When you own a Land Rover Defender TD5 or any other LR for that matter, you do need to keep up on the maintenance. So when I was checking over the engine I found the waste gate mechanism seemed to be jammed. I've not worked on this part of the engine so it was a bit of a learning curve. I removed the actuator from the wastegate arm to see which had failed, the actuator or the arm. In my case the arm mechanise had gone bad. The shaft running into the manifold had seized. Very expensive! Luckily though with a 17mm spanner and a tin of WD40, slowly I managed to work the shift loose, just a little at a time.
A few minutes of careful persuasion totally freed off the arm. I was unable to find any information exactly how this arm should be refitted. Was there any calibration required? I'm still not sure but what I did was the following. I re-attatched the actuator to the arm after bolting in the actuator using the 2 10mm nuts. I took up all the slack in the arm using the thumb screw then gave it another turn and half. As stated in the video, comparatively speaking, the performance is now out of this world. I can only assume the wastegate had been stuck open a tad preventing me from getting full boost. This fix worked for me, and is still good, but don't go tweaking the turbo unless you know what you are doing or are prepared for things to go bad!
* Update April 2022. The fix is still going strong with no need to revisit the problem, very happy*
Although I didn't need to replace it here is a link to an actuator currently for sale for around £35 on eBay:
www.ebay.co.uk...
Link to Amazon for an array of Defender waste gates, pick carefully: amzn.to/38450QS
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