Right guys, time for an update....and not a good one!
I had my diesel
mechanic friend come take a look and we ruled out exhaust blockage with a fairly simple test. I have one of those very fancy, expensive silicon high heat exhaust hoses off the
elbow and before the
muffler. The beauty of this is its really flexible and you can squeeze it with the
motor running. Under load, you can squeeze this really easily telling us there is no pressure building up in the exhaust. So thats all ok.
He also took a really good look at the turbo and said while its worn, its not buggered by any means and should still make well over 2PSI the way it is.
So that pointed me back to the original suspect - Fuel. The only
parts left in the fuel system were
injector pump and injectors.
So off they came on Saturday night and dropped them off to the Diesel and Turbo specialists here. 3 hours later a
phone call came to say the pump was full or rust and metal filings. The injector nozzles are damaged from the filings and both the
injector pump and all 4 injectors need rebuilding. They said the fuel that came out of the pump didnt have any
water in it now, but there has obviously been
water in there at some stage that was not cleaned out properly.
They said I was really lucky the metal shavings didn't jam an injector open and flood a cylinder, in turn hydraulic'ing the engine and snapping rods, so I guess that has to be the silver lining.
They are currently stripping the pump to find a list of
parts needed to fix it, but it sounds like the cam
wheel and injector nozzles are likely ex
Japan, so there goes our Xmas holiday =(.
Will update you all later this arvo when I have the verdict.
Thanks for all the help so far, and at least we have found the cause of the
power issue!