Well what a fun day ive had today.  After last nights fun and games of the car dying on me, i took the day off work to try and sort the issue. 

Our initial findings were there was no fuel being pumped from the tank.  So suspect fuel lifter pump.  All being well i looked through the guide on here and thought that would be quite a quick job.

No such luck with my car.  It has (had) a nice towbar fitted, complete with massive steel plate in the boot, half covering the removable panel. 



So i began stripping off the tow bar.  A job easier said than done, and after removing half the car i was left with this to deal with.



With the bumper removed i could see where most of the bolts were so i removed them and took off the main part of the towbar.  It was at this stage i took a look at the electric side of things.  I have not seen such shoddy workmanship before in my life.  There were bare wires everywhere, wires taped with electrical tape and scotch lock a plenty.  After a bit of a fight i finally traced all wires and removed the towbar. 




This just left the plate with two bolts remaining.  After a crawl around under the car the plate was finally removed.



Now to the fuel pump. i removed the cover and undone the plastic retaining ring.  When i lifted the top off the tank, i could see that not only had the pipework pulled completely off the pump, but the wiring had come undone as well.  I removed the pump, cleaned the housing and filter and reassembled everything how it should be and slotted it all back in.




Having done this i popped the bonnet and cracked off the feed pipe to the fuel filter and turned the ignition on.  Diesel came gushing out everywhere making some what of a mess.  Big improvement over last night.  Unfortunately while i was cranking over to bleed the injectors the battery died on me, so it is currently on charge and i will try again a bit later.

All in all quite a fun day - not.  Although i am happy the towbar is gone and while i had the bumper off i removed the chrome trim as it was damaged, plus i hate chrome.  I have had an electrical issue recently with the check computer telling me i had a bulb out, even though they were all working.  I am going to put that down to the towbar wiring, after seeing the state of it.

Fingers crossed for a few hours time, heres hoping it fires up for me

Just to update from earlier.

I put the partly charged battery back on and bleed off the fuel filter then the injectors.  Eventually after lots of cranking it started to get all the air out the system.  I nipped up the injectors and it started up.  Seems that the first part sorted now. 

The leak off pipes are looking in a sorry state so i will be replacing them all tomorrow along with the thermostat change and a coolant flush.  Im picking up the thermostat and anti freeze from vauxhall tomorrow.

Eventually i will get it to run properly

I thought it was the pick up pipe! Good fun today then.

Nice one Pete, when you do your leak off pipes, are you writing a guide?