Isuzu C223

Isuzu's 2.2 diesel — in the Trooper and the Panther.

It is an indirect-injection engine with a mechanical pump and no engine electronics worth the name, which puts it on the far side of every modern diesel line: no rail, no filter, no EGR cooler, nothing to regenerate. Almost every modern diesel complaint is inapplicable here.

What goes wrong is old-diesel wear. Glow plugs and their relay are the commonest cold-start fault and are testable in minutes; injection pump timing drifts as the belt ages and shows as smoke and poor economy rather than as a running fault; and injector nozzles carbon up and knock at idle.

The timing belt drives the injection pump as well as the camshaft, so a belt service is not the job it is on a petrol engine, and getting the pump timing back is the part that takes the skill.

These engines outlive the vehicles around them, and in several markets they are still in service in vehicles far newer than themselves.