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Freelander 1998 head gasket failure...help!


deb5672

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I have owned this 1.8 petrol (no eye rolls please) from New and would love to keep her going. Only has 48000 on clock. Had New engine installed by landrover about 3 years after getting so around 2001. Has been well looked after but on trip back through france last week started to over heat. Topped up coolant.got all the way back close to home suddenly over heated and stopped...restarted nursed to garage...Topped up again got us home. Called mechanic says is the head gasket. Which it May well be. Mechanis did say he wasn't used to looking at this type of set up so wondering if he's just opted for the easy your car has terminal failure thing...

When filling coolant up it is coming out almost immediately from a 'u' hose just next to the oil dipstick...no clue what this is...Any ideas?

We initially thought the fault maybe due to the water pump rather than the head gasket... 

Any freelander mechanics happy to come out to take a look...am based in South East London.

Or any positive suggestions gratefully received

Many thanks in advance...would simply love to get it back on the road.

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If you want top expertise DVA Power in Milton Keynes is the chappy all the Lotus & Caterham boys go to, I had complete 1800 engine from him for mine.

Not sure of your level of ability / willingness but you should be able to diagnose a few things and rule out a few things on your own to save a bit of money.

If it hasn't overheated badly (if it didn't hit the red line) you might get away with a new gasket only, otherwise the head will have gone soft and you'll need a new head as well (again, DVA Power would sell you a good head) - be very wary of any used head as it could be pre-knackered.

Doing a new head & gasket isn't a terribly hard job, if memory serves @Les Henson did a write-up with pictures in the technical archive section. Just use good quality parts - Elring head gasket / genuine Land Rover bits.

I actually like the 1800, it's a great little engine that suffered from being assembled badly at the factory / having the accountants cut corners on a few critical parts.

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Sorry but any over heated 1.8 will most likely have slipped liners as well as all the other issues mentioned above.  Did you do the thermostat/cooling mod to stop the thermal shock that kills these engines - it most likely overheated due to the thermostat being closed and the engine getting hot and then letting a rush of cold coolant into the hot engine and causing thermal shock.  I bet this was the reason you had the engine replaced originally.  Unfortunately the replacement engines also failed a short time later as the engine themselves were Ok but not the cooling system.  You have a good good run out of this second engine.

Local used car yards used to take out the thermostat while the cars were on their used car lot in case they failed.  No thermostat then no thermal shock - only worked in summer though.  There was a mod that virtually eliminated the thermal shock problem with the 1.8.

 

Garry

 

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