The Torment continues.......................

[Bull Bar Cowboy]

After a conversation with the forum walking disaster ……. Hello nige ………. It was decided that the tale should be posted here ……….. just so that you can all take the pi$$.

I have decided that associating with HFH is very bad news ……… just something about him that seems to be very, very contagious.

This all started about a week ago Wednesday ……… a litre of oil down the front of the V8 indicated the valley gasket had let go…….. it was quickly changed with no fuss, but after I started the engine I noted a ‘chuffing’ noise. On the V8 this is normally an indication of a blown exhaust manifold gasket, so I paid little attention to it and decided it would wait.

On the Friday I was coming down the M5 when the truck went down to 4 cylinders, coupled with a rise in water temp and a huge loss of power ………… barely able to find 40mph !. The tacho wasn’t indicating an electrical misfire problem so I assumed the loss of 4 pots was down to the EFI ……… I stopped on the hard shoulder, fiddled with the resistor pack connector and 10 minutes later was on my way again with 8 pots……………. but increased water temp.

Once home I checked out the engine for anything obvious and it appeared that the chuffing was from engine central ………. Indeed further diagnosis revealed No5 had blown into the valley and into No7……….. so on the M5 I had probably lost the good bank and was trying to run on 2 cylinders !

Monday night I stripped down the engine and sure enough the gasket had blown as diagnosed. I felt that a couple of the bolts were not a tight as they should be……. Tuesday night saw the reassembly ………. When the threads of the 3 long bolts let go in the block, hence the Helicoil threads in the tech archive ……….whilst reaching across to the ‘helicoil’ shelf in the workshop my shin pushed against the replacement front axle that was on stands ………… the inevitable happened and the axle came crashing down on my foot (I wear trainers when in the workshop) ……….. I quickly pulled my foot free but the pain is so intense that you don’t really shout ….. you just sort of stand there and in a quiet whimpering voice let out a stammered …..fu….fu….fu….fu…fu……….noise

Once the pain had retreated a little I picked up the axle on dropped it back on the stands………. Its just that I forgot my thumb was underneath as I dropped the long end onto the stand …….. again pulling the thumb clear, the pain and throbbing is almost immediate giving way to the stammered fu……fu……fu….fu…….oh boll@cks ……… normally you sort of jump around, holding the offended thumb ……… but me bloody toe was still hurting to much to even walk.

So after a while reassembly commenced and bolt 9 in the head pulled out its threads ……… so yet another helicoil was fitted ……… eventually the head is on together with the inlet manifold and the engine filled with coolant whilst the other ancillaries are bolted………. I then noticed a trickle of coolant flowing down the valley and slowly turning into a lake ……… damn…….. the heater hose at the back of the block had split underneath …… just where I couldn’t see it.

So we now get round to fitting the ancillaries and the steering pump bracket stripped a thread on one of the ‘swinging’ studs in the mounting frame ……… to get around this, meant dismantling the pump from the frame and welding in a new stud ………. Once that was back on the adjuster nut that is factory tacked to the back of the frame broke away ……….. so it all comes off again to re-tack (reweld) the nut.

Excellent ……… finally back together and road tested ……….. well pleased ……. Its now Thursday so its only taken the best part of a week to do a 4 hour job. That night I was due to go shooting up at the farm with my son ………. We just clear the first field after the track and the engine stalls ……… a restart reveals we are back on 4 pots …… a good fiddle with the resistor pack has no effect, its pitch black and the powerbeam torch is failing rapidly, so we call it a night and return home on 4 cylinders ……….. almost back home it returns (as if by magic) to running on all 8……..bu@@er !

Experience tells me this will be a resistor pack fault or the supply to the pack ……… so I dissect the resistor pack, cut out the crappy molex connector and hard wire it to the loom ………….I also bypass the brown/orange feed into the loom right back to the main relay……. This feed splits 3 ways by a joint in the loom built by Mr Lucas ……… 2 to the resistor pack and one to the ‘my flap is open’ switch in the AFM.

A good long road test reveals all is well in the land of Lucas EFI , so the next night its back up to the farm ………… at the point where I am furthest from civilisation and at the bottom of a deep gulley ……….. yes….. you guessed it ………we lose 4 pots again………… so after a bit of thought, I drive along the gulley slideslope with a bootfull of loud pedal and it bring it back on all eight …………. at one point along the slope I apparently went onto 2 wheels ………. but steering down the slope brought it back to an even keel. During the evening the 4 pot event happened several times, however, a bit of load and a bootfull would give a temporary fix.

The only possible place for this fault was the ECU ………. for which I have a circuit diagram …………… so Sunday morning was spent looking for a ‘dry’ joint and rebuilding (with new components) the injector output stages of the ECU………… for those interested its just a couple of BDX65B’s as emitter followers with BC214 drivers off the output chip ……… certainly not rocket science………….Yes a suspected dry joint was found and also the mounting of the TO3’s left a bit to be desired ………. but this is now fixed and all seems well in the land of V8 ……………… perhaps I can get back to building the axles now………………….I cant remember upsetting anybody last week……

Sorry for the long post …………..blame the cat antagonizer….. …..

Ian

[Mark90]

I think anyone with a LR has days/weeks like that, I know I do

[jules]

He's right we have all been there....

[dollythelw]

true, bit its nice to hear you're not alone, if its gonna go balloons skywards then let it happen in style

nice one Ian, hope the flesh regrows fella

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

Makes me feel all normal

Nige

[Andy]

reminds me why i have a TDi, just snap a cambelt every 2 years & all is well...

no i cant find why the buggers go either, everything replaced & its all tourqued up right etc etc