Cooling problem with Defender TD5 in mountains of Argentina

[LuisaBell]

We are overlanding in South America in our 130 TD5 and have run into a spot of bother. Advice please! Here's the story:

We are driving from Mendoza, Argentina to Santiago in Chile. We are driving through an amazing mountain range and are at about 3000m above sea level, It's warm during the day and freezing at night. Yesterday we were driving up another hill after about 200km when rusty coloured water began spouting out of the water filler tank. We pulled over (noted that the viscous fan was running and the temp gauge was on COLD and the engine did not seem overheated), let her finish her let tantrum, topped her up, waited 20 minutes and drove back down the hill but she definitely felt low on power especially pulling off in first. There were no other issues on the 10 km drive down to the next little village. This morning both the aux fan and viscous fan are running full strength on start up which I think is a bit strange. So far we have established that the following may have caused the original overflow (and associated loss of power?):

- Thermostat stuck closed - have removed the thermostat but we don't have a replacement and therefore will break the plastic unit and remove the thermostat and refit the housing

- Faulty Airflow meter

- Water pump failure - have tested the water pump and seems to be fine

- Viscous fan failure - have been advised that it's not a problem as the ECU probably has registered the problem and will keeping having the problem until it has been connected to the diagnostics unit

- Gunk in the cooling system - have flushed the radiator and all hoses and have replaced the hose connecting the top hose connecting the radiator, thermostat etc. - was a fair amount of orange gunk in the system

Advice please. You can also follow what other international Landy drivers are advising on http://www.facebook.com/a2a.expedition

And try not to make fun of the photos of the wife and me with most of our kit off

Thanks

Graeme

[Aragorn]

Running with no thermostat isnt a good idea. Instead, test it in some hot water to see if its opening.

Did the temperature guage actually reach a high temperature before the symptoms, indicating a heat related cause, or did it go from normal to nothing?

It does sound like characteristic TD5 headgasket symptoms, they'll often run fine, until they get under lots of load at which point they pressurise the cooling system and start venting water due to pressure rather than temperature. Which sort of correlates with it doing it on the uphill section then running fine on the way back down.

[Team Idris]

Sounds like head gasket to me.

We recon you loose 1% cooling for every 100m, so 30% down? But a low gauge temp suggests that isn't the issue and you arn't pulling a trailer, so is it really working that hard? But all that brown gunk isn't good, as that rust had to come from somewhere.

There's 2 heads? 10P and 13P? 10P being the weakest early version. There is a super-dooper replacement that we got new, with all the valves in. No idea how long to ship to you though, but I mention it incase things go further south.

Hope a gasket fixes him. Sounds a great trip. Good Luck

[Andrew Chua]

The top of the cooling tank venting and the temp gauge at the cold position suggests that you have a coolant flow issue.

The gauge at cold would mean that there's no coolant at the point of the temp sensor to measure, so it's cold.

The top of the plastic venting suggests that the pressure in the system is higher that normal. It could be the head or simply cos the coolant is not circulating.

If the coolant is not moving, that means its the water pump. You can test this by opening the resivour cap, filling it up with water and then floor the gas, it should sent coolant out of the opening, if it doesn't the water pump is faulty.