Vehicle & Technical > Range Rover

Ive had enough!

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Range Rover Blues:
Lordy, we're up late mate.

When the heada are off, check them with a straight edge and shine a light on the from behind, any gaps will be evident.  Check how warped with a straight edge and feeler guages.

Your problem comes in that the heads won't just warp along their lenght but side to side and this cannot be pulled out.

if you think they are ok then fitting composite gaskets will give you a better chance of it all working reliably, even if it's at the cost of a little performance.  Compsite gaskets compress down to 1.2mm rather than the ali gaskets being 0.5mm, thus reducing the compresion ratio.

Dr Strangeglove:
Do you know what caused it to blow the gasket?  Did it overheat?  If so you need to know what caused it to overheat!  I had to do the heads on mine a couple of months back.  It cost me £140 to have the heads skimmed and tested (£25 per skin/£25 per test and £40 to have two studs removed after they broke trying to get the exhaust off).  The composite head gasket set cost me about £40 ish, new oil filter, oil, air filter, coolant, new breather pipe, etc cost a further £70 ish.  Then a big favour from a friend of mine who is a mechanic.

One thing I would suggest is take loads of photos before you start of all the different little fiddly bits.  Mine is a 3.9 Vogue so you have the alternator, PAS pump and aircon pump all mounted to the front and all need to come off - when it comes to re-assembly and you aren’t quite sure which way the bracket went and using what spacers, the visual reminder will help.

I marked my ht leads/rubber tubes and hoses/wiring etc with some tipex.  The little sponge on the tipex corrector is very useful - however - if you can also use a permanent marker per use that also - tipex can come off dirty rubber and wiring as it tends to flake off when the parts flex.

I am no mechanic and I would have been goosed without my friend.

Good luck with it mate.

Just one more thing, depending on the year your engine may have 14 or 10 bolts in each head.  If it has 14 bolts then the outer 4 should not be tightened to the same torque as the other 10. look at the RPi web site which states:-

“All post '96 Rover V8 engines no longer have the outer 4 head bolts on each bank, this is what the engine has always needed, but it took Rover 25 years to realize it. The following solutions/actions are available to you.

 Do Nothing. Well Rover got away with it for 25 years. It's a far-off, long term problem on new engines and an immediate problem on all pre '96 used, medium to high mileage engines, of all assumed conditions.

 Use conventional tin (shim steel ) gaskets to retain compression ratio. This is actually better than it may seem, you can (we would) refit the outer 4 offending bolts as Rover, but torque them to only 20-25ft/lb so they fill the hole but have no detrimental effect, this is generally the best option if your head and block faces are new or near perfect order.

 Fit composite gaskets. This is the surest way of getting the best head gasket seal, but unlike the above option, will lower the compression ratio by a factor of about 0.6-1 (important to some but not to most).”

http://www.v8engines.com/engine-4.htm

Yoshi:
I have the manual on cd here for the range rover, and mine is the 89 3.9 v8 which would apparently have the 3 sets of bolts, but i have the torque settings for all of it!

Am thinking of letting it get done by a mechanic, all except for the rad which i can do meself!

Also no idea why it went, was going up a nasty hill, put me foot down for kick down and it happened, went up to about 3500rpm then it was heating up when accelerating and cooling when braking!

Yoshi:
well its not officially off the road for a while :( there is no way i can do it myself, not enough knowledge) and me local garage who are pretty good said the cheapest he could do it for was £450 for both sides :( he will however do the test in a couple of weeks to see what side it is to see if we can lower the cost, but in the meantime i swapped me pc and £100 for a motor on his forecourt, an n-reg mundano with tax and test til november (just the base unit of the pc, not the tft monitor)

Dr Strangeglove:
I am sure you will get loads of posts now telling you to do both sides.  A lot of the hard work is in taking of all the parts that are in the way of you getting to the heads.  The only labour I think you will save is on the removal of the second head, and the removal of the exhaust manifold from that side - as for parts they come as a set - I would recommend you refit a composite gasket though - slightly more expensive but a good look at the RPI website will convince you!

I am in a similar situation to you in that I have had the heads done but it is still overheating.  It seems ok when I drive at a reasonable speed but then starts to struggle when I start doing a lot of turning (slowing down then accelerating away).  I am presuming now that it is the radiator (but this is more a presumption in hope) as the water seems to circulate, the heater works very well (I was advised by difflock that if the water pump is not working very well the heater would tend to blow hot and cold!) and I have removed the thermostat to ensure it is not that.  I can only think of two remaining items - the radiator (one for mine I have priced new at £165 at the moment) which you may think seems an expensive part but I am hoping that this is the problem as the only other thing I can think of is a cracked block or slipped piston lining and I do not want to even consider that!!

dave362 currently has a rad for the 3.5 on ebay to collect from York - current price £50 with a day to go - only six months old apparently.  Whilst your rad is not as expensive as mine, £50 for one six months old looks OK.

ONE MORE THING: Range Rover Blue's told me that sometimes the timing being out can cause overheating - again look at the RPI website for a description of how to fist check you have the correct TDC on your pulley before you check the timing.

Oops - forgot to mention - Land Rover Owner International magazine had an article on checking the head and also for checking for a cracked block.  Whilst I want the original I will photocopy it or scan it if you want (as it was last month), just let me know a fax number or email address.

I hope all goes as smoothly as it possibly can mate.

Regards

Mick

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