Diagnosis
A few days after bringing our “new” 2004 Land Rover Discovery home, I was about to stretch my mechanical comfort zone. Although I was a mechanic in the military back in 2010, the stakes are higher when working on my own vehicle. If I screw something up, I will be the one paying for it.
Since the previous owner had told me it was “the head gaskets” I assumed the problem was at least that serious (looking at a weekend long job with about $500 in parts). Because I was optimistic I decided to order a new low temperature thermostat and install it, just to see what happens. In retrospect, this was basically a wild guess that had an almost zero percent chance of working. Indeed, it did not do much. The truck still overheated and dumped coolant within about five minutes of running. Hey, wouldn’t it have been cool if a $60 dollar part just fixed all my problems?
At this point I decided to focus my attention on the head gaskets. One of the symptoms of bad head gaskets can be exhaust gas in the coolant. Luckily they sell a low priced testing kit that can detect this situation. At this point I had some mixed emotions. If this test does indeed indicate exhaust gas in the coolant, I know I am in for at the minimum a head gasket repair and at worst a new engine (remember that Robinson article from the previous post)?
Well crap. After running the test.... the fluid is yellow.
Yellow Flud. Reference: http://www.superchevy.com/how-to/additional-tech/1409-head-gasket-failure-technically-speaking/
This means exactly one thing: exhaust gas in the coolant. This is either due to bad head gaskets or worse. In any case, it was time to “remove the heads”. No big deal, this just means removing what seems like the majority of the components under the hood. I got this. After all I had an amazing video from Atlantic British. What could go wrong.
In all honesty, removing the heads went pretty smoothly. I made a quick trip to the local discount tool store Harbor Freight to pick up a mechanics tool set, removed the hood for easy access and got to work. I felt like a pro, pulling of parts that I could barely identify. This was great fun. My wife Sarah was an eager assistant and even got in on the action a little.
Within a few nights, we got access to what we needed: the cylinder heads or “heads” for short. Under these bad boys was a thin sheet of paper like material that is many a Land Rover owner’s nemisis. The infamous “head gasket”. The only thing stopping us from pulling the heads off were a dozen or so head bolts. It turns out that my Harbour Freight tool set wasnt equipped to handle bolts that were the perfect combination of inaccessible and tight as hell.
After a quick trip to Home Depot, and a few nights off. We had the precise tool we needed, a giant metal “cheater bar”. With a little bit of might and a lot of spirit, we cracked the head bolts and had reached the promised land. We could see the head gaskets!!
Fantastic! There was just one problem. The head gaskets actually looked fine. Much like a sick person visiting the doctor is hoping for a quick diagnosis and remedy, I was hoping to see a giant tear in the head gasket at which point I would triumphiantly declare victory. No such luck. The fact that I couldn’t see anything majorly wrong suggested the worst. Was it new engine time?
After taking about 1000 photos and consulting the Land Rover forums and facebook groups for second and third opinions, it wasn’t looking good. Many identified one photo in particular that suggested I was in for it. Below you can see how the middle cylinder looks shiny and clean. This isn’t because I decided to spit shine that one, this is because of coolant leaking into the combustion chamber. This might sound complicated, but even I know that water shouldn’t be where the fire and oil goes. Furthermore, I was informed that there are no coolant passages near this cylinder so it was unlikely that the head gaskets would be to blame.
Middle cylinder “steam cleaned”
Another thing that helpful people from the internet suggested was to have the block pressure tested. This was another case where if the test fails, you know you are screwed, but if it passes you still might be screwed. I didn’t want to purchase this tool since I would only even need it once so I called a local Land Rover independent shop. It is always a pleasant suprise when you call a new shop and are greeted with an enthusiastic owner who is ready to help out. It seems all to often that shops are on the defensive and overly curt with customers. Nick at Exclusive British European was a great help, and a quick call to a local tow company later, the Land Rover was now in the hands of a trained professional. The goal was simple: determine if bringing her back to life was going to be quick and easy or long and expensive.
Well, the results came in and the news was grim. Nick told me I would need a new engine. After cosulting my forum friends about this, many suggested to figure out exactly what tests he ran and how he was so sure. I think this was good advice, but I trusted the mechanics, and at this point I was starting to think that installing a new engine would bring me greater peice of mind. Eventually I would like this vehicle to become a part of my life in a capacity beyond something that I tinker with in my garage. If this was to be our adventure and expedition vehicle, do I really want a ticking time bomb under the hood? I think not.
Until this point serious money had not been spent, and as previously mentioned, the proposition of a new engine is a 10K-12K endeavor. This is the point of no return. This was actually a much bigger decision than getting into this project in the first place. It would be pretty easy to button the truck back up, and sell it on craigslist in the same condition that I bought it in. When I got off the phone with Nick, it took me a few hours to get up the courage to send a text to my wife. When I did it read “so.... might need a new engine after all, would that be crazy?” She responded “Yeah, it would be. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do it.”
