Overheating
Posted: Sat Jun 17, 2017 6:22 pm
I packed up my truck with the intention of driving 8 hours from the Washington DC area to the southern coast of North Carolina to catch a ferry out to Portsmouth Island on the Outer Banks to do a little camping with a group of Land Rover buddies. I got as far as 2 hours from my house and had to stop - the truck kept overheating - badly.
Luckily, I stopped in Richmond, VA where a good friend runs an independent Land Rover repair shop. He is the same person that helped me with my recent frame swap. We worked on it for a full day and got nowhere to solving the problem. Trip canceled. Not happy.
It runs for a short while and seems ok. When I drive at highway speeds, it appears the coolant is being forced out the expansion overflow tube until I get so low on coolant that the motor overheats. We replaced expansion tank cap and thermostat and that did not help. We did a pressure test on the whole system and could find no leaks. The water pump is new, a Britpart, and I took it back off and gave it a thorough visual inspection looking for loose impellers or other signs of fault and found nothing out of the ordinary. We are not seeing any white smoke / steam from the exhaust and it does not smell of coolant. The engine runs fine with great power and no miss. Still - I think we might have a head gasket issue. We are still looking into this so the answer is still yet to come.
If anyone else has experienced this then please share your knowledge. I will update the thread once I get some more testing done and finally pinpoint the problem.
Luckily, I stopped in Richmond, VA where a good friend runs an independent Land Rover repair shop. He is the same person that helped me with my recent frame swap. We worked on it for a full day and got nowhere to solving the problem. Trip canceled. Not happy.
It runs for a short while and seems ok. When I drive at highway speeds, it appears the coolant is being forced out the expansion overflow tube until I get so low on coolant that the motor overheats. We replaced expansion tank cap and thermostat and that did not help. We did a pressure test on the whole system and could find no leaks. The water pump is new, a Britpart, and I took it back off and gave it a thorough visual inspection looking for loose impellers or other signs of fault and found nothing out of the ordinary. We are not seeing any white smoke / steam from the exhaust and it does not smell of coolant. The engine runs fine with great power and no miss. Still - I think we might have a head gasket issue. We are still looking into this so the answer is still yet to come.
If anyone else has experienced this then please share your knowledge. I will update the thread once I get some more testing done and finally pinpoint the problem.