3.9 efi drinking water!!

Hi All,

Please help!! My v8 is drinking coolant, there are no obvious leaks, no water in the oil, but there is plenty of water coming out of the exhaust pipe (no cat) before I consider porous head syndrome is there any other things best to check first such as head gasket etc?

I've popped in k seal but no joy

Any help very much appreciated!!

Thanks

Dave

Head gasket gone between a waterway and an exhaust port

Only two waterways on each bank on the rover v8 block to head and they are at the front and rear of block, if not head gasket then could be a crack in head, heads off I'm afraid to investigate

Thanks guys, sounds like a fair amount of work either way I guess, time to empty the garage and get my hands dirty!!

Might be an idea to check the liners while the heads are off & before you spend more time/money?

norseman said:

Might be an idea to check the liners while the heads are off & before you spend more time/money?

Click to expand...

Yep defo good call

DaveW, this sounds all too familiar. I had this on my (3 weeks new to me) Disco2. As soon as the heads were removed it was clear to me that one piston crown (cyl.6) was showing signs of 'bore washing'. It looked like it had been steam cleaned. This was where the coolant was going, from the coolant sys. & out the exhaust. The witless garage who had the car still pursued head pressure checks & skimming, but the block was the problem.
Other signs had been a misfire that was due to the steam fouling the plug after it had been left standing, the 'waterfall' sound of the cabin rad system being low on coolant as coolant volume was lost, and of course when it let go properly it was pressurising the coolant system & pushing coolant out the coolant reservoir overflow pipe.
I chose to have top hat liners installed by the highly professional guys at JE Developments. They heat the block up, press the liners out & then inspect to make sure that the crack between the water gallery and the cylinder bore is within repair limits for a resin to be used to seal it up. This has given me an engine that will certainly see the car to its retirement, but the liner replacement and subsequent rebuild was painfully expensive.
I suspect all you can do is remove the heads. If there are signs of bore washing then its either a rebuild or slap a replacement lump in and play Russian roulette that it doesn't let go in the future.

my 3.5 gone the same way some bubbleing back up the rad, some presure build up but she not drinking any water yet just pour back in the little bit from the expansion tank
hopefully get the old series to behave this week so i can get the heads off the 3.5 this
weekend but like the lads say rebuild time or slap another lump in

disco924 said:

my 3.5 gone the same way some bubbleing back up the rad, some presure build up but she not drinking any water yet just pour back in the little bit from the expansion tank
hopefully get the old series to behave this week so i can get the heads off the 3.5 this
weekend but like the lads say rebuild time or slap another lump in

Click to expand...

well you lucky cpos it aint the block...but re oe poster it proberly is..

so if you gonna spend money on tophat liners then why not do it to a 4.6??????..scrap the 3.9!! and go for more power etc!!

I would normally say liner on a 3.9, but I have usually managed to cure them with Kseal. A leak between water & exaaust however never seems to be fixable with that stuff. Soon as water pushes sealant into the crack, combustion pressure forces it back out. I did run my Volvo V70 in such a state for several months, just add water daily until it failed MOT on emissions where all the water destroyed the cat.