P38A coolant system failure point

Left on Saturday for a 4 day off-road expedition with my club but had to drop out due to a failure in my cooling system.

The top radiator hose goes into a plastic T that has a small diameter branch leading down to the thermostat. The section of plastic T where the upper radiator hose connects broke and I lost all coolant. Luckily with 13 Land Rover owners around we were able to jury rig the connection and it held well enough to let me drive 250km to home. The club president says he used to own a Classic and they often replaced this T connection with a metal one as they were failure prone. I don't really know why it broke as there is no lateral pressure on it. Maybe I put a hand on it some time in the past and cracked it? Replaced it with an original from one of my parts cars but I think I will see if I can make a metal one. Dimensions are 1.375 inches/35mm for the large ends, 0.775 inches/19.7mm for the branch tube and overall length of 3.385 inches/86mm.

If you replace your hoses at some point you might consider also replacing this T piece. Cheers.

Hope you got to do a few days before it went
Plastic can just go no warning probably not anything you’ve done. I am wary since the plastic along the top of rad blew in Mark’s face on tickover for no apparent reason

RangeRoller dt said:

Hope you got to do a few days before it went
Plastic can just go no warning probably not anything you’ve done. I am wary since the plastic along the top of rad blew in Mark’s face on tickover for no apparent reason

Click to expand...

Hmmm, plastic.... High pressure.... Scalding.... Stupid idea.....
A metal part is a good idea and it may have been on the car for quite some time. Luckily you had an army of kinfolk to help out

Plastic starts to deteriorate from the moment it's made, add heating/cooling and vibration, it's an accident waiting to happen

It was the first day of a 4 day trip and we had just started the off-road part so I didn't see anything I couldn't have seen from a regular car. A lot of packing and preparation for naught. I did see some nice scenery driving up and back so not a total waste. I was lucky it didn't happen way out in the back country as I'm not sure how the repair would have held up on rough roads.

Gord Wedman said:

It was the first day of a 4 day trip and we had just started the off-road part so I didn't see anything I couldn't have seen from a regular car. A lot of packing and preparation for naught. I did see some nice scenery driving up and back so not a total waste. I was lucky it didn't happen way out in the back country as I'm not sure how the repair would have held up on rough roads.

Click to expand...

Self amalgamating tape is good for emergency repairs.

Yes, one of the guys had some but we just went with the hose clamp and zip ties. I think I will add a selection of hose clamps, zip ties and Rescue Tape to my tools.

Always got a little sleeve in the boot. Got me home last time
I have used that metal duct tape stuff few times on hoses when overheated, not ideal but would work on a tee if you have bottle of water or two

Sorry couldn't add text before, This was how mine looked a few years ago. luckily i was just random checking before a drive so very closely avoided disaster on the crap Russian roads. The replacement from LR was the one with plastic.