Freelander 1 G4 coolant loss - solved

PRT fitted. Bled and all good at tickover. Driving causes boiling and switching off causes the tank to get sucked dry!!!

andyfreelandy said:

PRT fitted. Bled and all good at tickover. Driving causes boiling and switching off causes the tank to get sucked dry!!!

Click to expand...

It seems like there's air in it somewhere. If you add more water when it's getting sucked in, does that dissappear too?

Plugs look fine, dry and grey ish brown.
Compression 200 to 220 psi, my gauge is a bit enthusiastic!
Reassembled with replacement header and cap.
Now get this, coolant problem seems solved, for now!! Could boiling and bad cap really cause that much boiling and then suction?
However, now have a cyl 3 misfire and flashing engine light!!
Only disturbed the plugs and coil packs so have tried substitution with no change.
Also, can hear 'click' when misfire occurs.

Injector? Leaking inlet?
This vehicle is trying me at the moment!
See what today brings. The misfire and click seem to happen together.
Maybe the inlet, water loss, temp fix and misfire are all related??

andyfreelandy said:

Plugs look fine, dry and grey ish brown.
Compression 200 to 220 psi, my gauge is a bit enthusiastic!
Reassembled with replacement header and cap.
Now get this, coolant problem seems solved, for now!! Could boiling and bad cap really cause that much boiling and then suction?
However, now have a cyl 3 misfire and flashing engine light!!
Only disturbed the plugs and coil packs so have tried substitution with no change.
Also, can hear 'click' when misfire occurs.

Injector? Leaking inlet?
This vehicle is trying me at the moment!
See what today brings. The misfire and click seem to happen together.
Maybe the inlet, water loss, temp fix and misfire are all related??

Click to expand...

My D1V8 was always overheating.

Changed the stat to start with - finding there wasn't 1 in there. The forecourt I got it from didn't want to know and promptly ceased trading. Stat didn't change anything.

Took it to a LR 'specialist' who said the viscous fan was shot and replaced it, that wasn't cheap, and didn't fix it either.

They then said both heads were shot, and they just happened to have a couple they could do me a deal on

That didn't fix anything.

Took it elsewhere, they said the rad needed changing, so installed a new one, once again, not cheap and didn't fix anything.

Finally took it to a fella who spent some time on it and diagnosed a faulty expansion tank cap - not holding the right pressure. Got a new one, that was worse than the old one. Got another new one and that did more to fix the overheating than all the other new bits - but it was never very good and would still boil up on occasion.

If the coolant is boiling and there's bubbles/air being pushed round the system, I suppose as soon as the pump stops, all (most of) the air will float back up to the expansion tank giving the impression that water is being sucked out of it. I wouldn't think a K Series will be to happy with that for long.

Thanks, it could be as simple as air getting in through the cap, I will be watching it closely, but now the misfire??

Connected or unconnected? Changing the coil packs and those dodgy springs today. Will try to get my spark tester on all plugs, not easy with the set up but will confirm electrics. Or not!!!!

So, monitored misfire on Pscan. This allows you to collect the number of misfires per cylinder and log then in a chart against time.
Found massive misfire problem on cylinder 3 as expected from fault code.
Swapped coil pack. Fault and misfire now logged on cylinder 1. New coil pack solved problem.
Stood it on clean cardboard overnight and when running to check for leaks. None found.
No more boiling problems since new expansion tank and cap and system flush.

Here's what I think happened.
Cap allowed boiling and coolant loss.
Topping and cling film got me home at steady speed but likely air lock present.
Boiling shifted crap into expansion tank, to freak me and probably blocked the jiggle valve leading to air locks that I couldn't shift.
Boiling and air lock made it look like it was drinking coolant when switched off, as GG identied.
System flush cleared crap from previous hgf which happened just before I got it.
Compression test required removal of coil packs, which made one of them fail for some reason (replaced spring but still faulty).

So two unconnected faults that really started to look like hgf.
Best not to rush in. Will use it for short runs to make sure all is well.

Thanks for all the input.