Greetings all,
My wife and I recently emigrated from the UK to her home country of Romania. Some of the roads here, particularly in remote areas and the mountains, can be rather... interesting... to say the least. We knew we wanted a vehicle that could handle them at some point, though weren't expecting to find one within our limited budget. However, we did come across a Freelander TD4 that we could afford. It looked to be in good nick, ran fine, and I couldn't find any obvious problems. Plus my wife loved it, and I've always wanted a Land Rover, so it was a done deal.
Unfortunately I seem to have imported my usual luck with four-wheeled vehicles, as within days we were having problems. Ironically, we were literally on our way to the Romanian equivalent of an MOT when they started! Bloody thing wouldn't go beyond 3000rpm and didn't sound like a happy bunny at all. Imagine my surprise when it somehow passed, with an official stamp proclaiming that it was "technically sound"! It promptly broke down on the way home.
On stripping things down to fix various problems it quickly became clear that a complete idiot has worked on it in the past, someone who favours bodge jobs. A great example is that one of the injectors was covered in some kind of yellow resin-like material. This had given way and the injector had become a diesel fountain. Removing the resin also revealed numerous tool impact marks all over the top of the injector, making it clear why the thing had developed a leak in the first place.
Anyway, bit by bit I have been fixing the problems. We don't have the budget to get something else, on top of which we don't really want to. It's a Land Rover! Hopefully sooner rather than later it'll be running smoothly and we can start to actually enjoy it!
And hopefully, my posts here won't consist solely of questions on how to fix this or that...
My wife and I recently emigrated from the UK to her home country of Romania. Some of the roads here, particularly in remote areas and the mountains, can be rather... interesting... to say the least. We knew we wanted a vehicle that could handle them at some point, though weren't expecting to find one within our limited budget. However, we did come across a Freelander TD4 that we could afford. It looked to be in good nick, ran fine, and I couldn't find any obvious problems. Plus my wife loved it, and I've always wanted a Land Rover, so it was a done deal.
Unfortunately I seem to have imported my usual luck with four-wheeled vehicles, as within days we were having problems. Ironically, we were literally on our way to the Romanian equivalent of an MOT when they started! Bloody thing wouldn't go beyond 3000rpm and didn't sound like a happy bunny at all. Imagine my surprise when it somehow passed, with an official stamp proclaiming that it was "technically sound"! It promptly broke down on the way home.
On stripping things down to fix various problems it quickly became clear that a complete idiot has worked on it in the past, someone who favours bodge jobs. A great example is that one of the injectors was covered in some kind of yellow resin-like material. This had given way and the injector had become a diesel fountain. Removing the resin also revealed numerous tool impact marks all over the top of the injector, making it clear why the thing had developed a leak in the first place.
Anyway, bit by bit I have been fixing the problems. We don't have the budget to get something else, on top of which we don't really want to. It's a Land Rover! Hopefully sooner rather than later it'll be running smoothly and we can start to actually enjoy it!
And hopefully, my posts here won't consist solely of questions on how to fix this or that...
