Freelander 1 TD4 engine - I found someone making billet aluminium coolant elbows

Not one for the Thrift brigade, please don't post by saying you can get a plastic one off eBay for a tenth of the price of this part. This is a piece of exquisite engineering, CNC machined in Yorkshire, from an aluminium billet with ferrules welded on for sensors etc. It's beautifully made, and as such a bit "pricey" compared to the plastic made in china knock off's that can be had for less than a case of beer, and it is also more expensive than even a legit dealer part whether bought from a BMW or Land Rover dealership, but this is the ultimate solution to the issue of failing coolant elbows on the M47/M57 engines and given the work that would have went into making it, I think it's fairly priced at £149.00 https://dieselpumpuk.com/products/m57-water-outlet-pipe



In the interests of transparency, I've no ties or affiliation with DieselPumpUK. My only "involvement" with them is watching their youtube channel and thinking that Luke (the proprietor) is the sort of bloke I'd enjoy having a chat about engineering and landies over a beer with. He's developed these for the conversion market, I'm likely to stick one in my 635d as part of the preparations for tuning the tits out of it.

It looks nice, and the price is very reasonable from a manufacturing point of view. However to me it seems excessive for an old road engine.
The part it replaces lasts about a decade, and only costs £15 should it fail.
So unless the vehicle is going to last 100 years it'll never break even, although I guess if coolant and labour are factored in, then the price differential isn't so bad is it first seems.

Edited for accuracy.

Nodge68 said:

The part it replaces lasts about a decade, and only costs £15 should it fail.

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Jayridium said:

please don't post by saying you can get a plastic one off eBay for a tenth of the price of this part.

Click to expand...

Jayridium said:

please don't post by saying you can get a plastic one off eBay for a tenth of the price of this part.

Click to expand...

I'm not knocking the beautiful billet part you've seen, but it's an expensive way to solve a problem which isn't actually a problem.
I've just checked and they've gone up a lot since I bought one, but a genuine LR part is still available for about £30.
https://www.advancedfactors.co.uk/lr006797-water-connector-591953-p.asp
You can get a Britpart boxed one for £15 from LR parts suppliers, but it's probably an LR one in a Britpart box.

Very first sentence on this thread was "Not one for the Thrift brigade, please don't post by saying you can get a plastic one off eBay for a tenth of the price of this part." I know it makes no economical sense, I opened the thread with that exact sentiment, and here we foocking are, debating the validity of exactly this unit versus an injection moulded piece of plastic. What is the foocking point of this conversation, I already established in the opening post that this is an order of magnitude more expensive than it's plastic counterparts.

You know what, foock it, I'm out of here.

Bye now

Jayridium said:

Very first sentence on this thread was "Not one for the Thrift brigade, please don't post by saying you can get a plastic one off eBay for a tenth of the price of this part."

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Oddly I missed that part and went straight to the pretty pictures.
Please accept my apologies.