Hi All

Im back with yet another problem with my freelander v6. I was driving it in to work the other day and I started to notice steam coming out of the expansion tank area. On getting back to the car later that day, before starting it up I checked the expansion tank and it was empty.

I didnt start the car and rang the AA. They topped it up with coolant, it didnt take much. They said it was a faulty expansion tank cap.

So got a new expansion tank cap from Land Rover today and its doing the same again.

If you are stopped it seems to overheat at that point and steams from the expansion tank. The expansion tank seems to immediately fill with water so that it is full to the top.

The radiator top hose was very hot, the radiator was hot and the bottom hose was also very hot! I dont know whether the electric fans are working. Dont want to run the car again in case of damage..

The coolant temperature sensor has never moved above the middle mark.

I have attached a video showing what the expansion tank is doing.

Also to point out, its had new water pump and cambelts about 3000 miles ago.

Should the fans be on at that point? How can i test the fans?

not sure mate but it could be a blocked coolant hose,
it happened to me once so i squezzed the hoses where
i could reach & the blockage cleared,been ok ever since,
worth a try,mind your hands though of fans belts ect.
regards stan.

You may have a new cap but have you checked the tank itself as they can crack.
Looks like the coolant is boiling which it will do if there is no pressure in the cooling system. Do the rad hoses go hard when they are hot?
Any white smoke or steam from the exhaust?
Does the fan ever come on?
You are right to be cautious about running the engine - the V6 gets unhappy pretty quickly if its cooling is broken.

davidsmith1307 said:

You may have a new cap but have you checked the tank itself as they can crack.
Looks like the coolant is boiling which it will do if there is no pressure in the cooling system. Do the rad hoses go hard when they are hot?
Any white smoke or steam from the exhaust?
Does the fan ever come on?
You are right to be cautious about running the engine - the V6 gets unhappy pretty quickly if its cooling is broken.

Click to expand...

Where abouts are they prone to cracking? Will is be an obvious crack? I did have a look but to be honest couldnt see anything leaking from it.

There is no white smoke or steam from the exhaust.

The fan used to come on when i first started the car but it doesn't seem to now. It definitely wasnt on last night when it was overheating.

With the car cold, reach in behind the radiator and make sure you can turn the fans by hand, so they're not jammed.

...then check the fuses.

B34R said:

With the car cold, reach in behind the radiator and make sure you can turn the fans by hand, so they're not jammed.

...then check the fuses.

Click to expand...

Just checked. The fans spin freely and the 60Amp fuse for the fans is ok.

s1nn0n said:

Where abouts are they prone to cracking? Will is be an obvious crack? I did have a look but to be honest couldnt see anything leaking from it.

There is no white smoke or steam from the exhaust.

The fan used to come on when i first started the car but it doesn't seem to now. It definitely wasnt on last night when it was overheating.

Click to expand...

From memory they crack around the neck.
@Hippo and @Nodge68 know a lot more about these than me though.

They do indeed crack around the neck, mine did, but it didn't spew out any coolant. Difficult to tell form the video but that looks very full even hot. How much coolant do you have in the tank?

DON'T RUN THE ENGINE.

You say the AA man filled the coolant reservoir up. Did he bleed the air out of the engine?
I would assume not. There's 2 bleed screws for the v6 engine fitted in the FL1. 1 at the top rear of the engine and one low down on the engine at the front near where the eggsource comes out.

As above the v6 likes to run hot. The theory is the coolant system pressurises as it gets hot, which increases the temp which the coolant starts to boil. Reason being boiling coolant is not good. The v6 goes above 100 degrees so not having pressure allows the coolant to boil. My fans don't come on until 109 degrees and turn oft at 106 degrees. The bottom radiator hose won't get warm unless it's sat on tick over for a while, or on tick over after a run to warm it.

From looking at the video I think you have air in the cooling system. It's true coolant reservoir caps can fail. Also the coolant reservoir can fail with cracks around the top which allow pressure to escape as per pic below. When this happens and air gets in the engine is at major risk of overheating.

If you have a leak then it's popular for the thermostat housing to crack. Look from the front of the engine through available holes with a torch.

The way forward is to bleed all air out of the coolant system. Allowing the level to drop to the bottom of the coolant reservoir will put air into the engine.
You also need to check the coolant reservoir for cracks around the top.
You need to take the acoustic cover (big plastic thing with air filter in it) oft the top of the engine and look in the v for coolant.

Have a read of this fred for the v6 bleeding procedure:

https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/v6-overheating-please-look-at-video.282613/

The temp display is crap. They seem to get to the middle and sit there.
Yer can test the fans by using a hawkeye or similar to turn them on. Other than this they will come on when it's warm. But only allow to it to get warm once all the air is out and you feel the large pipe at the top behind the radiator getting hard as pressure increases in the coolant system.


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Thank you to everyone for your help so far, much appreciated!

I have checked in the V of the engine tonight and it appears the thermostat is leaking. I have ordered a new thermostat and will get it fitted this weekend. The coolant expansion tank looks ok to me. Fingers crossed now that this fixes it.

I have received the new thermostat today but there is a slight rattle from it... sounds like a ball bearing moving about.
Is it normal for a new stat to rattle slightly?

The stat housing for the KV6 was originally metal, but on the more recent ones (including the Freelander) a plastic one is used.
There is a South African guy (Kaiser) who makes alloy ones. They weren't perfect though and the last I heard he was designing a better one, but I haven't heard anything about it for a few years.
If my stat housing split I'd be looking into this as an option.

However both the V6's I've owned had bubbling coolant at some point.
The first one had a split coolant hose, then after fixing had an airlock in the coolant. Got worse and worse until it was cleared, which only the local dealer seemed able to do.
(Might be something to do with the lower bleed valve Hippo mentions, which I wasn't ware of!)
The second was either a head gasket or slipped liner, fixed by a dose of K-Seal in the reservoir. Took a few days to work but is still going well nearly a year later.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Check the bottle cap you have is the right one.
If it tightens until it clicks, it's the wrong one and will allow air in as well as out.
It should seal tight which the clicky one doesn't do - as Hippos says, the system needs to pressurise or the coolant will boil.

Hi ( Kaiser) still makes these and can be found on http://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=24992&highlight=Kaiser&page=23 I am sure he would be willing to help any FL1 V6 owner whom wanted one, Please say Arctic referred you to him, when my thermostat went in 2014 I replaced it will a new one via keyhole surgery, just after I was given a Kaiser alloy thermostat at a R75 MGZT meet I attend through out the year, few photo's below if the replacement fails I will had the alloy one then cheers Arctic2

Keyhole thermostat surgery
http://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=1636331&postcount=27
http://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=1644361&postcount=32
http://www.the75andztclub.co.uk/forum/showpost.php?p=1673293&postcount=35

be aware that the plastic goes brittle on stat and can be a bugger to remove, I re engined a 75 and the water pump impeller was cack plastic as well.

The plastic thermostat does have some failings. Having spent many years on the KV6, may conclusion is it's OK but only if changed at set intervals. I now change the stat with the timing belts and water pump. The thermostat moves slightly in use, causing the O rings to weep a little coolant. This weeping causes corrosion around the O rings and there eventual failure. I use plumber's silicone grease around the O rings when fitting. This appears to help the corrosion problem. I won't use a water pump that has plastic impeller either. It's been known for the plastic impeller to slip on its shaft when the engine gets to running temperature. The normal running temperature of the KV6 is close to 100°C. The fans won't come into play unless the coolant is at 109°C , switching of again at 106°C. The fans are controlled by a Pulse Width Modulated signal from the engine ECU. The PWM control signal is fed to the fan control unit mounted on the LHS of the radiator, close to the battery. The fan controller drives the fans at various speeds, under engine ECU control.
The temperature gauge only goes into the red sector when the engine temperature exceeds 115°C. This is done to avoid unnecessary driver concerns over fluctuations in engine temperature. For this reason, the gauge displays normal temps when the engine is between 75°C and 114°C.

bukko said:

IMPORTANT NOTE: Check the bottle cap you have is the right one.
If it tightens until it clicks, it's the wrong one and will allow air in as well as out.
It should seal tight which the clicky one doesn't do - as Hippos says, the system needs to pressurise or the coolant will boil.

Click to expand...

I have replaced the thermostat and link pipe. I have spent most of the day making sure the system has been bled getting all air out, using both the bulkhead bleed screw and the one on the bottom of the engine.

I do have the 'clicky' cap as you mentioned above. The coolant was still rising and trying to boil as before.

However, we took the cap off an S-Type Jag which fits on, and the coolant didn't boil this time. The front fans didnt switch on though after quite some time getting it hot. All hoses were hot, including the top radiator hose, bottom radiator hose and the top radiator hose was getting quite hard to compress.

With the old cap, when taking it off, there was no pressure loss at all, with the Jags cap there was the usual pressure loss as you would expect.

Do you know what cap I need? As this one was provided by the main dealer.

How can I test the fans manually to ensure they work correctly?

There seems to be a lot of confusion about which cap is the right one, even amongst people on here who are convinced the clicky one is right.
Some dealers even still seem to supply it.
However my local dealer has it right and supplied me a non-clicky one as "definitely the latest". Ebay is a bit of a wild stab in the dark as to whether or not you get the right one!
It has a spring controlled lid that only vents if the pressure rises above a safe level (I have no idea what).
Be careful you don't over tighten it though as the thread is knackered really easily and then it won't seal tight, making it pretty much pointless.
As for testing the fans, I can get mine to start with a quick run up the motorway and back followed by a 10 minute sit at idle. Pretty sure it would over-heat dramatically without the fans!

bukko said:

There seems to be a lot of confusion about which cap is the right one, even amongst people on here who are convinced the clicky one is right.
Some dealers even still seem to supply it.
However my local dealer has it right and supplied me a non-clicky one as "definitely the latest". Ebay is a bit of a wild stab in the dark as to whether or not you get the right one!
It has a spring controlled lid that only vents if the pressure rises above a safe level (I have no idea what).
Be careful you don't over tighten it though as the thread is knackered really easily and then it won't seal tight, making it pretty much pointless.
As for testing the fans, I can get mine to start with a quick run up the motorway and back followed by a 10 minute sit at idle. Pretty sure it would over-heat dramatically without the fans!

Click to expand...

https://www.lrdirect.com/Parts-by-Model/Freelander-1-Parts/Cooling/Expansion-Tank/

There are two part numbers listed PCD000090 and PCD500030. I have PCD500030 now and it doesnt appear to hold any pressure on the expansion tank.

I've had several new coolant reservoirs over the years (think I'm on me 4th) and caps oft main dealers and they have all been clicky caps. Newest one was about 6 months ago. I haven't had a cap fail but change them when the reservoir cracks. If cap PCF000012 has ben upgraded then they would create a new number and sellers would list the old part number as superseded by another. Main dealer network parts are supplied by the same source in the UK. Seems to be via caterpillar in the UK currently.

This is what I have:
Cap = PCD500030 £4.09 + vat
Reservoir = PCF000012 £25.45 +vat
Prices from main dealer in February 2014.

The release pressure of the caps has been increased a few times. I can't remember what it's at now but it's close to 18 Psi. The clutched cap was ok on the MG ZS180 (same engine) but in that application, it rerely exceeds 100°C. The Freelander being automatic and heavy, ups the running temperature considerably, increasing the demand on the cooling system.
It sounds like the cap is at fault on this engine though.