Happyhippo
Active Member
Hi all, its a bit hot today to be out there fiddling with the hippo so I thought I would consult the Oracle of all things Land Rover!
I have an ongoing problem with my 2000my XeDi currently on about 160k miles. Some of you might remember that I renewed the engine at about 135k miles with the last new unit from Rimmers. At that time with the engine out, I took the opportunity to correct many small problems which had occurred over the years, one of which was failure of the exhaust downpipe mid-point mounting. This is a bracket welded about 600mm from the manifold flange which is fixed to a handy bolt on the engine casting. Can't exactly remember where or even if this is original, because I have now changed it. Anyway because this had failed I thought I would beef up the engine support with a short length of angle iron. This required some slight heat and pressure to twist the downpipe flange bracket to mate up with the mounting. Once fixed, the downpipe was then really firmly located. Some 20k miles later the downpipe has now failed at the flexible bellows. Presumably because of the engine rocking back and forth between power on and off. Any movement must be very slight as I cannot get it to budge at all by pushing it back and forth from the top and the steady brackets and engine mountings seem firm.
I wondered if it might be better to release the mid-point fixing completely but I'm concerned that there will then be stress on the cast iron turbo manifold flange which I figured can't be good. The downstream downpipe flange mates to a stainless exhaust which has lasted at least 100k miles and shows no sign of ageing. At the end of the day the downpipe is only about £25 so not really a big problem!
My question really is "do members have problems with regular down pipe failures and is the mid-point fixing standard?"
I have an ongoing problem with my 2000my XeDi currently on about 160k miles. Some of you might remember that I renewed the engine at about 135k miles with the last new unit from Rimmers. At that time with the engine out, I took the opportunity to correct many small problems which had occurred over the years, one of which was failure of the exhaust downpipe mid-point mounting. This is a bracket welded about 600mm from the manifold flange which is fixed to a handy bolt on the engine casting. Can't exactly remember where or even if this is original, because I have now changed it. Anyway because this had failed I thought I would beef up the engine support with a short length of angle iron. This required some slight heat and pressure to twist the downpipe flange bracket to mate up with the mounting. Once fixed, the downpipe was then really firmly located. Some 20k miles later the downpipe has now failed at the flexible bellows. Presumably because of the engine rocking back and forth between power on and off. Any movement must be very slight as I cannot get it to budge at all by pushing it back and forth from the top and the steady brackets and engine mountings seem firm.
I wondered if it might be better to release the mid-point fixing completely but I'm concerned that there will then be stress on the cast iron turbo manifold flange which I figured can't be good. The downstream downpipe flange mates to a stainless exhaust which has lasted at least 100k miles and shows no sign of ageing. At the end of the day the downpipe is only about £25 so not really a big problem!
My question really is "do members have problems with regular down pipe failures and is the mid-point fixing standard?"
