Hi all

We are new to the forum and Land Rovers.

A couple of weeks ago we purchased a 2001 3dr Td4 ES Auto from Guitarjon off this forum.

On doing a search I see he's already posted few things about the FL when in his ownership so I'll pick up things from here.

The usual photos taken when we got it home.





The following morning which was Monday 22nd of July we decided to have a couple of nights away at the Tanhill Inn. So in checking the FL over for the journey I noticed we'd got a slight water leak from the front of the engine and the coolant was dripping off a steel pipe not far from the crankshaft pulley next to the sump. I checked the rubber hose's that I could see and all seemed ok, checked water pump, again all seemed ok, mine is missing its under tray/sump guard so I stuck my head under the front of the engine and with my torch I could see a small drip of water coming from somewhere just above the alternator area, so I quickly removed the engine cover and found that a plastic pipe which connects to the top radiator hose maybe the culprit. I got my iPhone and was able to take a picture of what I couldn't see from the top of the engine.

It was leaking from where the plastic pipe bolts up the water way on the cylinder head.



I started the engine and as soon as it started to warm up the leak stopped, I guess due to expansion. We waited a couple of hours for the engine to cool down and still no leak and with virtually no coolant lose out of the header tank we decided to carry on packing for our mini break away to North Yorkshire. One other thing I found out before we set off was the locking wheel nut key was missing, so we phoned the Land Rover dealer in Settle and ordered a new set of locking wheel nuts to be picked up on our return journey.

We did about two hundred and fifty mile of up and down dale motoring and she never missed a beat.

More to follow.

Looks very nice,
and I am sure you have some great ideas on what to do with it,
I will watch to see the project unfold..

What is the difference between a ES and a Serengeti??

He didn't keep it long lol........welcome mate, and good luck with the project.

Mine had a intermittent leak from that very bit had to pressurised the cooling system to find it the part is only twenty bucks or so

Is that an Avenger I see in the picture?

JC600 said:

He didn't keep it long lol........welcome mate, and good luck with the project.

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I think he only had it about a month or so.

Nodge68 said:

Is that an Avenger I see in the picture?

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Yep, it's a 1970 1500 Super Auto on a 'H' reg first year of production. I've actually owned it twice now

Sucram said:

Yep, it's a 1970 1500 Super Auto on a 'H' reg first year of production. I've actually owned it twice now

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I can remember seeing one on 1st aug 1970 , H reg just out , and thinking the rear light clusters were strange , I was still at school and your freelander looks fine

Sucram said:

Yep, it's a 1970 1500 Super Auto on a 'H' reg first year of production. I've actually owned it twice now

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Nice to see it still on the road. I've got a Tiger specked 1972 1500GT in polar white. It's been a work in progress for 20 years. One day I'll get her finished.

We had only had the FL fours day and it was time to start spending a few quid on the old girl. The tyres were well past their best with three of them being boarder line legal. So I ordered for four Pirelli Scorpion STR 215/65/16's cost of which was £400 fitted and balanced. Straight away it was starting to drive better, but we've got a few more things to sort out.

Ian jones said:

I can remember seeing one on 1st aug 1970 , H reg just out , and thinking the rear light clusters were strange , I was still at school and your freelander looks fine

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The Hockey stick tail lights are cool the price Avengers are getting these days is scary. Well worth keeping hold of them now.

Nodge68 said:

Nice to see it still on the road. I've got a Tiger specked 1972 1500GT in polar white. It's been a work in progress for 20 years. One day I'll get her finished.

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Nice one, its the same colour as my Super. I've had many Avengers and Sunbeams over the last 27 years from basic cars to Avenger Tiger's, Sunbeam Ti's, Sunbeam Lotus's, in fact two Carib blue four door GT's have passed through our fleet. We also have a long on going restoration project in the form of a race prepared Avenger Tiger which won Mod Prod Saloons in 1988/89.

Having the Land Rover has a project is an outlet to take my mind off the other cars and tackle something a bit different.

Sucram said:

Nice one, its the same colour as my Super. I've had many Avengers and Sunbeams over the last 27 years from basic cars to Avenger Tiger's, Sunbeam Ti's, Sunbeam Lotus's, in fact two Carib blue four door GT's have passed through our fleet. We also have a long on going restoration project in the form of a race prepared Avenger Tiger which won Mod Prod Saloons in 1988/89.

Having Land Rover has a project is an outlet to take my mind off the other cars and tackle something a bit different.

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I've had at least 1 Avenger since I could drive (27 years). My first car was an 73 Aquarius metallic 1500 Super. My 1500 GT was my second car, I loved it so much I decided to keep it. My wife's first car was a 74 Carib blue 1500 GL which i fitted a GT engine. Sadly that Avenger is no longer about.
I spent many years building hot versions of Triumphs for other people but loved the simple and hassle free maintenance of the Avenger. The only problem with them was fuel consumption when running on twin 40's. My V6 Freelander is economical by comparison. It might be sacrilege but I'm working on a KV6 engine conversion for my GT just because I want to.

Five days into our Freelander ownership and that pesky leak was getting worse with water now running down the front of the engine and off the sump and leaving a very large puddle of coolant on the drive, urgent action needed.

I removed the engine cover to see what I'm faced with and what tools are needed, no workshop manual to look at, never worked on one of these before, so a good look round to see what I think has to be removed and in what order. First off was the inter cooler pipe work etc and the EGR blank, this then exposed the inlet manifold, but I still could not see how the plastic pipe which the radiator top hose attached to was bolted to the cylinder head, no option but to remove the inlet. With the inlet removed I could now easily get to the offending pipe work.



You can see the plastic pipe better in this photo. Very easy to remove just three bolts attach it to the cylinder head and the pipes are push fit and are retained with a metal clip.



Once removed I could see that the surface of the cylinder head to which the rubber seal in the plastic pipe mates upto has slight pitting, I'm betting this is the cause of the leak!



So off to Land Rover at Wakefield I go armed with a wallet full of money to buy a new pipe. I'd seen used ones on eBay for £19.99, but I preferred getting a new one if I could. Well to my surprise the pipe from Land Rover was £10.09 + vat which I thought was pretty good value and cheaper than the used ones on evilbay!! I also bought some vacuum pipes and Land Rover pink anti-freeze while I was at it.

New and old, the old one had broke away on the inside so the rubber seal wasn't doing very much.



Before I fitted the pipe, I smeared a bit of gasket sealant on the face of the cylinder head in an attempt to fill the pitting, not sure if that's a good or bad thing, but I had to try something, fingers crossed it helps to seal it.





I managed to buy a full set of genuine BMW M47 manifold gasket rubbers, what ever you call them? off eBay for £21.00 posted.



Has you can see the face of the rectangle ones is different, but they are the same overall dimensions.



While I had the inlet manifold off I thought it wise to clean all that black sticky tar like crap out of it, what a mucky horrid job that was, I also cleaned the ports on the cylinder head has they were also gunged up, but taking extreme care not to drop a bit of it in to the cylinder head, she's got to breath much better after this



New rubber gaskets fitted to a nicely cleaned inlet





All bolted back together and ready to go.





So far its been a success and cleaning out that inlet manifold and cylinder head ports has certainly helped, it goes like the wind now, well probably not that much, more like a strong breeze, but its an improvement on what it was before, so not only have we, fingers crossed cured the water leak, but also gained/restored a bit of performance.

Right now where's my to do list

A job well done , your mpg will improve after cleaning out the intake !

The O/S rear bumper was out of line and the plastic wheel arch had come adrift.



The mounting lug on the bumper had been ripped off and a plastic clip that holds the arch on had broken. Mounting repaired with 'Q Bond' and new wheel arch clip bought from Land Rover, sorted.

She will be like new in no time at all,,

Keep it up mate...

I had the back brakes off today as unknown to us the hand brake on the O/S wheel wasn't working. I removed the brake shoes and the hand brake lever and cable was seized, I prayed WD40 up the brake cable from the back plate end, I then gripped the end of the cable with the mole grips and pulled like hell to free the inner cable, I had to apply the hand brake and release it and pull the cable back again until it was free repeating the process about a dozen times. I got the level un seized and copper slipped up. Reassembled it all and re-adjusted the hand brake, now works a treat on both wheels. Also while I was at it I quickly wire brushed the out side of the drums to remove any flakes of rust and paint, then I gave them a coat of satin black, looks much better not seeing those rust drums through the wheels.

seems like your doing an excellent job looking good
I ve done all the things you've done including egr valve oil change all filters changed some new pipe work and performance is so much better done all the brakes sprayed the rear drums black just need 2 lower light guards now to finish it of I have the rest already fitted
anyway i was wondering looking at your pics the cover over the engine with common rail wrote on it is that a standard thing only mine aint got 1 and its the same engine or I think it is it looks like its the same engine m47 I think just wondered if its missing or meant to have 1 ??cheers kevin

Kevins

Yes the engine cover is standard, but I have noticed like you have said that on some they don't have the same cover, maybe because mine is an early Td4, registered Feb 2001 on an 'X' perfix and on later models it may have been superseded with something else?

But I guess someone will be along to tell us the reasons why

Cheers