Officially a professional Wang-Jangler
Today I installed the Silicone BAS intercooler hose. Here is a short video outlining the process. There is a bit of a knack to it, PM for more details if you get stuck?
https://youtu.be/qWswb7hOqUk
In that fraction of a second, there was an imperial ass-tonne of wang-jangling that happened to get the hose onto the vehicle.
Below is some rough steps of what happened:
- Remove radiator fan top cowl.
- Remove dirty side cold air intake piping (I have nuggets kit, hence all the blue schmoo everywhere). This pipe was just wrangled out of the way.
- Remove airbox lid, and undo both ends of the airbox to turbo inlet elbow. This can just dangle on top of the engine by the PCV hose. I put a glove over the turbo intake opening to stop crap getting in, but a rag would be just as good.
- I have one of the Land Rover intercooler hose iterations which included the metal pipe with rubber ebends on each end. Start by undoing the hose elbow attaching to turbo. Ideally, do both ends. on this hose. Should be a hose clamp with a 7mm hex/flat screwdriver fastener
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/316.jpg
- Undo the intercooler end of this same hose. I used this monstrosity of a ratchet to get'er'done. 3/8 with solid extension, 1/4 reducer and a flexy extension. 7mm on the end. Give her the whole 12inches right in the crack near the radiator. Works a charm every time.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/317.jpg
- From there, any hose clamps were undone, and hose hooks used to get the rubbers off. They were on pretty tight, it wasn't pretty. If you have the all-rubber hose style, then you can just bend it to make it move where you want.
- The hose was removed out the top of the engine bay. It was pulled back, under / around the cat converter, I/C end fed down into the abyss and pulled straight back up and out. Like I said: Lots of Wang-jangling happened today.
Here is old and new, side by side (No legible part unmbers on that hose, I'm afraid).
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/318.jpg
- From here, It was on to the re-assebly steps. Get the correct brackets on, and the silicone hose fitted. This is where things also took a buit of a turn.
- The alternator is held on by 2x 13mm bolts. These bolts are what holds the support bracket for the recall kit hose support bracket. This is the point where I worked out I didn't have a suitable tool to release the accessory drive belt. Ideally I would use a 3/8 breaker bar, but my anaemic little 3/8 ratchet was not long enough to get the tensioner released. So be it.
- This necessitated the alternator bolts to be removed one at a time to get the bracket fitted. Damn- not ideal, but it is what it is.
...This is also where I worked out that the bottom alternator bolt cannot come out fully due to fouling on the steering rod clamp. Double damn.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/319.jpg
- I ended up notching the bottom bolt hold on the bracket to allow it to slide in. Once again, not ideal, but thems the breaks.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/320.jpg
- Once the alt bracket was installed, I moved onto installing the second bracket. The one that looks like a 'P'.
Surely this goes somewhere around here?
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/321.jpg
NOPE.
What about here:
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/322.jpg
NOPE.
Or here?
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/323.jpg
NOPE.
So I thought to myself, 'Surely there is a bolt somewhere under the airbox???'
FML. I give up. I started to remove the airbox. Surely a simple task I think to myself. NOPE. This is where I didn't RTFM. Cue more wang-jangling!
- (This is not a step in the hose install, mainly me documenting it to justify the 90 minute ****up that made this job such a PITA.) The airbox sits on 4 rubber isolator grommets with plastic index pins that are moulded into the airbox. If you've never had these out, they will be crusty, and cantankerous. Use lots of your favourite lube here to get it out. You need to yank it up on the inboard side, and horizontally away from the wing top. there are 2 vertical pins under the box, and 2 horizontal pins under the wing top.
The FSM recommends degassing aircon for this job.
I reckon, if you remove either the alternator, or the radiator fan/lower shroud, you would not need to. You get waaaay more airbox wiggle room if you undo the 3 bolts in the wheel well that hold the airbox support bracket on. Your milage may vary if you don't have nugget's airbox kit, for the life of me I can't recall how the factory ducting interfaces with the airbox inlet.
- After I jangled with this airbox for waaay too long, I got back to the job at hand- install the silicone hose. Airbox remained loose in-position, which afforded a bit more wiggle room to get around the hose. I gave up on the P bracket... didn't install it, and still have NFI where it goes.
- The hose was fed down, I/C end first, under the airbox. From there the trick I found is to wrangle the hose up into position by stuffing a fist down the hole beside the lower radiator shroud Removing the RHS screw on the radiator allows it to move up a bit, which also helps. Hose clamp was fed onto the hose at this point, then joined to the I/C.
- Hose trimming.
BAS suggest approx 15mm trimmed from the turbo end. I found this was nowhere near enough. I removed this much:
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/324.jpg
Trick is to cut as square as possible, and cut bit by bit. Used a serrated blade on my leatherman, it seemed to do the best job. You can get dedicated hose cutting tools, but not sure if these are much chop on silicone. For those not familiar with the size of my hand, that's about 50mm.
After the first 15mm it looked like this:
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/325.jpg
Still pretty kinked, and touching the steering arm.
Here it is all trimmed up, lookin' sexy, with the bracket installed and complete.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/315.jpg
Plenty of room down below now too- probably 30-40mm.
https://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/im...017/02/326.jpg
The rest of the job is just buttoning everything back together. It's fairly straight forward.
PS did this all in 43 degree heat.
I weighed myself afterwards, lost about 3L sweat- I was 3kg under my normal weight! I had a mandatory beer (1 of) and ice water (about a litre) thoughout. She was a hot one.
Another slight inconvenience...
Sadly, It has been a week and a half since I've driven the mule, and I was all set to get over to Andy130's joint to help out with his rebuild.
When I'd attempted to unlock the car, the key fob wasn't working. Odd I thought... So I resorted to the old fashioned way using the key (how primitive!).
Turns out I'd flattened the main battery. I believe I'd left the nanocom plugged in after doing the troubleshooting on the vehicle after the turbo hose blew, and it had drained the battery down to what I measured as 8.7V after a week and a half sitting idle. Whoops.
Lucky for me, my dual battery system came to the rescue- flicked the Blue sea systems ACR switch to 'combine' cranking and aux batteries, and I was good to go. Fired right up.
This whole story is probably not newsworthy in its own, but It does serve an interesting reminder to those out there who may do some remote driving or camping, about the benefits of a properly set up DBS.
If I'd had a 'dumb' switch between the batteries, then I'd have 2 flat batteries.
If the ACR didn't have a combine function, I'd not have had the option to so easily 'jump start' myself.
When I was looking at all the options for the dual battery system, I tried to isolate the 'critical' engine control circuits to the cranking battery, and put all my accessories and non critical stuff on the aux battery. I think this is always a smart move, however it doesn't prevent brain farts like I had from causing you grief when you let the car sit with a active load for so long...
In addition, I dadn't realise that the Nanocom stays ON when the engine is off... probably reinforces that it's a engine diagnosis tool, moreso than an instrument pack (although it does have that functionality). The 'select vehicle' and 'detecting vehicle' screen that always needs to be pushed thru to get to the good stuff on the nanocom is also a slight annoyance, but that's the way the cookie crumbles, I guess.
I checked the battery voltages using a cheap cigrette lighter socket volt meter I have. Probably not super accurate, but a decent tool nonetheless.
With a flat cranking battery, the alternator was charging to 14.7V IIRC, and once it had charged for a while, it dropped back down to 14.1V.
I'll attempt to get a measurement of what voltages I have after the surface charge dissipates. All in all I drove for about an hour to charge the main battery with the ACR doing its thing all the while. It will be interesting to see where I stand- if I have a usable voltage after such a short drive.