Thread: What did you do on your Defender today ? (well, this week anyway)

Originally Posted by MLD

powder coating is prone to chipping on impact. the underside of the tank might take a beating if you do alot of bush driving.

what about a quality chassis paint for the tank (after a quality rust protection coating too)? I stupidly fitted my Long Ranger tank without a quality paint finish and have surface rust developing where the paint has been removed from rock impacts etc. I'm about the drop the tank for other reasons and have KBS tank liner treatment and their chassis paint pack for a refresh. I used the chassis paint pack on the chassis and the rust blaster solution works a treat to remove rust and prime the surface for painting. KBS say their rust seal is not UV stable and i can concur. The sections of chassis exposed to UV have gone a dull black while the sections inside the chassis rails are still gloss.

I think they are pretty renowned for poor coating.

The problem with my tank was it was flush up against the crossmember and I think even bolted on the bottom. So sand and muck built up between the crossmember and the tank. There was no way to get water in there. There was rusty fuel tank still attached to the crossmember.

The new tank is a 140 and is a completely different design. There is an airgap between the crossmember so I can easily clean in there now. I don't think it will rust there again. The new tank goes under the chassis rail and has a compartment in the wheel well. That's not to say of course that it won't rust somehwere else. :|

I'm actually not too worried about the stone damage underneath. I do so much bush driving that even the rust gets blasted off.

I should post in here. Last year we fitted two front runner gullwing windows. We bought them on sale (they were expensive) and the install was a bit fiddly. However these are one of the best upgrades we've ever done. It just makes the rear of the car soooo much more accessible. These are game changers.

Recently new radiator, core plug, alternator and turbo/intercooler hoses. She's still losing coolant to exhaust. Running out of diagnosis options that aren't "cracked head".

On a TD5, you only have a couple of options for coolant out the exhaust.

None of the bits you have replaced will address that unfortunately.

Blown head gasket, cracked head, failed cooled EGR could also do it.

Other than that, head off for checking, then go from there.

Yep already done the head gasket which fixed coolant to oil, and the core plug and radiator fixed the external coolant leaks. I didn't get the head tested at the time, but hoped the gasket would sort it. She had an EGR delete before I bought her.

I lost about 15mm down the coolant tank in a 250km drive on the weekend, about half of which ended up as oily water in the catch can

Picked up my TD5 exhaust manifold today........shiny ooh ah!
P1160097.jpg
The vehicle has only done around 75,000km but while I was getting my hands dirty elsewhere I thought I would somewhat future proof the exhaust manifold. There was a slight "untrueness" to the gasket faces but given the low kms I believe this is from factory. I had the manifold faces machined and I slotted the mounting holes on ports 1,2,4 & 5 as well as drilled and tapped for an EGT probe just before the common outlet. Next, I took off all sharp edges by radiusing with a file, to avoid coating failure and then had it ceramic coated and polished inside and out by CIC Performance Ceramics in Welshpool Perth. These guys do top notch work!
All studs were fine and no exhaust leaks but I am going to fit Gigglepin extended studs and spacers. Why?......because I can.
TD5 Exhaust Manifold Stud Kit - Image by Gigglepin.jpg

Today I fixed a problem that has been bugging me for some time. A power steering fluid leak, that was leaving embarrassing puddles in shopping centre carparks. Last week, after a thorough degreasing the week before it became clear it was not power steering fluid! I parked it over the concrete in my shed, and vigorously moved the wheel from lock to lock with the vehicle stationary and the engine running. Sure enough, the telltale puddle appeared underneath. (Since I was invariably in good clothes when I noticed it, I was not going to crawl underneath to confirm what it was!

So I got on the creeper and pulled myself underneath to see just where it was coming from. "Wait a minute - that is coming from behind the axle housing! It can't be from the steering. "

I soon found it was from the short bit of hose joining the fuel return line and the stub pipe on the priming pup on the side of the injection pump. The original had split twenty years ago, and I had replaced it with some reinforced nylon fuel hose that I had. This was now rock solid, and I had to destroy it to get it off, so I am not sure just where it was leaking.

It is a fool of a setup - the hose, about 5cm long, joins the 9mm metal stub on the primer pump to an 8mm metal sub shrunk into the end of the semi-rigid nylon pipe to the tank. Both subs have a ridge round the end, a bit like a flare, to ensure the hose (with a hose clip) is retained. The original rubber hose, small enough to fit the pie to the tank, is overstretched when forced onto the stub on the pump, and eventually split on this flare.

The plastic on I fitted twenty years ago at least can be softened to get it on, although I think the rubber is better. I had no rubber hose the right size, so I used the same hose as I did twenty years ago.