Swirl Flaps

[Teigs]

Not sure how many others out there have experienced this but I've just been told that a swirl flap from the intake manifold has broken off my Freelander 2,2008, and proceeded to score piston and damage 2 valves. Quite possibly it's also destroyed the turbo but I didn't want to spend anymore money investigating.
Basically mean replacement motor (2nd hand around $5K) and installation $5K.
This is a design fault with these motors and the car runs perfectly fine without them.
I contacted Land Rover Australia who at first offered me a 'goodwill' engine and then said sorry we meant goodwill engine for $8K.

Shocker!

[FisherX]

Well thanks for scaring the crap out of me! I didn't know the flaps were there!

So after reading up about them I checked out the wife's tonight. So our 07 TD2 has them and it has 210, 000km on the clock.

So I'm worried. So looking at our car I found the actuator is there but not connected to anything. I can't feel a shaft coming out where it should be, so I guess they have been removed already. Maybe.

But I've still a bit worried now, so I might order the later model intake manifold without the flaps and change it out.

Thanks for the heads up.

[Teigs]

Sorry for the scare but better than having to fork out $10K for motor and fit - like I did!!! After fixing mine my mechanic had another FL2 in and heard a similar noise. That lucky guy had his flaps out before the damage was done.

[FisherX]

So I was getting worried and after much procrastination I finally pulled the intake manifold off today to check the swirl flaps.

[bigsad] Yep mine were in a bad state. The flap on #4 cylinder had fallen apart and I found half of it in lower valve of cyl #3 and the other half in #1. I didn't see any of the end of the brass shaft when I pulled out the broken bits, so that has me a little concerned. #1 flap was not secured to the shaft and was just flopping around, so would have been the next to go and the remaining flaps were stuck shut and the end of the actuator had broken off.

Anyway I pulled them all out as well as the shaft, sealed up the bits that go between the cylinders with a bit of Sika and gave everything a clean and put it back together.

It's a bit of a job and took about 5 hours to do. You could cut that down to probably 3 hours if you just changed the manifold out with a new replacement and didn't spend a heap of time cleaning everything.

The biggest PITA was the fuel filter mount and bracket, and trying to get the inlet hose back on.

Thanks Teigs for raising the issue, It could have cost me an engine.

[trumpycam]

These are new to me also, ours is an update 2011, would it have them?