Thread: What happened to your Discovery 2 today?

Originally Posted by Bosco15

After a cooling system leak at the little hose from the oil cooler, the one that steps down from 20mm to 10mm, I decided to change the cooling system hoses.
The top had already been done by PO with a shiny blue silicone job, so I sourced the other major hoses and set about a day of cursing.
Why step down in diameter from oil cooler to steel pipe, I wondered? Why not flare the steel pipe so that a straight hose could be used? To sell genuine hoses? Or to **** the guy off, who's stuck on the side of the road with a bit of straight hose in his tool kit?
Then I encountered the thermostat schemozzle. WTF were they thinking? How can we design this bit of plumbing so that it really does someone's head in, someday?
Thermostat housings on the block or head are standard fair. Why reinvent the wheel?
Then the water pump hose. I know, let's put spring clamps on a hose with little to no chance of getting grips anywhere near it. Lol. That'll make someone's day.
I chuckled to myself, a week or so ago, when topping up transfer case oil. The handbrake guys decided that right in front of the filler would be a great spot to run a fat, stiff cable.
I know designers of vehicles rarely consider serviceability, but this Disco is taking it to the next level.

You really need to have a look at the next series of Discovery's, the 2 is stone age compared to them!!!

You probably should also get some remote hose clamp pliers.

Originally Posted by Bosco15

....
Then the water pump hose. I know, let's put spring clamps on a hose with little to no chance of getting grips anywhere near it. Lol. That'll make someone's day.
.....

flexi hose clamp tool is good for this one, and others of course, but particularly this one.

Like this one.

You can also get fixed types, which work better in some instances than the flexible ones too.

But in the end, once we removed as many as we did on the TD5, I think I replaced all or most with worm driven clamps.

Originally Posted by Bosco15

After a cooling system leak at the little hose from the oil cooler, the one that steps down from 20mm to 10mm, I decided to change the cooling system hoses.
The top had already been done by PO with a shiny blue silicone job, so I sourced the other major hoses and set about a day of cursing.
Why step down in diameter from oil cooler to steel pipe, I wondered? Why not flare the steel pipe so that a straight hose could be used? To sell genuine hoses? Or to **** the guy off, who's stuck on the side of the road with a bit of straight hose in his tool kit?
Then I encountered the thermostat schemozzle. WTF were they thinking? How can we design this bit of plumbing so that it really does someone's head in, someday?
Thermostat housings on the block or head are standard fair. Why reinvent the wheel?
Then the water pump hose. I know, let's put spring clamps on a hose with little to no chance of getting grips anywhere near it. Lol. That'll make someone's day.
I chuckled to myself, a week or so ago, when topping up transfer case oil. The handbrake guys decided that right in front of the filler would be a great spot to run a fat, stiff cable.
I know designers of vehicles rarely consider serviceability, but this Disco is taking it to the next level.

Thermostats on blocks / heads went the way of the Dodo over two decades ago. They dont provide consistent heat control, bypass cooling is far more efficient and effective. Was used by race builders back 30+ years ago (I used them a lot)

The D2 is one of the easiest vehicles to service, easier than many 90/00's sedans etc. And coil wrapping cooling hoses has been around for milenia

For spring clamps - a set of clamp tools from eBay are more than adequate for the home mech, and make doing them easy - they arent actually designed to be removed with pliers or mole grips...

Welcome to the fun.

Bosco. Don't know if yours is a V8 but if it is the best thing you can do is get rid of the silly 3 way lower hose thermostat that biases the heater instead of 100 per cent cooling flow ...replace with top hose straight through (Meziere or similar) thermostat to get it more like the D1 than D2 and chose a lower temp thermostat for that. Cheers

Its just so the heater heats up quickly rather than having to wait for everything to come up to temp. I've recently replaced my thermostat with a Ryco standard replacement and the car comes up to temp a lot quicker than before, and I'm noticing that I now get lock up in 4th gear a lot quicker as a result - half way into town as opposed to all the way into town. I suspect if you lower the thermostat temps and go to a D1 setup cooling system that you'll have cold and fuel inefficient drives in the winter. The standard setup shouldn't be prone to overheating, for the Td5 at least.

Originally Posted by Slunnie

Its just so the heater heats up quickly rather than having to wait for everything to come up to temp. I've recently replaced my thermostat with a Ryco standard replacement and the car comes up to temp a lot quicker than before, and I'm noticing that I now get lock up in 4th gear a lot quicker as a result - half way into town as opposed to all the way into town. I suspect if you lower the thermostat temps and go to a D1 setup cooling system that you'll have cold and fuel inefficient drives in the winter. The standard setup shouldn't be prone to overheating, for the Td5 at least.

I think it depends on the motor and state you live in. In Qld even in zero or close to it Western suburbs winter days my V8 always got to temp reasonably quickly (78 to 80 degrees or so) and never had an issue with fuel economy nor oil issues (this was after the top hose stat conversion years ago). The V8 really needs to run cooler than what LR decided it should be in the D2. The 3 way can divert to the heater even when ideally the motor needs 100 per cent radiator to block flow. I had to read RAVE a few times to get this but I was not impressed by it. Anyway it has been much success as Borat says having it modded. Cheers

Originally Posted by Tombie

Thermostats on blocks / heads went the way of the Dodo over two decades ago. They dont provide consistent heat control, bypass cooling is far more efficient and effective. Was used by race builders back 30+ years ago (I used them a lot)

The D2 is one of the easiest vehicles to service, easier than many 90/00's sedans etc. And coil wrapping cooling hoses has been around for milenia

For spring clamps - a set of clamp tools from eBay are more than adequate for the home mech, and make doing them easy - they arent actually designed to be removed with pliers or mole grips...

Welcome to the fun.

Ditto..
I LOVE the original spring clamps and the matching locking clamp pliers which make working with spring clamps a breeze. I’ll even collect a few “free” clamps at the wreckers when I’m thereso I’m never short…. In service, on coolant hoses they give constant leak free tension on the hose thru zillions of heat cycles. In my experience if you have to remove a coolant hose for any reason, when you refit ensure the original spring clamp aligns with the clamp indentation on the hose and you are good for another zillion heat cycles or until the hose fails. There are constant tension versions of worm drive clamps and T-bolt clamps BUT you wont find them where most us shop for Auto Parts. People hate spring clamps because they don’t play well with pliers or multi-grip pliers (aka slip-jaw pliers). So apply the right tool to tool to the task and enjoy the experience.

Originally Posted by ozscott

Bosco. Don't know if yours is a V8 but if it is the best thing you can do is get rid of the silly 3 way lower hose thermostat that biases the heater instead of 100 per cent cooling flow ...replace with top hose straight through (Meziere or similar) thermostat to get it more like the D1 than D2 and chose a lower temp thermostat for that. Cheers

We will have to agree to disagree on this

Bypass thermostat set ups provide a more consistent operating temp (which is set by the opening temp for said thermostat) for a given engine.

Online thermostats have a cycle of hot-cold-hot-cold as the crack open and close again during the coolant cycle. Dropping engine temps, closing, increasing engine temp and repeat.

Bypass systems trickle flow the block/head(s) providing more consistent temps inside the engine. This is both more economical and more efficient.

The heater core is used to maintain bypass flow as it prevents nucleate boiling by allowing some consistent flow (the heater core also assists cooling, it is a small radiator after all).

As Slunnie posted, a side benefit is quicker heater activation and quicker engine temp build.

When I built high performance vehicles, we would deliberately remove the block mounted thermostats and replace with inline bypass units to improve thermal efficiency and cooling.