Thread: What happened to your Discovery 2 today?

Originally Posted by DiscoDiscoMan

Thinking of taking the Td five out to replace the leaking rear main seal and others…. Anybody done that without degassing the air con?
Can you just move it aside?…

From memory.. Yes.

You can unbolt the compressor and move it aside to replace the water pump and the bracket . Engine? IMHO it would be pretty tight unless you remove the bracket that holds the PS pump and water pump.
Regards PhilipA

Originally Posted by DiscoDiscoMan

Thinking of taking the Td five out to replace the leaking rear main seal and others…. Anybody done that without degassing the air con?
Can you just move it aside?…

Like other said, yeah you can.
Nephew did this about 2(maybe 3) ish months ago.

cable tie compressor and lines to something on the side of the engine bay(sorry can't remember where he did) and no worries when you go to put the engine back in yourself(like he did).

Originally Posted by AK83

Like other said, yeah you can.
Nephew did this about 2(maybe 3) ish months ago.

cable tie compressor and lines to something on the side of the engine bay(sorry can't remember where he did) and no worries when you go to put the engine back in yourself(like he did).

Thanks team.
I did the water pump a couple of years ago and had no trouble with moving the compressor. Might try tieing it to the power steering/ace reservoir bracket

Hi Team, I found the main oil leak at the back of the engine is from the rocker cover gasket D.
This the second gasket with this issue.
Anyone used some RTV sealant and a new rocker cover gasket to fix it?

If it’s only a slight or mild rear engine seal leak I might not have to pull the motor out…

Originally Posted by DiscoDiscoMan

Anyone used some RTV sealant and a new rocker cover gasket to fix it?

Yep. Just don't use too much.

Today I changed the oil, I pumped the oil out trough the dipstick tube. New centripetal filter, new air filter. 5w40 oil. It must be the 8th time I've done this!

IZI(the D2a) got his A/C regas today .... and the results are much better than I expected too.

The average A/C regas nowadays cost about $250-300(up this way) and you gotta wait for too long to get in line. Sometimes U can be lucky and get in at one place, but most have waiting queues.

Stuff that, so got the bits and did it myself.

Turns out the D2a had been tampered with, and had no gas. A quick spurt to see if any hiss out of the system and nada!
Kind'a sort'a looked like something had gone on before I got him, but hard to know exactly what. Weird paint or something that looked like bits had been moved/replaced/etc.

So, looked up what way to regas the AC the easiest way for a numpty that knows zero about AC... and it turns out knowing nothing could be helpful.

I just followed instructions, and in about an hour I had awesome cold air coming the vents.

I bought a VEVOR vac pump/AC gauge and hose set off ebay, About $150.
Knowing nothing about refrigerant and chemistry, I went the easy-peasy way.
I found out that R134a is not allowed to be sold in Aus any more, at least at the retail level. Maybe for pros or whatever, but recall I'm a numpty.
So looked up alternatives, and it seems the latest fad is using LPG/Butane as the refrigerant. R290/R600 ... can't remember the numbers(someone may correct me), but I found this Hychill minus30 stuff, again on ebay.
That was the easy way. What I failed to understand tho was the amount needed.

D2 says is needs about 700g of refrigerant, but that for R134a. Hychill(which is a 70/30 LPG/Propane blend) is more dense and only needs 30% of what's needed in R134a terms... so the two cans of Hychill will do me about 4 or 5 cars into the future(ie. my 3008 and my nephews D2a too ... plus any future car(s).

If you've been on the fence about getting your AC fixed, and you think you can't do it ... I reckon you'd be wrong .. and that you can.

After reading a fair bit about it all, I wanted to be armed with more info that actually needed to be sure I didn't blow myself or my small town to high heaven, but in all my reading, it turns out that this LPG/Propane blend gets cold at lower pressures.
About half what R134a needs to get to the same evap temp .. ie your compressor needs less pressure, so less load on motor... blah blah.

I haven't driven the D2a with working AC, so can't make proper direct comparisons, but I have driven the D2 with it's std A/C working well, and the D1(std).
Without AC going, the D1 runs at (eg) 80°C coolant temp, and the D2 runs at about 86.
With AC on, D1 will run in the high 80's, where it could easily be 90°C .. ie. in every situation, the AC is putting a high load on the poor underpowered 300Tdi, and obviously coolant temps are then affected.
TD5(D2) prety much runs at 86 maybe 88, but hovers between 86-87 and 88 regular as clockwork. With AC on, 92 minimum, and 95 is normal.
These are my baseline figures. having watched these with monotonous regularity for the past 6 to 8 years.

Now the D2a(IZI) and his new found chilled nature. 88° has been the most common coolant figure I've seen for the past 2 or 3 months driving around here. Sometimes I've seen 90, a quick spike up to 92 maybe ... but I'd call it 89°C with no working AC.
Now with working AC, about 36°C ambient this arvo on the test drive, and I didn't see anything over 89°C .. a few brief spikes to 92, but steady as a rock at 89°C.
ie. as a summary, no change, and I wasn't expecting that.

I expected at the least a rise to 92, maybe 95, but I believe that this lower pressure AC gas is doing it's thing, as stated and running at lower pressure to lessen the load on the compressor a bit.

The vent air temp with AC is more than cold enough. I'd say D1 is colder D2 not quite as cold, but now D2a is a bit colder than D2 .. where D2 could be down on gas. I don't have any way to recover the R134a, so can't do anything to the D1 and D2(yet).

If you're thinking about doing your own AC(and it really is simple/easy) .. as said, you need a vac pump/AC hose-gauge kit and some gas. If your AC has gas, you need some way to recover the R134a already in it. And my understanding is that it takes some time to do this properly(about an hour).
This part I have no idea about, as I don't have any way to recover gas.

But simple process is connect gauges and hoses. You can't get it wrong!
Connect loose hose(should be yellow) to vac pump and vac away. about 30mins had 30mmHg as all info I've read and watched says it should be. Then, disconnect vac pump, connect the recharge gas bottle to the yellow line now, purge a bit of air-gas out and very carefully let in the recharge gas in. This was the only 'hard' part .. had to be gentle with the inlet(low side) not to get a huge gush of pressure into the system. That is with engine off.
Once the gets up into the 25psi range, start car, AC on fan on, etc ... and again very slowly open inlet valve to gently allow gas in again. If I had used R134a, I was supposed to get pressure up to about 70-ish PSI, but this hychill stuff says not any more than 40PSI, and 35 is a good upper limit.
With that as my only reference points, the recharge can of hychill lost a bit over 200g in weight(as they said it should).

If you do do it yourself and want to save bucketloads on the gas price, 70/30 LPG/Propane mix is much cheaper. A single can of hychill on ebay cost about 80something bucks, with tap.
But for me, a bit over $200 was worth it considering I have other cars to do later too.

hope this helps someone.