Thread: Any Advice for a New Disco II Owner Working on His Car

Originally Posted by AK83

Another thing you need is patience. Totally understand the desire to get it going, but being more methodical and careful will help to make it more reliable.
If you've never been around landrovers before, they have a reputation for oil leaks, yeah!!

Like reddirt said, whilst you've made a lot of space around the engine now, good time to renew many seals/gaskets and o-rings.
The oil coolers(heat exchanger part) have been known to leak, so you get oil in your coolant or water in your oil symptoms.
Quite a few seals in that area. remembering that the car is 20+ years old and o-rings do compress to the point that they readily leak after such a long time.

You don't have to remove the turbo to do head gasket, but doing so, it gives you a lot more room to move around there. Almost 100% for sure, the turbo drain pipe has warped, as they pretty much all do.
So check the turbo end of the flange on the pipe for flatness, and file/grind the flange face to flatten it before you waste energy and all your swear words getting it back on.

Just so you know, the inside flange bolt(should be 8mm) is a total pain to get back on. What I've now started to do is to use hex or socket head bolts of that thread size(I can't remember exactly, it may be M5, but really not sure!!) With a socket head, you can more easily get a long straight allen key more easily in there, than a 1/4 drive socket.

A few updates on my progress with everything, so far there haven't been any major issues that I have spotted, I'm studying full time and working part time so fitting this in around my life has extended the process a little bit.

One issue I have come across now was that after taking the cylinder head apart and removing the injectors, I found the tips of them to be filthy. Similarly, the little guaze filter for the fuel pressure regulator block (my understanding is that it filters the return line for the fuel through the engine) was also filthy and covered in sludge. I did my best to clean it up and have been using a combination of kerosene, acetone and isopropyl alcohol (the isopropyl alcohol comes in a spray bottle so is usefull for getting rid of the oily film kerosene leaves behind).

The next steps I'm taking are to clean and inspect everything. I have found an injector specialist in Sydney that can test all five injector's spray patterns for around about $90 and if any need to be taken apart, cleaned and rebuilt he estimated somewhere in the realm of $120 per injector. Tomorrow I'm planning to do all my checks on the cylinder head for flatness and cracks so the following weekend it could hypothetically be going back together if everything goes well.

I still have a few more queries in the mean time...

1. Does anyone have any suggestions for how I should go about cleaning the fuel galleries in the cylinder head (it is a 10p engine so both galleries are internal I believe)
2. I have attached some photos, but does anyone have any suggestions for getting the cylinder head mating surface even cleaner than what it is currently?
3. I'm also curious about flushing the engine oil, I was wondering if I should potentially drop the sump now to replace the gasket and oil pump bolt so I can similarly deep clean the inside of the sump and then filling the engine with a cheaper oil to run the engine in with an engine flush additive before changing the oil filters and adding a better quality oil. Alternatively should I just put the engine back together, top the oil level up and then once its running just do the regular oil change and change the oil filters?