Thread: the 2.25L petrol/diesel, doesnt matter theyre both crud.

These are the boat anchors that started it... the first engines that landrover developed, designed and manufactured. Aparently the engineers were avid douglas adams fans and paid attention to the evolution of the vogons when they did as although these engines have no right to survive to this day through sheer stubborness here they are looking not so much designed as congealed, well corroded.

Lets start at the front just behind the pully thats held in place with a crank handle dog... hang about lets start there. A CRANK Handle... the starting and charging system included with this engine is so unreliable that they included a crank handle. As Standard... Do I need to continue? no, but Im going to anyway as the next major fault is less than an inch from that and it the front seal..

youve all been in a landrover when it rains.. youve all gotten wet.. why? because landrover seals leak and here in their ultimate intelligence they've rivited the seal in place so when it leaks youve got to drill the rivits out dropping swarf everywhere including the oil gallery that lubricates the rattler sorry timing chain. To sort that little problem out you have to drop the sump, you drop the sump and you guessed it thats another seal that needs working on.....

speaking of timing chains, thats connected to a cam gear which at the end of the day drives valves. Now Im not going to be overly insulting to the valves but lets just say they're the only things I know of that suffer recessions faster than ageing middle managers and stem erosion faster than a rose garden in the middle of an acid rain shower. but at least when they're working they do the job well enough to let the engine breathe somewhat better than a scuba diving athsmatic whose been given a tank full of compressed pollen to breathe 30 meters down. The drinking straw sized exhaust with more bends, twists and kinks in it than a pretzle in fetish gear dancing with a tornado in a trailer park doesnt do a whole lot to help the situation

And a word on power... thats all it is to these engines, a word, petrol diesel thats all it is, something you can talk about but never have. but thats not without its benifits its very hard to get it bogged if you dont have enough power to spin the wheels but the downside is consistantly getting overtaken by little old ladies in their electric scooters and zimmer frames.

of course in the vehicles that come with this mighty excuse for a power plant you wind up with the inevitable series dilemma of do I park on the hill incase the startermotor fails or do I park on the flat incase the handbrake fails? but thats not really the fault of the motor and they had the forethought of giving you a crank handle so you can safely park on the flat.

And the engines need maintenance on a regular basis, valve adjustments, spark plug cleaning leaks plugging relatively speaking its not all that much so long as your comparing it to the maintenance requirements of say a space shuttle. The best bit of it all is that the welsh plugs that are part of the engine are very easy to replace, well all except for the one that no-one knows is in the back of the block where noone but for the extra bendy dwarf freaks with spines like snakes and heads shrunk by vodoo witch doctors can see it and your average cephelopod will be complaining of cramps while trying to replace it.

they are a very friendly engine, other parts of the engine like to form bonds with parts of the engine that you wouldnt normally expect, bearings like to be one with cranks and blocks and in the diesels the precombustion chamber, when it get on down to trying to do the hard yards, generaly likes to become one with both the piston and the head at the same time and if it can manage it the block as well. Which leads me to the other good thing about these motors.

These engines last forever, partly because no-one really wants to risk a long distance trip with one, by long distance I mean anything past say the end of the driveway, and partly because they're so bad on fuel, emissions, power and anything else that an engine should be good at that no-one can actually tell when one is truely knackerd, just out of tune or just off the rebuild line.

































































The fact that IMHO the 2.25l petrol engine is probabley the most reliable and abuse tolerante engine ever built on this planet has been overlooked for the writing of this post and the fact that the diesel varients great great grand child the TD5 has more than one similarity to it was never considered.

thats easy, 6v is the upper limit for USB rechargers, with a 6v system you wouldnt need a fancy voltage regulator to run your phone/gps/camera chargers youd just need to wire in a usb socket...