Thread: The leaning tower of landy

My truck is sitting level this morning after I took it over to Tauranga and the Toyota dealer sent it over to the Landrover agent for repairs.

The mechanic traced the reason for it settling unevenly to dust from the silicone beads in the compressor dryer moving through the system and jamming the valves in the front and rear valve blocks.

He proved it by undoing the pipes from the compressor and put them in a glass of water, where he could see a steady stream of bubbles as the air came back from the airsprings through the semi open valves to the compressor.

He cleaned the valve blocks and replaced the dryer unit so hopefully we are now ready to return to Oz ...looking increasing likely towards the end of May..

yayhttp://www.aulro.com/afvb/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

That's a keen mechanic! Normally the valve blocks would just be replaced.

Yes..it's nice to find a mechanic who is also a landy enthusiast..Mike at Ebbetts in Tauranga is one of those mechanics who knows his stuff and went right to the cause from experience.

He also noted how much easier it was to get to the front block with my OL roo bar in front compared to the original bumper.

Sacred Blue ! who is this masked man the actually logically troubleshoots a problem ,a very rare resource indeed . Its usually change parts to something works.
A simple bypass test indeed ! just put the return line ,at the exhaust valve into a glass of water ,any bubbles equalls bypass . Personally seen heaps of that white powder that used to be the drying beads right through the drier .
Now ,the real issue is what did he do to stop it from Happening again ?
Ive personally stripped 5 different compressors and every one of them showed this problem , and every one of them had perfectly performing compressor sections in them , in that the Piston,rings,bore,and crank were all Okay and they all pumped up perfectlly well ONCE all Silica was removed from the DRIER system. Reassembled and fitted without any silica gel ,just cut a spacer and leave in the top and bottom Felt filters (once they have been cleaned and dried )
So now its a tradeoff between keeping the system DRY and keeping it Working .

Originally Posted by 400HPONGAS

Reassembled and fitted without any silica gel

Did you try any just with less dessicant? My original D4 dryer was overfull but the compressor had worn out by the time I removed some dessicant so it still didn't pump well enough. I've removed some dessicant from the replacement compressor's dryer to try to make the compressor last longer.

Lets say its the breakdown of the silica gel into a powder form , from probably vibrationand the loading from the spring tensioning . Never found the spring to be overly crushing in the dryer chamber , its probably road vibration, and running vibration that cause the Gel Beads to breakdown t)
Graeme , you nay you had a faulty compressor (And who hasnt !!)What was the Fault with the compressor ?Worn out ? what was worn out ?
Did you pull the Compressor apart , take the head and Barrel off an,Reed Valve to find the Fault . as both the Thermistor in the motor and the Temp switch will also play up but thats more of a fault of the main driving relay

In dont think less dessicant will make much difference as its the breaking down to a powder form that is the Problem,Having less in a bigger air gap may make it "powderize" quicker

My original compressor ended-up not producing any pressure at all. I didn't pull it apart as it was being replaced under warranty. It was impossible to blow through the dryer whereas I could get some through the new dryer, but a lot more with a small amount of dessicant removed yet still under tension of the spring, just not as hard packed.

Still,dont jump to any conclusions , Out of all compressors I have messed with ,none had a actual compressor Fault ,yet all were highly restricted on the output side due to the Silica gel dust problem ,Im messing with the motor thermistor and compressor bi-mettalic switches to see what actual heat range sets them off.
Graeme, with the proliferation of Tyre monitoring pressure systems , wouldnt it be possible to say, Tee,into each air bag and record the actual pressures,then with suitable Transducers display the results ?