Thread: Turbo Leak in 3.0 litre

After a very heavy nudge into sand, after bottoming out in a big hole I couldn't see cause of the sun position throwing a big shadow, my 3.0L D4 went into limp mode.


Hissing noise and restricted performance, which was fun considering I was in very soft, deep sand with miles still to drive and almost on dark.


Same symptoms on the road with very slow progress to 100kph. However, I did find driving 'manually' got me there quicker as it forced the gear changes.


Fault was caused by the throttle body (I think .... it was a few years ago) being knocked loose. It apparently is held on with a metal spring clip of some description (I never saw it). Austral said the gasket had become a bit spongy reducing the tension, allowing the unit to pop loose. I imagine it even just being a bit loose would create the same symptom as you'd get unmetered air straight into the system.


Kev.

The car is still off the road waiting for the Rovertech electronics guru to get his act together. I probably should have taken it to Barbagallo!


Hopefully he will get onto my car late today and we'll see what they come up with. Both of my son's D1s also failed last week. At least we have the V8 back on the road quickly (the water pump collapsed) so that he has a car to drive and my wife can drive my daughter's manual Suzuki Swift, which she hates. All she wants is an auto "high up" car that she can easily chuck the grandkid's seats into, a role that the D4 is perfect for when it is not doing outback touring or off roading.

Originally Posted by Celtoid

Fault was caused by the throttle body (I think .... it was a few years ago) being knocked loose. It apparently is held on with a metal spring clip of some description (I never saw it).

The throttle body is in the centre front of the top of the engine. With the acoustic cover removed it is very easy to check if the throttle body has been dislodged but if not suspected then it might not be be spotted.

Rovertech have finally managed to track the fault with their new test gear that is way more advanced than the old Autologic they were using. Southern Landrover have also been involved and everyone has been stumped until today.


The first problem was Graeme's secondary turbo valve, which was intermittently sticking a little bit but not the cause of the restricted performance.


The next problem was a faulty temperature sensor but that wasn't the real cause either.


The next problem was that both waste gates weren't working. This was finally tracked to no vacuum at the actuators, despite the brakes having plenty of vacuum. This was found to be a broken T in the vacuum pipe, which has been broken for a long time and is full of dust. For future reference, the vacuum pump is split into two independent sections, one for the brakes and one for the rest, which was confusing the mechanics also until the Southern guy found out it was a split vacuum system to ensure braking safety.


Once this was fixed the true problem and cause of the hissing was found! It was a cracked plastic inlet manifold. Possibly broken due to the lack of turbo waste gates and over pressurization of the inlet.


They now need to try to source a new inlet manifold. Since no one in WA has ever come across these problems before my car has been a learning curve for both Rovertech and the dealers and there probably won't be any parts available!


Thank goodness they just invested in the new diagnosis tool, which allows drilling right down to testing and adjusting individual components. The last 5 days since they received my car have been spent getting this system up and running and then fixing a D3 that has had problems for months and could not be diagnosed previously using the Autologic system. It has just proved its worth on my car also.


The interesting thing is that until the manifold started to crack the car was running perfectly, heaps of power and no obvious issues. The manifold must have finally split enough to generate a consistent fault which led to me taking the car to get fixed.

Still waiting for the new OEM manifolds to get here from Brisbane via Sydney. It is a bugger because LR won't send them direct from Brisbane to Perth, which seems to add about a week onto the delivery time!


I have to use my trusty old Patrol to tow my caravan this weekend because the car is not available. I will just have to wear hearing protection to make the noise level similar to the D4. Nothing will remove the bumps, however.


I decided to get both manifolds replaced, rather than just the one that cracked. I don't want the other one to crack in the bush somewhere in a couple of weeks!


Graeme, maybe you can explain how my engine could run properly with the vacuum T piece at the top of the engine snapped off and no vacuum for any of the engine controls?? There was no problem until I got restricted performance when the split in the manifold got bad enough. I guess one explanation would be that it wasn't broken and the mechanics did it. However, they reckon it had been broken for some time and probably caused the manifold problems.


Something else to check out on the trails, I guess. However, I don't like removing the engine cover because I once flicked heaps of sand into the rocker area via the oil filler when I didn't clean around the oil filler prior to removing the cover. Some clever vacuuming through a thin plastic tube got rid of all the sand that we could see but it is a bit of risk when removing the engine cover.

I don't have an explanation for the broken T-piece not having any detrimental effect. The oil filler hole can be covered with a clean rag by lifting only the front of the cover although any debris around the cap still has to be cleaned away first.

My inlet manifolds finally arrived from Brisbane on Thursday and the car is now being put back together. It seems Rovertech gets the parts from RoverCraft, which gets the parts from LR and sells them cheaper than LR. It now appears that LR has a policy of supplying stuff to RC very slowly.


When putting everything back together they found that the fan hub is unserviceable so I will now have to wait for that, somewhere around $1000 from LR since I need it quickly.


I am also getting new suspension assemblies front and rear, hopefully to the latest D4 factory standard that Graham has found is good. The tailgate switch has also arrived and is being fitted today. At around 200,000km I will have a lot of the wear items renewed after this major rebuilding job but I will be pretty poor I think.


The next thing when I get the car back is to do another transmission oil flush (the third one) and see how the stator bush is performing. If there is any sign of wear when they take the pan off I will also get the transmission rebuilt so that I have most things that can go wrong repaired. I can't afford a transmission failure on a remote trip and I don't want to get a new car since mine is set up perfectly and already scratched, so I am spending the money to make sure it remains reliable.

I just picked up my D4 and it appears to be fixed. The major issue was the cracked inlet manifold. I asked them to replace both manifolds as a precaution since so much had to be stripped out to get to them.

In addition to two inlet manifolds, I needed a new fan and hub assembly, new belts and hoses throughout, new tailgate switch, both front wheel bearings and a new MAF sensor. They also fixed my faulty Kaymar bar lights and installed a compressor shut off kit. Not sure what that last one was.

Should be good for a while now.