Thread: Jaguar Land Rover recall TDV6 engined vehicles

Originally Posted by loanrangie

Correct John, pre coffee counting !

I was on my second

lol, for me it was midnight after not being able to sleep thinking about cars after having 1 coffee in the morning, and too full dinner belly with a beer on top...

Originally Posted by loanrangie

No but they could have made the crank stronger by having more metal between the journals and fillets which meant they would need to stagger the cylinders more and increase the length a bit.

ah ok, so yeah still same number of mains, just thicker webs.

Originally Posted by haydent

ah ok, so yeah still same number of mains, just thicker webs.

Even better QC on the casting would have helped. They don't all fail.

The desire to fit a V6 engine in the east-west space of a 4-cylinder is the reason why the engine is as short as it is, which lead to a marginal crankshaft design. The engine design engineers must have had their fingers crossed that it would be adequate.

Originally Posted by loanrangie

No but they could have made the crank stronger by having more metal between the journals and fillets which meant they would need to stagger the cylinders more and increase the length a bit.

It was very a much a compromised design. Had to be short enough to be mounted transversely in smaller cars than the Discovery. So I blame the French!

Had Ford designed it purely for longitudinal use in LR and Ford vehicles then yes it could have been made longer, a bit heavier, and with thicker webs. An extra 10mm in length and probably just 5kg more in weight could have made it a bullet proof engine.

What I find impressive is 20 years on and Ford are still using this engine series. Hopefully they got it right with the Ranger now that the engine is being built in South Africa (no excuse to not correct any of the flaws in the design).

Originally Posted by loanrangie

No but they could have made the crank stronger by having more metal between the journals and fillets which meant they would need to stagger the cylinders more and increase the length a bit.

A link on that change would mean I might believe it!!

This link sort of says that the change in engines was a forged crankshaft. Ford 3.0L Power Stroke Lion Engine link: Just a moment...

Some references have been to a billet (with third party crankshafts) but a billet is a lump of steel, and does not refer to a crankshaft manufacturing process. However a forged crankshaft is not a cast one (which then has other processes applied to it after its pouring ie casting. A forged crank is a piece of metal that is squeezed into shape, which aids uniformity and aligns the metal's grain. A Samurai sword was forged, by hammering the heated metal, and many folds made, and the fire's charcoal when the sword was put into the fire, added carbon, hence those swords were a good metal product. For a crank a piece of metal is heated up and then pressured - via hydraulics typically - into shape. If an engine is designed for a forged crankshaft then tighter tolerances would allow a lighter crankshaft. Tighter tolerances and more compact crankshafts can be made with forging due to forging being stronger. Hardness is another issue though. But forging a crank for the Lion would not IMO make it lighter for that reason, the physical dimensions would be the same unless a total redesign was made ie a new engine.

For myself, I am not taking the D4 to Western Australia. The main issue with my D4 was being able to repair an issue in outback W.A. where I want to tour towing my 2013 2.45 tonne off road trailer for 4 to 6 months. There is no service between Port Headland and Darwin, and parts are an issue there, plus mechanic's ignorance and annoyance I presume. I chipped the Disco's windscreen in northern QLD and couldn't get a windscreen, and the only windscreen stockist up there had a huge range of windscreens, but no Disco ones. I glued it up just fine though.

Out of annoyance at Ford I would not buy an Everest - and I did road test a QLD friend who hired a brand new Everest Platinum for Melbourne, which felt smaller in the front than the D4 somehow, I suspect it was due to a lower roof line, and maybe it is narrower on the inside, but outside it looks quite big. Its floor slopes upwards in the rear too, which is weird but tolerable. It reminded me of the very first Mazda CX-5's interior, the Everest seemed like a prototype not a finished vehicle. It was very quiet though and the seats while feeling a bit small were comfortable. But IMO people adjust to seats but IMO being able to move around on a seat over long distances lowers fatigue. Tight buckets don't achieve that IMO.

I'm buying my best friend's 200 series. I had tested many 300s and he got the bug and has ordered a 300 GR-Sport. He lives in Melbourne but has 5 acres at Flinders - the Mornington Peninsula - where his is retiring one day too, but he works and lives a lot down there. He has lots of cars though but the 200 was comfortable, but his wife now prefers a high performance Mini Wagon. Much of the 200's miles were simply driving a 70-85 km one way trip to there and back on Melbourne roads and freeways. He's towed his boat on occasion too. I will do the W.A. trip and then consider selling the 200 and keeping the D4. But my son wants to buy the D4, so if that happens, I guess I'll have to keep the 200. The 200 will need suspension work, probably a cyclonic snorkel. I hate snorkels because any dusty road I've seen has as much dust at 2 metres as at 1 metre. But I do believe in cyclonic snorkels. The air cleaners on 200's are a bad joke and actually a disgrace IMO. The filters themselves don't stop all the dust, and the 200's air filter housings flex and leak air. And even sealed ones under tests show dust gets through the filters. Many 200s have wrecked their motors due to "dusting", something I have never heard of in a D4.

But at least Toyota will sell a short block. The Toyota V8 is still sold in Africa, as even the straight 6 1HD-FT(&E) 4.2 litre diesel (famous for reliability) still is too. Those engines are still being made. The 4.2 6 diesel 1HD-FTE do break down, a friend tows with one and his required a few thousand for its head repairs. They also lack power and torque but 430Nm at 1200 RPM from 4.2 litres sounds like a recipe for long life IMO. I think Toyota keeps selling its diesel engines in South America and South Africa because that way they get a return, and also make big profits when people want a replacement motor, because the manufacturing has been kept going, the new vehicles sales of old engines means a replacement engine for an old Toyota would make Toyota lots of profit, increase customer loyalty and brand reputation. Ford are doing the same with the still making the V6, but incomprehensibly don't feel any obligation to supply new motors for old Land Rovers, when I bet it would be easy to do so.

The LR WSM states that the TDV6 cranks are forged, although that could be a misunderstanding by whoever wrote that part of the manual.
It appears to me that the crankshafts only break because a big-end has seized from lack of lubrication due to a badly failed main bearing. Hence IMO start with preventing the demise of the main bearings, not go looking for stronger crankshafts. Another SDV8 with a seized big-end shows-up on the UK RR forum every couple of weeks but never with a broken crankshaft, noting that they have a main bearing each side of a big-end journal and don't have thin webs.