Thread: What happened to your D3/D4 today?

Originally Posted by BradC

I saw a teardown somewhere that I'm sure showed an internal seal/gasket that was the predominant failure mechanism rather than the cooler-block gasket. I'll have a poke around and see if I can find it.

I'm only concerned because I had planned to do the cooler when I do the timing belt and was going to buy a Nissens unit to do it with. Given mine isn't an issue (yet) I'm almost re-thinking that.

The internal gasket is subject to stringent quality controls at factory so failures should be tiny in a quality OEM factory assembled part. The outer gasket however is at the coal face of human error.

Perhaps as I had at 253k kms oil scum in the coolant is sign of an internal failure (heat cycles) whereas oil only in the valley I would bet my bottom dollar is external gasket related.

My suspicion is the vertical threads fill with some coolant and oil on disassembly and the bolts, which have a tiny torque value, are done up against this and don’t achieve true tightness.

In the case of a high torque bolt such as the head bolts you crack the block making this error.

Heh PerthDisco,
I like your analysis on residual liquid in the bolt holes, leading to insufficient fastening of the cooler.
I have two D4s and actually replaced the cooler in our other D4 last January, due to oil in coolant.
Would you recommend revisiting the torques on the bolts, given 9 months and 9,000km since it was fitted?
thank you, Jeff

Originally Posted by Jeffoir

Heh PerthDisco,
I like your analysis on residual liquid in the bolt holes, leading to insufficient fastening of the cooler.
I have two D4s and actually replaced the cooler in our other D4 last January, due to oil in coolant.
Would you recommend revisiting the torques on the bolts, given 9 months and 9,000km since it was fitted?
thank you, Jeff

If you don’t specifically recall vacuuming or air blasting the holes yes I would it’s easy enough to check. There’s a lot of mess on removal and those holes are in the firing line. It’s standard 101 practice for head bolts.

The 4.4TDV8 oil cooler's internal gasket would fail and after a while LR made it available as a spare part, which was revised a few years later because they still didn't last, possibly because the oil cooler sits on top of the EGR cooler where it gets quite hot if EGR isn't disabled.

A LR parts supplier stated that Nissens made the best after market radiators but they weren't as good as LR genuine, although the original radiator in my L322 developed a seam leak next to the top outlet so wasn't that well made. I fitted a Nissens as genuine weren't available even ex-UK.

Investigating a rear brake squeal so off with the wheels and found a slider pin on one caliper was seized, had to put the cradle in the vice so I could twist it out.
Wire brush on the pins and drill bit in the holes to clean them out then lubed and refitted,gave the handbrake shoes an adjustment while I was there.
Rear rotors had a bit of a lip so removed that with a flap disc, will replace them on the next pad change.
I have removed both 12v sockets from under the HVAC controls and replaced them with a 3D printed holder for the 2 USB leads from my head unit and a socket with 2 QC 3.0 sockets and 1 USB C socket to suit my new phone.

Took the lad camping down to Boranup. First time unpowered and tenting (I hadn't put up a tent in 30 years). I bought a meter for the Engel (Powerhouse In-Line Solar Panel/Battery Watt Meter - Altronics) and fitted a BM2 "because I could".

I have the drivers side cig lighter on continuous power, so just plugged into that and left it in the boot. No battery issues. Rocked up Friday arvo, took it out for about an hour yesterday and started straight up again this morning. Voltage was down to ~11.4v. The meter says the fridge uses about 40Ah/day. Happy with that.

The battery is about half-life (I usually get ~5 years) and I was concerned it'd be a problem, but all good. The jump pack stayed in the glove box.

Run the charger after the weekend. The battery was up to about 85% after the 3 hour drive home.

With the BM2 I can correlate the voltage between the charger and the battery. Looks like about 150mOhm between the rear trailer socket and the battery. That doesn't sound like a lot, but when you are looking at charge voltage thresholds at an amp or so (C/100) it's not that insignificant. I'll actually measure it at some point.

Re-writing my charger software so I can feed it a "total loop resistance" and have it compensate for that. So when I use it with croc clips directly to the battery it's ok, but when I use a 5M extension into the rear socket I can make it accommodate for the whole bit (Charger to car is about 10 mOhm, but car to battery looks like ~150mOhm). Yes, I know it's a 99.9% thing, but "because I can".

40ah per day? What fridge is that?