Thread: Another cracked inlet manifold....and LR roadside Assist/Customer Care shocker

Jesus. TLDR. It’s the most common failure for the 3L and if you looked for the error P006A you’d find endless threads.
Replace both at the same time.

The no love seems more direct at the Land Rover road side assistance rather than the vehicle.

*As for the manifold, meh... whats a couple of $K between friends right? I've done that many inlet manifold changes now its become just one of them items to do.
*I still dont say to customers to change both, I have plenty of example where I have only done the drivers side and a few that I have done both sides. As yet I've not done a passenger side on its own.
*Its not any cheaper to do both (well not if you get me to do it).
*Saying that, another trusted Indy Land Rover repairer close by me does recommend doing both sides.

Originally Posted by DazzaTD5

The no love seems more direct at the Land Rover road side assistance rather than the vehicle.

*As for the manifold, meh... whats a couple of $K between friends right? I've done that many inlet manifold changes now its become just one of them items to do.
*I still dont say to customers to change both, I have plenty of example where I have only done the drivers side and a few that I have done both sides. As yet I've not done a passenger side on its own.
*Its not any cheaper to do both (well not if you get me to do it).
*Saying that, another trusted Indy Land Rover repairer close by me does recommend doing both sides.

I’ve now done both of mine, but I admit there was 80,000km between each failure

Originally Posted by chrisevz1337

Our D4 waited to the final day of our recent trip, leaving a camp site in the Border Ranges NP before springing a "restricted performance" warning light on us.

Conscious we'd soon be going through Coffs, we did made a call to LR dealership there to make sure they would be expecting us. Although under restricted performance, car wasn't overly struggling. Similar to other posts, 100km/h on highway, hills a little tough, but as long as feathering the throttle and keeping revs below 2000rpm, car would behave. Very noticeable 'hissing" noise above 2000rpm, driver side. Within 100km of Coffs, the Engine management light also appeared.

Into Coffs, and this is where the fun started...checked error codes, confirmed suggested cracked inlet manifold. Quoted $5.3k to fix, but had no availability in workshop for 2 weeks - they then went on to confirm that the parts were physically on back order, into Melbourne HQ from UK(?) with non expected for 2 MONTHS!

I call LR Road-side Assist for guidance, they confirm that as we physically drove into the dealership, and that the car wasn't "towed" from a public place, we could not use any of our roadside assist benefits - no rental car, no accommodation, no towing etc, and get told to call customer care. I call customer care, only to be told they are unaware of the roadside assist policy, and they are unable to help (?)

I'm in disbelief at this point; managed to arrange a rental car in Coffs, and a place to stay and made the decision to drive the D4 to nearby Caltex, and call Roadside assist, to see if we could get a tow home. Go through process with LR Roadside Assist, NRMA turn up, D4 gets towed to secure holding car park in Coffs to be taken back to same dealership for assessment. I handed over the keys, and we continued drive home to Sydney.

What followed was one of the most shambolic and damaging customer experiences I've ever witnessed. I'd summarize as it taking 18 days to arrive home, unfixed, with "D4" being lost for 4 days of that period...

Let's look past the fact that a $90k car new, has done a manifold after 100kms, after LR had issued bulletin/warning of faulty parts with no recall or being covered by them. Let's look past the shambles of not being able to activate the roadside assist benefits our moment of need - the customer care negligence, D4 making it hard for me to love her at the moment.

2015 D4 3.0L TDV6, 110KMS, Fuji White & Blackpack, Rhinorack Batwing, REDARC 1225 BCDC DBS)

There are some extremely good sealant "tapes" on the market these days. Not possible to get sufficient access to crack in order to "lay'"some tape along crack and continue on journey?

Originally Posted by chrisevz1337

I call LR Road-side Assist for guidance, they confirm that as we physically drove into the dealership, and that the car wasn't "towed" from a public place, we could not use any of our roadside assist benefits - no rental car, no accommodation, no towing etc

Thanks, that's good to know. Won't be trying to help myself in the future should I ever need it.

To be fair, I have seen roadside assist in action from a remote location (Birdsville), 1000s of ks from home. They exceeded the benefits they claim to offer in that instance. Transporting the vehicle to Perth (where the owner lives) for repair rather than just to Adelaide for repair and thereby avoiding the owner having to retrieve it from Adelaide at a later date.

As always with these things it depends on your luck getting the right person on the end of the phone at the right time.

Originally Posted by Discodicky

There are some extremely good sealant "tapes" on the market these days. Not possible to get sufficient access to crack in order to "lay'"some tape along crack and continue on journey?

I wondered how you'd go with some fibreglass woven mesh tape. Would the epoxy/resin adequately stick to the manifold plastic if appropriately prepared?

Originally Posted by BradC

I wondered how you'd go with some fibreglass woven mesh tape. Would the epoxy/resin adequately stick to the manifold plastic if appropriately prepared?

I'm assuming they're plastic? If so what sort?

DL

Originally Posted by BradC

I wondered how you'd go with some fibreglass woven mesh tape. Would the epoxy/resin adequately stick to the manifold plastic if appropriately prepared?

I get asked to fix stuff like this from time to time.

Have had a look at some shots from threads on here that show the cracked manifolds. Yes plastic........... type of plastic would be stamped on somewhere for recycling purposes.

The biggest downside would be access. crack surround would need to absolutely oil free for a gaffer type temp fix. I suspect access is so limited that the manifold might as well be replaced when all the crap is out of the way.

You can use epoxy resin and fibreglass on hard plastics to fix cracks, but the surface must be totally degreased and completely sanded where you want it to stick.

The inside of the instrument binnacle of my 74 2 door is done that way and works well.

The upside of any possible temporary fix for these manifolds is that the vacuum inside is trying to pull whatever you might use into the crack. This a huge plus.

Last month I was asked to have a look at a split in the tank of a 3 or 400 litre vineyard sprayer. Tank not available, sprayer discontinued. New sprayer $12k plus. Plastic was HDPE or HDPP.

Split was halfway down on the side, about 500mm long. Took an hour or so to get off the remains of previous fixes......silicon, sikaflex, bitumen tape inside and out. I was only fixing the inside.

Was sanded everywhere in the repair area with a 100mm grinder with a flap disc....... the plastic doesn't have time to melt at 10,000rpm.

Used a special flexible brew and 4 layers of 300gsm chopped strand (chopped strand will flex a bit, woven is more likely to split) then a thick coating over the top. All is good...................no leaks.

The point I'm making here is the weight of the contents of the tank helps the patch stay really stuck, kinda the same as the vac on an intake manifold would.

DL

EDIT: The manifolds can't be fixed like this, for the reason Graeme points out on the next page.