Thread: 3.6L TDV8 Intake / Valve Cover Gasket

Originally Posted by jackiechan

Got everything back together.
Turned ignition on and off a few times, bled air out of fuel lines at little valve on top of engine. Then attempted start up.
Engine turned over a few times then fired right up. Sounded great.

Got out to look and a huge amount of diesel is leaking from somewhere at the back of the engine.

It's possible I've damaged some pipe, but I don't think I did. Could some pipe have popped off with excess pressure or something? Or have I damaged something somehow?

Any help is much appreciated.
I'm really regretting buying this car right now.

Check all the fuel pipes to the injectors and any other connections in the fuel system.

Originally Posted by haydent

After the initial panick about the low oil level and amount on the engine, I topped it up and monitored it and its not loosing oil as fast as I first feared.

I have the parts from UK and bought a crowfoot spanner set on sale at sca

Just waiting for good time to do it and will post back here

can I ask where did you get your intake covers ?
also aftermarket or LR ?

Anyone used aftermarket one - want some opinions form people who fit aftermarket

I actually just reused my covers, in hindsight ive had thoughts that i should have replaced them with all the work involved to take them off and on, but worried being cheap and putting aftermarket one on might be worse than what i had, I would have considered getting them off aliexpress,

I actually have an update to this thread. since doing this job, ive had a slowly worsening problem of diesel smell when stopping or slowly moving after driving for a while. I identified that it was coming out of the engine bay near the firewall and going into the cabin air intake at base of windscreen. When driving you dont smell it as it gets carried away too much.

I had put my injector pipe guards back on a few weeks after being happy with first doing the job, which made it hard to see what was going on, so just put it off, hoping it would go away.

Had a big tripped planned so thought better investigate, I had a leaking injector seal and about 4 of the bolts on the passenger valve cover were finger loose and you could hear the air escaping...

All this despite using new seals, and and for the valve cover bolts actually over torquing them to about 14n rather than 10n and checking them some weeks after the initial job.

As you do i was finding this all out the day before leaving.

Once I got the cover off the passenger side, (i could smell it worst on that side so started there) there was all this hard black gunk around one of the injectors, at first thought it might have been a cracked cover, but worked out is was the injector not sealing properly. I couldnt get it out though (i didnt have a puller, the lr factory one you can get off ebay china for like $40 turns out), i could turn it a bit but thats all, and was worried i could be just about to break something and make the car immobile.... so i just tightened it up hoping id reseated and torqued it enough to seal again.

So we left on trip with big caravan got about 10km and checked under bonnet, could hear loud air escaping noise in time with a cylinder, so now it had gotten worse, as could never hear the air escaping from the injector.

So turned back and had another go at removing the injector, this time with the extra heat and pressure of the caravan and me loosening it the day before and spraying wd40 around it, it must have loosened up all the gunk that was sticking it. I got it out , what a relief .

It was a mess, but no damage, dropped some tools and the seal washer a few times in the engine bay which is mandatory and takes up half the job time, but cleaned it all up with rotary tool wire brush, amazingly the copper washer looked fine despite being run for a year with combustion gasses leaking past it. Hand cleaned the hole and seat with the same wire brush but taped to a screw driver.

I put it all back together and its been fine so far, I tempted to never put those covers back on, as they really are a barrier to monitoring and diagnosing potential engine troubles early,

But why didnt it seal properly the first time ? I thought id done everything by the manual, but looking again at the steps to fix this one injector I may not have....

I will post my finding in the next post, just running out of time now

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