OK, so fired up the 95 today. The back history as I have it is that the PO put the new Head Gaskets in and the Seafoamed the oil... causing so much sludge to break free it clocked up the pickup in the pan, Said he dropped and cleaned it out 4 times. I checked oil is new and full, I mean looks just poured in new.

Ticking there all the time, I added a quart of MMO to the oil and ran it to operating temp to move it all around and will let it sit for a few days then try again.

This is the reason he sold the truck in the first place, just didn't want to mess with it anymore.

I'm guessing that the pickup is plugged again? Anything else I can look for or at?

While topping of coolant (water) I took off the main top hose to the engine at the radiator, and filled it up... NUTS came out! Little nuts... Truck had been sitting with all the coolant lines off and looks like a mouse has moved into them... so going to have to back flush the system to clean it all out, pop out the thermostat and make sure it's not plugged up etc. (which is why I used water and not coolant for this test)

Here's video of it...

95 Land Rover Discovery 5 Speed. - YouTube

 

Nuts you say, that is about the damdest thing I have heard yet.

I think I would want to drop that pan and eyeball it all really soon before some further damage occurs, sound was not good.

It would be nice to rig something up to where you could pump a good solvent thru it for a while. Wonder how it looks under the valve covers? That would bve an easy thing to check.

Anybody got any experience with small pumps and solvent flushes? I have seen some pumps that you can use a drill motor to run them. Or maybe something similar to an aqaurium pump that could handle solvents. Something that you could recirculate a cleaning solvent with.

I remember one brand name Safety Kleen, they make those recirculating parts washers and the associated solvents. I bet our donut eating friend in Alaska Chris-Bob probably has one.

 

Sounds like all the lifters are making noise. I could clearly only hear one bank making noise on mine. My point being it sounds like you have no oil pressure. Did he clean out the sludge in the oil pump?

 

Oil PSI test before any more operation. Could be trash in pan / pickup, O ring for pickup tube, oil cooler in radiator clogged up, etc. Noise not good.

Radiator can be taken to indy shop and they can hot acid flush, unsolder a tank, rod out calcium, etc. Was about $70 for mine. Tubes are too small for nuts, so those will have to come out by gravity (remove and shake upside down).

 

Not sure if all 95's are the same but my oil pick up had a gasket not a oring.

 

Dropping the pan was going to be the next steo[ just so I can get a good look.

Got a link to a cheap oil pressure gauge?

I could recirculate the oil/solvent using an electric fuel pump I have sitting here. I use to transfer fuel from diesel to diesel etc... But how would you do it? pull from the oil pan and dump back into the oil filler tube?

I guess I could also do Kerosene in the oil let it idle for 5 min to really clean it out.

I don't want to spend a lot of time or money on this engine, I would rather swap it for something else (like an isuzu diesel) But willing to toss some time into it. Odometer only reads 150,000k but I guess thats about the time for a HG to go.

 

Speaking of oil pickups and screens, I was watching HPTV this past weekend. On one of the projects they were doing with the 80's buick wagon building up a Pontiac 400 to be an 800HP turbo super duper modified engine, they were installing a new larger formed oil pan to increase oil capacity. They also changed out the oil pickup tube and the new one they put on had a much larger screen assembly that they said gave better performance and the larger size of it also made it much less likely to get blocked off and cause oil starvation issues. Food for thought.

I went back out to my Discovery today since the weather was so nice and the wife kept giving me chores to do with her and the grandkids, like picking up toys and stuff in the backyard, I decided I would rather spend some time on my creeper under the Discovery pretending to do something important.

I took a couple of old rags and rolled around under the beast, wiping down varous areas trying to get all the old previous grime and leaky residues off so I could see if there were any other issues I needed to attend to. The only leak I could see was a slight drip from the worm gear clamp/hose on the bottom of the power steering reservoir. All else looks very good finally.

I was noticing the oil cooler lines going to the radiator and giving some thought to a possible way to possible see the condition of the oil being circulated.

Would it be possible to unscrew those lines from the ports on the radiator and substitute something in between those two lines that you could view or sample the oil being circulated? Just as a test type thing, like on your 95. Possibly even be able to use those two lines to do a solvent cleaning process with some sort of rigged up pump or something along those lines.

Of course before you do anything else, I agree with Savannah, you should check the current oil pressure before doing anymore running of the engine. It would be a shame to screw that motor up.

 

What about rigging something with the pump and the oil cooler lines? If you could rig something good there, you could do an extended flush using your fuel pump.

 

IMHO flush of the oil system is OK until you get to bearings.... But you could reverse flush from oil cooler line back thru the pickup. However, by the time all that takes place, just drop the pan so you can really see what you are working with.

 

I'm sick as a dog right now, AND rain is coming, so it's going to be a couple days before I drop the pan.