Hi all,

My D1 is making a slow march to a failing head gasket. The once steady starting idle is slowly becoming more vibrational and sporadic and when you accelerate hard you can get a whiff of coolant. No milky oil, no white smoke out the exhaust, but there is a slow loss of coolant from the reservoir (no puddles under the engine). I know I’m not presenting the strongest evidence that it’s a failed head gasket, most of my theory is based off the feel of vibration when I first start it up in the morning and comparing it to failed head gaskets from previous vehicles.

However, yesterday when I started the D1 up my service engine light came on (not check engine light), owners manual states that this comes on every 50,000 miles and to go to your local Land Rover dealer to have a routine emissions check, aka ignore it. I had to make a couple of stops and after my first stop I attempted to start back up. I noticed my service engine light was no longer on (without me doing anything) and moments after starting up my engine struggled and then died. I know this can happen when a head gasket really starts to fail, I was able to get going by revving the engine to stop it from stalling and found that as soon as I shifted to drive the engine didn’t stall and it didn’t stall at all while driving, but after my next trip 20 minutes later stalled during startup again.

My question is: does anyone know if the engine service light turning itself off could be at all related to some electrical component related to the emission that would cause the D1 to stall at start up?

***UPDATE***

The problem has never reproduced itself and the service engine light never came back on... makes me think there was a correlation between the two..

 

I'm not convinced it is a head gasket. It might be, but there are other things to check first.
As to the smell and loss of coolant....
1- check intake heater for leaks
2- check hoses and clamps into/out of the heater core both in the engine bay and in the cabin.

As to the stalling, it sounds more like a IACV issue which is pretty common and not a big deal at all.
https://landroverforums.com/forum/di...75/#post585891

As to the service engine light...
https://discoweb.org/oldsite/reset/index.htm

As to the rough starts.... how new are the plugs and wires? Is your PCV clogged. Could be lots of things including engine bearings.

All this stuff is pretty easy and cheap so worth checking before taking the plunge into a head gasket. You might wind up there anyway.

 

I just looked through the workshop and electrical manual at the info for the IACV, but there weren’t any tests for diagnosing a malfunctioning IACV. I may just try to replace it. The next day It started fine without stalling, started at 1000 RPMs eventually going down to its normal 700 +/- 10 RPMs.

 

If you replace it, you may want to re-flash the ECU. That will basically re-set all your adaptive values which have been building up over time.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/d...ms.gemsutility