I bought my first Rover, an 03 Discovery II with a knocking/ticking noise. I read all about slipped liners and really thought that's what it would be. I pulled the pan off and found a very loose rod bearing. I can move it back and forth with one finger and there is way too much slack from the crank to the bearing. So that was at least some of the noise if not all. My problem is, how can I tell if I have a slipped liner or two on top of that? Once its stripped down to the bare block, how can I tell for sure if a liner has or has not slipped? My other quiestion is if the liners haven't slipped yet, is there anything that can be done to prevent them from slipping in the future. I have heard of "pinning" the sleeves in the block. I read somewhere about putting loctite around the top and bottom edge of the sleeve but that seems a little far out there and not sure that would do anything long term over thousands of heat cycles. My questions are:

1. Is there any way to determine is the sleeves have or have not slipped yet?

2. Is there anything that can be done to prevent it from happening in the future while the block is bare

Top hat liners from D & D in Michigan will be right around $2k including shipping and I would really rather not spend that much on this if it doesn't have to have it.

Thanks in advance guys I love this site and I have already learned so much.

 

As far as I know, the only way to find out for sure if the liners have slipped is to take off the heads and look at the top of the liners themselves. If they have slipped, they wont be level with the top of the face of the block where the cylinder heads bolt on. Sometimes, they will slip and hammer the hell out of the head and smash a big "O" in the top of it. I have heard that when this happens it sounds like a jack-hammer, I take that to mean louder than the "normal" Rover ticks. As far as preventing it... I don't know? I think heat is usually what causes them to shift in the bores. The best thing to do is probably just watch your temp. gauge like a hawk. Also, a lot of people I have talked to who have had this problem have told me that they wish they would have gotten their head gaskets done sooner when they started to leak and the engine started to subsequently run hotter than normal due to combustion gasses heating up the coolant.
I don't know, but anyway, if you take the heads off you will know for sure.

 

Anyone else heard of "pinning" a liner? I read about a guy in Australia who had his pinned AFTER they had slipped and it work fine for about six months only. I am curious if it works as a preventative measure.

 

How to pin liners - DiscoWeb Message Boards

 

How many miles on yours? What was the sound like? just at idle just when hot, or all the time? thanks

 

112,xxx miles. Noise seemed to come and go. When warm it seemed a little more common, but definitely made more noise the faster the motor ran. at 3k rpm it was a hell of a rattle and I was scared to rev it any higher. Sometimes at idle the noise would almost go away completely. I honestly didn't mess with diagnosing the noise too much as I was planning on pulling the motor out and putting it on a stand to take it apart and really see what was going on.

 

Pinning sounds like a good option if they haven't moved. I wouldn't feel comfortable doing it myself however. Would have to find a shop who could do it or has done it before. When I get the heads off how obvious will it be if the liners have slipped? Will a machine shop pressure testing the block tell me whether there is a crack in it?

 

Maybe. Some of the horror stories are that a crack behind the liners, especially a very small one, might hold pressure just fine until the block warms up.

If it fails the pressure test, it's certainly bad, but if it doesn't fail, that don't assure that it's ok.

 

From what I've read (whatever that's worth), if you have a crack behind one of the liners the liner in that cylinder will often sink down the bore just a little bit. I don't know if they all do this but it may be something to look for while you're in there. I don't know how common this even is, I've heard very few stories of this happening but, I don't know if that's just because people don't write anything about it or if only very few of these blocks actually crack. ??? This is the reason I've started a new thread about this very thing. I'm not looking for an exact answer, just some idea of how common it is.

 

You had a bearing noise. The liners start to tick when engine warms to operating temp and is only audible at idle. When you rev up past 1200rpm or so the noise stops. There is not enough mass and the movement is so minor 1/16 inch that no noise is heard above idle. The d1 had no lip at bottom of cylinder so the sleave could move up and down a tremendous amount untill it dropped into bottom end. If there are no defects behind liner there is no reason the engine would suffer any problems other then this horrid tick.