So I bought a Disco 2 at auction for 1300 ran great and shifted..fine clean car...It was in the 3rd lane problem cars and only had 1 other bidder...drove it home no problem. Around town very short trips no problems. Drove it to Vegas from Arizona had bad smoking..misfire..horrible tranny slippage but no overheating of engine. Oil consumption was radical..like 3 quarts per week no kidding..oil level would show barely minutes after showing full.????
Transmission fluid was extremely dirty...and very low. Topped off tranny..drove it a few miles then tranny fluid overfull.and dirty again... Engine bearings would rattle after warm up..top end even worse sometimes. Other times everything quiet and smooth.???? ..Reluctantly took it to a foreign car Specialist in Vegas...Lolol...I explaned all this in detail to the arrogant owner service writer..I asked for a trans fluid level check top off and anyalyze..His Expert land rover tech said blown tranny..blown head gasket ..although no oil or water mixing . He charged me 250 for their opinion and two quarts of fluid.Drove it back to Arizona and had slipping smoking rattling. The rover made it home..limpped around driving it for 2600 miles had several EXPERTS LOLOLOL look at it after two minutes all said blown head gaskets.. Lolol..no over heating at all never..This weekend it took me two minutes to fix all these issues...After I LOGIC ALLY THOUGHT ALL THIS THRU PRESTO GENIUS IDEA..I pulled off air breather box...AND DOUBLE CHECKED THE TRANS COOLER AND OIL COOLER QUICK DISSCONNENTS AND COOLER LINE ROUTING..AHHHHAAAAA..CROSSED OVER TRANNY AND OIL COOLER LINES...tranny fluid in motor oil..and motor oil in tranny fluid...SOME IDIOT TECH ALONG THE WAY HAD SWITCHED THE QUICK CONNENT LINES...wow...a quick tranny filter change and flush..with major oil flush and service...Rover runs fine shifts fine no smoking ..misfire was fuel return line leak pressure issue simple fix....Lesson learned...

 

Awesome that you sorted it out. You gotta love it when you can fix a problem like that.

Don't get too upset with the sloppy work of the shops. It took you 2600 miles to come up with the presto genius idea. While they it's pretty bad they jump to a diagnosis, crossed cooler lines isn't something most would even think possible....I'm surprised the connections are the same.

 

Yes land rover should have color coded the connections. This is a 1999 disco 2. Supposedly they eliminated the cooler later that year. The most impressive thing is that the ZF Tranny and engine could take the abuse for so long and still be OK afterwards...I had read about BMW factory techs using tranny fluid to clean motors at 60k service and read that in Africa outback they had used delco motor oil in trans.... I drove out all remaining trans fluid burned out of motor after ten miles on hwy...basically ending up with an extremely clean internal motor and a very well lubricated transmission...After torture.

 

That's quite an adventure, and a lot of luck! Hope you enjoy your Rover!

P.S. Since head gaskets blowing are so common on this machine, they just jumped to the conclusion. 95% of the time they would have been right. 99.999% of the time people don't swap the cooler lines.

 

If you have a fuel return, you have a disco 1.