I'm trying my best to help a friend with a 2002 Land Rover Discovery (2?) with a coolant leak. So my friend takes the vehicle in for an oil change and he gets the "you need to have the coolant system flushed" sales pitch. Well wanting to do the right thing he says yes, (I told him my view is that cooling systems like transmissions should not be flushed unless there is a problem) well a leak started immediately after.

The leak appears to be on the drivers side kinda behind the exhaust manifold and lower on the block. Its a difficult to see area, from above you cannot see quite that low, from below you cannot see quite that high up on the block.

The leak seems to occur while driving because there is not much coolant on the garage floor. At some point the heater stopped working, but when coolant was added the heater started to work again. As coolant is lost the heater stops working (I'm guessing thats just a symptom of losing the coolant).

I have zero experience with these vehicles. Are there coolant lines that run to that area? Is this a BMW engine? I thought I read that somewhere.

Any help would be appreciated.

 

That is a Buick engine.
Your friend needs to bleed all the air from the coolant system, while the engine is stone cold, refill it and then go have the coolant system pressure tested to verify the leak.
You might also have him check for coolant leaking from under the t/body.
Better yet, have your friend send me his tele number and I'll call him thru what to do.
Makwe sure he doesn't drive it an more till this is resolved or he could toast the engine.

 

I'm not sure how to do that privately. I get a lot of "you do not have permission to access this page" when navigating this site. So I suppose the telephone number has to be posted here? I'm not sure my friend would be comfortable with that. I'll see what I can do.

 

You have your schools of thought dead wrong.
You MUST change ALL of your fluids on ANY car no matter how many miles it has on it.

The transmission fluid MUST be changed every 30,000 miles.
The coolant MUST be changed every 3 years.
The engine oil MUST be changed every 3,000 miles.
Transfer case and differential fluids MUST be changed every 30,000 miles.
These are not recommendations, they are a MUST.
Just like any other car or truck.

Your way of thinking about it is like this, why brush your teeth if everything is fine?

Your friend getting his coolant flushed was not the cause of the leak.
In the "write up" and "how to" section there is a link on how to bleed the cooling system.

Not trying to be a jerk.

 

You have your school of thought, I have mine. It's like under the sink plumbing. When you take apart the "P" trap and associated plumbing under a sink and put it back together it always drips until aninternal coating of funk develops and seals the unions, so to it has been my experience that when you flush radiators and transmissions the internal funk gets knocked loose and causes big time problems. This has been my experience through many many vehicles.

As for brushing teeth, I dont see that as analogous.

Also not trying to be a jerk.

 

No problem.
Best of luck to you and your friend.

 

Not to resurect an ancient thread, but this is the EXACT coolant leak location with my 03.

The leak is on the driver's side maybe two inches lower than the exhaust manifold and maybe two inches closer to the firewall. I took a pic, but it's basically useless because I can't see the exact leak, I just know it's coming from right there due to the "trail" of coolant I can see from below.

It does NOT leak until it reaches normal operating temp (like after 7-8 minutes of idling in 80 degree weather), which I interpret to mean that it's leaking from an area that doesn't get coolant until the t-stat opens (right?).

It's a pretty small leak. It drips down then and off the oil pan drain bolt at a rate of maybe 1 drip every 3-5 seconds.

Here's the deal: I bought the truck with this leak about two weeks ago, and the owner provided me with the estimate that a local shop gave him for an upper/lower intake gasket job ($1300). Does that diagnosis sound right?? Of course I'm going to do the work myself, I just don't want to replace the intake gaskets if it's something else.

Disco Mike: what exactly am I going to find out if I take it a shop for a pressure test??

 

the pressure test will verify the leak point. so you are not throwing parts at it like you were planning on doing.

 

Hey when your friends "M&S" lights start flashing on his dash, and the tranny starts slipping because you didn't change the transmission fluid, ill be laughing my *** off.

Also Changing the coolant on these has to be done every three years if he uses Dex cool (standard coolant for these).

And my previous owner didn't change transfer case fluid, i had to have it rebuilt with new seals 10k miles ago.

These are not your normal family sedan. And people that take care of stuff like that deserve to be treated like **** because the person that buys it after your done with it gets f**ked over.

Edit: oh this is a old thread... make a new one please no hijacks?

 

Lol, your rigorous rebuke is well taken, no matter that the original idiot is no longer here to reject it.

And HilltopperSX, thanks for the clarification on the pressure test...so the coolant will just shoot out of the leak at a higher pressure thereby making it easier to identify? My neighbor has a mechanic's shop and is going to do a test for me next week. I'll be doing the grunt work though.

I guess I was mainly just fishing to see if any of the sages on this board recognized my leak point as characteristic of some common problem..."Oh, why of course. There's a small notch in the intake gasket that's common to leak at that precise location." That sort of thing.

An aside to your point SnowDude: I found a receipt for brake work done on my D2 with cheapie Autozone Duralast pads...why do I have a sneaking suspicion this truck wasn't cared for in EXACTLY the right manner...going to be working through the 60k maintenance list as quickly as possible to save headaches.

And BTW, all y'all rock.