I was out of town, and my wife brought the Disco into the dealer for a window regulator that went out. While she was there they told her that the car needed the head gaskets replaced.
I don't know if this is typical of Land Rover dealers, but my wifes no dummy. My family has been around shops (managing, and owning diesel shops) since before I was born, and my wife has learned well. She of course denied the maintenence and they gave her a gloom and doom story.
I got home from my trip and we put about 600 miles on the car without adding a drop of oil or coolant (the levels haven't gone down in over a month). I call BS on the dealers call. I haven't done any compression checks, but with the fluids staying level and the exhaust doesn't smell like glycol I think the cars all right.
I was wondering what you all think?

 

dc10freighter
If you are not blowing white smoke (coolant going into the cylinders and burning off) the only way I know you can determine if you have a bad head gasket is by checking your cylinder compression. Bad compression in 2 adjacent cylinders means a bad head gasket. If the compression is bad only on 1 cylinder, and giving off blue/black smoke = bad piston rings, possibly piston and or cylinders.
I'm in the process of changing my head gaskets currently cause my LR Disco II 2000 with 97000 miles started to blow white smoke during warm ups and ran rough but did not smoke during operating temp and did not run rough at operating temperature. (Close examination of the steel sleeves reveals no evidence of sleeves striking the head which is what happens when one loosens a liner). I noticed that it took very little coolant almost every week. Cooling system in my LR takes a while to depressurize (engine has to be cold for cooling pressure to normalized to ambient pressure). Do a cooling system pressure check! If that's ok then, my take on your situation: if she's not smoking and compression is good, and she idles well, your head gasket is fine.
What year is your LR and your mileage?
dc10feighter= FED EX or UPS logo on the vertical stabilizer of the plane? LOL
Ed

 

What year and how many miles on your truck?
I would suggest that you take your truck to a small shop or radiator shop and have them do a coolant pressure test and if need be a chemical block test. These 2 test will confirm if your head gaskets are leaking.
Mike