Hi all, new to posting but read alot to help me with my service. I have a 99 DII with 83K miles where I changed the oil, etc every 3000 miles religiously so I was expecting to get 150K+ miles out of this. I am currently having a coolant leak issue, internally as there is no external drips. This started with an overheating instance. It overheated, I pulled over, towed it home and replaced the thermostat, but it would still overheat (but not regularly). My diagnosis was that it was getting air in the coolant system and would "vapor lock". Upon accelerating I would hear the "waterfall noise" under the dash as mentioned by others but ran fine. So I took it to LR dealer for diagnosis. They said I had a "dropped sleeve" as on the drive into the bay they saw a misfire code. Said I needed a new car. After the shock I took it to a reguar mechanic I trusted and said it ran fine but he saw a small leak around the water pump, so put on a new one and replaced front gasket. Made it better, but I was still getting air (waterfall noise) and was getting low in coolant in the expansion tank about every 3 days. In the meantime I was getting Cyl 8 misfire and bad O2 sensor messages so I replaced the Oxygen sensors and she now runs great with no errors. On advice from a former LR mechanic I added K-Seal, but it didnt help. Only issue is i have to top off the expansion tank every 3 days and have run this way without issue for 6 months getting 15 MPG with city driving since replacing O2 sensors.
First question, am i wrong or was the LR dealer an idiot with the dropped sleeve diagnosis as it is running beautifully with no codes for 6 months. Second question, my next step is to get the Head gasket replaced. I had this done at 50K miles by a dealer, but my suspicion is the overheating instance blew the gasket. Is this the best way forward, or do I have a sleeve issue making this a worthless step?
Looking for the right direction from this forum...
Thanks,

 

1. Dealer opinion might be off a bit.

2. Another member just posted pictures of a severe HG leak, see https://landroverforums.com/forum/at...0416-rev-0-jpg

In there you will notice that the gasket material has less room between the rectangular water passage on the last cylinder. So #8 is a prime place for an HG leak.

Now where is that coolant going? White smoke out the tail pipe? Water in oil (milky looking)? It has to go somewhere. That rush of bubbles in the hose can be purged out with the bleeder, but will return if you are still having coolant go away. There is a chemical test for exhaust gas in coolant, but with this much loss it is almost certainly positive.

Now if you have the HG done, when heads are off they can inspect for slipped liner. Before any other work is done or parts ordered. But you have not described any other slipped liner symptoms, like "the tick". And six months of driving without more problems other than coolant loss would seem good. You may have erroded a groove in the aluminum head or block where steam was passing, but unlikely as no more gross over heat issues.

Would seek an indy shop, not the dealer. If you did have a slipped sleeve, driving for six months would have been more eventful.

 

I agree with buzz, that I'm not sure a dropped sleeve is really it after 6 months of problem free driving.
Do you change the oil yourself or have someone do it? Either way, take a good look at the oil as buzz mentioned. Also, do go sniff the tailpipe and see if it smells sweet or coolant like at all. Also, take a good look and sniff under the hood for signs of crusty coolant residue. When I first got my truck, I had the coolant going down very slowly, but could not find it. Finally, I really go in there with the light and looked around, and saw the hose from the overflow tank to the top of the engine was leaking, but it would only do it while running and hot, and just evaporated in that area so no drips. It was a pain of a hose to change (just vacuum tubing type hose), so much so that the previous owner had a crack in the middle of the hose, and just cut it and put an adapter in so he would not have to change it out where I did!
So, just make sure all hoses are good and not somewhere that evaporates on the hot engine. Look in the Rave for the coolant flow pattern
Here is when I was trying to figure out what this rogue hose was all about:

 

Hi all,
thanks for the posts, and yes the exhaust definitely has the sweet smell to it especially on startup. I have looked in the engine and cannot see any signs of the leak externally but will look for "crust". As for the coolant hydrocarbon test, that was done by the dealer who said there was gases in the coolant, but redone by the independent who said there was none. I believed the independent.

 

Well, we are back to why you loose coolant so quickly. Coolant pressure test can be done at home with device loaned by auto parts store.