When you take it apart there will be evidence on the firing rings of the head gasket if you indeed do have a slipped liner.

Slipped liners come from excessive overheating, they don't "just happen." Also a slipped sleeve alone would not cause the steam cleaning.

Excessive overheating can also lead to cracks in the block behind the liner between cylinders where the cooling channel is. The symptom of this is a steam cleaned piston top and cylinder, but a bad head gasket can also cause that. When you take it apart determine which.

If the engine has not been overheated excessively on more than one occasion and you have no signs of slipped or leaking liner you could rebuild.

Slipped liners can be pinned. Much cheaper than a new block.

Make sure not to skip using a machine shop to flatten the heads if you can rebuild.

You will only know your options when you get it apart and see what you actually have, until then everything is a guess.

Just offering a possible alternative to spending 5 - 8k, namely doing all of the basic troubleshooting before spending money.

Either way, once you have a running engine, make sure the cooling system is in top notch condition. Overheating doesn't happen for no good reason.

 

Welcome to the forum. I scanned through the comments so far and have few things to add.

1) the 4.0 to 4.6 swap is not as easy as swapping engines. I believe the harness and the computer need to be moved over also.

2) to confirm the slipped sleeve pull the heads and follow the steps in this video.
Slipped Sleeve Syndrome - YouTube


3) The CDL shifter in the 04' is a highly sought after item. If you decide not to fix the truck you can sell the shifter alone for $300^ on EBay. So if you got the truck for free you are guaranteed to make money if you part it out.

4) You might consider looking for another cheap 03-04 discovery on craigslist that has a bad transmission and just swapping over the trans and T-Case to the new car. Having a free spare discovery for parts will save you a lot of money.

 

Thanks for the guidance on how to determine whether the sleeve slipped or not.

A little more background on the D2 here.

In December, the fellow who gave it to my son had an overheating incident. He claims to have pulled it over immediately, towed to a shop and ($1,200 later) he had a new radiator.

Then in April -- after dropping the $1,200+, he had another overheating incident. Again, he says he pulled it over right away, and again had it towed to the same shop. That shop gave no diagnosis as to the overheating (maybe something they did wrong the first time around in December?), but told the owner that it cylinder 4 was washed and sleeve had slipped (I doubt they pulled the head for $300, but who knows).

They gave my friend an $8,000 estimate: maybe to NOT get the business or maybe because he can get those kind of rates from the noveau rich folks here in Austin (please visit, but don't stay).

So that's kinda how where we got to where we are.

The vehicle will start normally and run, but the most I have run it is to get it on and then off the trailer, maybe 30 seconds each time, and the temp needle never budged.

Does anyone know if the pressurized cooling system test is a reliable way of telling if you have a slipped sleeve: I read that if you start the engine and the engine to radiator hoses immediately become hard as a rock, then you have compressed air/fuel from a cylinder leaking into the cooling system. Is this true?

 

Did the previous owner ever have the head gaskets changed?

If not then blown HG's could cause all of this.

How many miles on this truck?

I'd still take it apart and look before buying new.

It would be a good project for you and your boy.

 

I'll have all the service records for this D2 and I think that the head gasket had been replaced but maybe not. I'll pull up the docs later tonight and check.

Would a blown head gasket cause a car to overheat -- or just to blow white smoke.

Also, when the owner had the second incident, he had to refill the colling system with a gallon of fluid to top it off. Would a slipped sleeve (or blown gasket) go thru a gallon of antifreeze in a few minutes?

In that Youtube video, the guy used some (blue anodized) caps to close the cooling system in order to pressurize it. Any idea where he might have gotten those.

 

and D2 has 115,000 miles on it I think.

 

At minimum I bet you have bad head gaskets with all those over heating problems. I would just pull the heads to confirm the block and sleeves are good or bad.

If you don't find a leak then buy the head gasket kit from AB (it's the best kit out there in my opinion), take the heads to a machine shop to get milled, cleaned, inspected, the new valve seals from the kit installed, and put it back together. (don't forget that you need new head bolts $80 or upgrade to ARP studs $200, when you install the new heads. Seriously, Throw the old ones away so you are not tempted to reuse them)

Land Rover Head Gasket Kit | RoverParts.com





Then get a genuine 180 gray thermostat to lower your temps to 188 and an ultraguage to monitor temps live.

Lucky8 Ebay- Low Temperature 99 04 Genuine Land Rover Discovery 2 Thermostat 180 Deg | eBay

Ultraguage- UltraGauge OBDII Scan tool & Information Center


I think your best bet at spotting a small slipped sleeve leak with the heads on would be to put a UV dye in the cooling tank, start the truck and let it warm, then turn it off and use the special lights and glasses to spot your leak. If you think the #4 cylinder has the leak then pull that plug and see if you see Dye in there. But like I said above, I really think you should pull the heads to be sure.

 

1) the 4.0 to 4.6 swap is not as easy as swapping engines. I believe the harness and the computer need to be moved over also.

Jared9220- have you ever swapped a 4.0 into a 4.6 equipped vehicle?

I did and it was a straight forward swap. Unless there is a different harness and computer in the car you swapped, you are wrong.

 

What about things like SAI? If your current ECU is setup for SAI you can not simply install an engine without SAI and expect there not to be problems.

 

I have had both cracked cylinder heads on one engine and a bad head gasket in another. Both will cause loss of coolant and pressurization of the coolant system. In neither case did I have white smoke from the tailpipe.

A quick test for a water jacket coolant leak is to pull your dipstick and oil cap. See if the oil looks milky or if there is a milky, frothy appearance. You can find pictures here on the forums.

II slipped liner will cause a pronounced ticking sound usually. There is good audio of one on YouTube if you search land Rover discovery slipped sleeve.

I am not sure what a washed cylinder is. If it is a steamed cylinder (meaning the cylinder is steam cleaned) then I have seen that in person and it is the result of coolant evaporating in the cylinder. One way to spot it without opening the engine is to pull the spark plugs and look at the ends.

The liner can dislodge from heat warpage, a crack admitting coolant behind it, and I don't know what else. Liners can easily be replaced by a machine shop. Flanged or "top hat" liners are extraordinarily experiensive to buy and install, but they solve he slipped liner problem permanently.

If you search my name on the forums you will find that I have gotten alot of help with my engines and, to be honest, got very lucky doing things the wrong way, from which I have learned a great deal. Jared2020, Droswap, DiscoMike, armyrover, and others are extremely knowledgeable and giving of their time, up to and including calling you to discuss it. From my experience, with a nice truck as you have, I would not do as I did in the past and just replace the engine or replace the head gaskets. I would pull the engine out, put it in my pickup, and take it to a machine shop for Flanged liners, new rings, check cam and crankshaft, check and re seat valves, and new gaskets all around, including the rear main, front, head, oil pan, oil filter housing, injector o rings, etc. All of which is serious money but far less than a rebuilt engine from somewhere else and far more reliable than a junkyard engine. I have a junkyard engine and, as I said, I got very lucky.

Pulling the engine and dealing with the machine shop, then reinstalling the engine, will certainly give you the experience you want with your son, and the peace of mind in having a good shop do the work (to whom you can go complain if something goes wrong) as opposed to waiting for the next penny to drop (as I do) is priceless.

I saw someone suggest a parts Rover. That's a good idea if you have the space. Parts, even down to the little plastic ones, can be expensive.

Having said all of that, if you want to go the lucky route as I did, check the plugs. Pull 2,4,and 6. 4 will probably look vastly different. That is going to indicate 4 is getting filled with coolant. You can confirm mixing of oil and coolant with a dye from advance auto or a kit that tests a sample of the coolant, also at advance auto. Then listen for the ticking. If you have ticking as in the video you need to get the engine to a machine shop for new liners because there is most likely a crack. If not, you may be lucky and all it will cost you is a 200 dollar head gasket kit. Amazon has the reinz kits that were recommended to me. Replacing the gaskets with the engine on can be done in a full weekend (for me on my first try... So maybe faster for you). I would also replace the thermostat with a 180 degree one (gray) and the belt. Plan other weekends to replace the water pump, oil pump, and front seals and gaskets (do all at once) . As long as the rear seal isn't leaking much or at all don't mess with that. If you have a leak from your oil pan or other places they are generally fixable on the truck and can be done later. You should get a code scanner because often the codes are very helpful and combinations of codes with a description of what your truck is doing will generally get a quick, accurate, response and some sort of solution from the forum.

Best,

Charlie V

Please excuse typos... Mobile device.