Hi, first time owner of Land Rover so I know very little about the car. Have been doing a lot of reading and kinda know whats going on, but not really





.
So, I bought this 2000 D2 from an old nice lady who isn't able to drive any more. The engine sounds like brand new, 100K mileage, oil changed regularly at Midas , serviced at local Land River in DFW, Texas.
The symptoms are of cracked head gasket - overheating, losing coolant. So initially I was going to use the short cut and use one of those head gasket treatments and drive 500 miles with it. BUT, after looking underneath the car I see that there is oil on a drivers side. My thought is its a pan gasket .. or not. Can you give your 2 cents what else could this be.

PS: after reading some more, I guess I will be better off paying indy mechanic and change head gasket and pan gasket at the same time rather than doing the "head gasket sealer". And if anyone has recommendations for LR mechanic DFW area, I would be greatly appreciate it.

 

The head gasket in a can won't fix anything. Most of the time it'll make it worse. You can fix these yourself or find an Indy shop to fix it. Or have someone confirm its even the head gaskets leaking. Diagnosis is important.

 

Not sure what I'm looking at here but it looks clean!

 

Are you sure that these leaks are even coolant that leaked out there? It looks like oil to me. Is it sticky and does it taste sweet? If so, its coolant; if not, it's oil of some sort.

I replaced head gaskets in my old 1988 Range Rover with the 3.9l, and it wasn't too bad, but I had the engine open for about two weeks of evenings and weekends. I imagine a 4.0l is about the same.

Scott

 

maybe some seepage from the steering box, but that looks like as good as you can expect from a d2 leak-wise. definitely do the head gaskets and oil pan gasket rather than trying any shortcuts. oil pan gasket really isn't too much of a hassle at all.

 

No, no, no. The pictures definitely shows oil stains. I didn't find any coolant leaks, But it "evaporates" somewhere. That's why I immediately thought it was a head gasket problem.
The oil leak leads me to believe there is a pan gasket bleed somewhere.

 

Rent a tester to see if there are exhaust gases in the coolant reservior. Simple test, that can answer a lot of questions. Oil leaks could be from up top and draining down. Valve cover gaskets are a known issue.

Brian.

 

Brian,
so I had my mechanic stop by my workshop/garage today and he didn't noticed any signs of gasket problem. What he saw is a lot of air in the hoses and used bleeder valve and extra distilled water to get rid of it (what he could with out evacuation tools). Then we drove the car for about 15 minutes and everything seemed to be normal. No overheating even with full AC blasting. Then we both went home and I came back to garage 2 hours later hoping to drive the car home. This time I drove it for 2 minutes and it started to overheat. I pulled over, waited it to cool off and took it back to garage. "Service engine soon" light came up as well. My mechanic is going to bring his diagnostic tools next weekend and read the messages. Any idea about this sort of behavior? Thanks for all your help.

 

Too bad about overheating again. That's very frustrating.

The best diagnostics are the engine's own. Many auto parts stores will read codes for free if you don't have your own ODB code reader. However, code readers aren't very expensive, so I'd recommend you buy your own. There are OK readers at Harbor Freight with free on-line updates. There are good and very inexpensive code readers on eBay too, even some with Bluetooth with free apps you can run on a smartphone. There are lots of options.

Good luck.

Scott

 

1. What state are you in?

2 park the truck on a hill, front up and bleed it that way. Open the bleeder and add until it comes out. Squeeze your hoses back and forth so the air moves.

3.pull your plugs and post a pic.