Oil light intermittant after timing cover gasket change and now headgasket too?
 

Long story short, Bought an '03 Disco SE a month ago. Seller was a mechanic and he said he changed the head gaskets and was selling it. I should have walked away as soon as I heard that but the aesthetics on this car drew me in :rolleyes:.

Drove it the 130 miles home without issues, no smoking, no over-heating. The next day went to work and on the way home it developed a coolant leak. Turned out the timing cover was leaking pretty strong. I just changed the timing cover gasket, oil pump gears, timing chain, and oil pan gasket.

After priming the engine with fuel pump fuse out, the oil pressure light went out after the fourth 12 second dry crank. Started it up and all was fine up until the engine warms up. At idle it will give the oil pressure light for 3-4 seconds and go away; it never comes on if i blip the throttle or hold at 1500+ rpm.

What gives? Do I need to drop the oil pan and check the pickup tube? I bought a oil pickup o-ring but failed to replace it on re-assembly. Could that be the issue?

As an aside, it looks like the head gasket has flared again from the over-heating when I discovered the timing cover leak. I'm over-heating again (hit nearly 244 degrees when I shut it down), and there white smoke coming out of tail-pipe. Its too bad since I havent even driven the car much and paid for it as if it was a well-running car.

Yes, the o-ring missing from the pickup tube could cause loss of oil preasure at low rpms. You need to put an oil preasure gauge on it to see exactly what is happening, you also need to put a cooling system preasure tester on it to see where the coolant leak is.
I could be that the coolant is leaking into the oil, which would effect your oil preasure.

I was thinking the same thing about the coolant. Fortunately I already have a cooling pressure tester for finding the timing cover leak.

I also plan on doing a compression test to see what numbers it produces for me. Once I do this I will post findings here.

I would be more concerned with oil preasure than engine compression

There is a oil passage from the timing cover to the block(the oil pump is in the cover), if you over tighten the right side of the cover it's possible to squeeze the gasket partially (or all the way) out resulting in a loss of oil pressure. First time I did a timing cover at the dealer I had no oil pressure, one of the more experienced techs told me that it happens to everyone at least once. I was more careful since then and it's never happened again. IIRC the torque on those bolts is very low, I'm not going to guess at the specific number but I remember being surprised at how low it was (this was after I did the first one and did the cover bolts by "feel" and had the failure)

Did you redo the timing cover gasket or simply loosen the bolts and torque correctly? I torqued the bolts down to I believe the 16-18 ft lbs range.

X2 on the oil psi test, all you know at this point is you ar dipping below 7PSI to turn on the light, and you don't know if you have 50 or 15 at rpm. You'll want to repeat test after any repairs to cover, just to be sure.

So from what I gather, i should worry about the oil pressure prior to diving into the head gasket repair? I plan on getting a mechanical gauge to figure out what the oil pressure is.

Yes, see https://landroverforums.com/forum/di...estions-46975/

Oil PSI can be resolved without driving or heating up to much. Then on to the HGs.

Re-did the gasket, what happens is that the gasket gets squeezed and loosening and re-tightening usually ends up making the situation worse. Did you happen to inspect the oil pump when you had the cover off? These pumps have a tendency to crack and that will also lower your oil pressure. 17 ft lb is the proper torque so I think that this scenario doesn't apply in your case.