Strange water problem - water from intake into cylinders?
 

Hi gang,

This is my second Disco, my first was a D1. The first one was a wicked curse I couldn't wait to get rid of, but as you can see - I've been drawn back!

I bought this truck - a 2000 DII auto - back in February. The P.O. said water came out the sides of the engine when you put water in it. Always up for a challenge, I bought it. It sat behind my garage this entire time and I finally had the time to pop one of the heads off to have a look-see. BTW: What was Land Rover THINKING by putting everything behind the intake?!?!

A quick backstory: As soon as I got it home back in February, I stuck a battery in it, topped off the water reservoir and spun it over. When I did, a very strong pulsing stream shot out of each side of the engine underneath the exhaust manifolds. It didn't even try to start.

It's cold.

There's water everywhere.

I'm going in where it's warm.

Fast forward to this weekend and I've got 'er torn down. Strangely, when I pulled the upper intake off, about two or three cups of water poured out of it. Hmm. Water doesn't flow through the upper intake.

I pulled the driver's head off and the gasket has lost the outer layers of material on each side in the area between the cylinder wall and the outside of the block. Hmm. Ok, if water's in the combustion chamber, on the squish stroke here's where it would exit.

No signs of overheating (that I can see), just a strange amount of water in the intake system. The sleeves are all up high and tight, literally ZERO cylinder wear and the engine is quite clean for having 175k miles on the chassis. Methinks it's been replaced.

So, the question is: Where could water enter the intake system with enough volume to leave behind a few cups and shoot out a dramatic amount on each squish stroke?

If there is no correct answer to that, the only theory we've been able to come up with is someone overheard the "slowly suck in water to clean carbon" trick and heard "slowly" as "turn the hose on full blast" and "suck" as "stick the hose right down the throttle body"

I haven't had time to sit down and investigate the intake yet, but it's on my list. Just a strange situation I thought I'd run across the Rover Gurus.

Just sounds like bad head gaskets to me.

Well, normally I would just pass it off as a blown head gasket, but the two center cylinders on the driver's side were blown from the cylinder out and the nearest water passages are on opposite ends of the head.

Maybe I'm over thinking things, but I'm just glad the bottom end looks A-OK :)

Before you put new head gaskets on this engine. Turn the crank and check each piston at TDC . Make sure they are all the same hight. You might have a bent rod with that much water in there!
The water in the intake is from the bad cylinders, cam overlap, intake and exhaust open at the same time.

Yes it sounds like the cylinder you are speaking of might have been hydrolocked. Or whatever it is called when a rod gets bent when there is an (non compressible) fluid in the cylinder. When I have my heads off my cylinders were solid no rocking.