Yesterday we were driving back from a coulpe days vacation. We were about 3 hours into our 5 hour drive back home. I noticed the RR was struggling to maintain 70MPH. The temperature started increasing to the point where it was just below the red mark. I had to drive the car about 20 miles in this condition. During that time the car would not go over 55 MPH, it struggled going up hills and there was noice that seemed like it was coming from the transmission. When we finally made it to a place where we could pull over, we coasted into a gas station where the RR died. The RR would not start again. I checked under the hood and the coolant resovoir was just about empty.

Thanks for your help...

Bill

 

low coolant fried head gasket may restart when cold if crank sensor

 

I think its a head gasket you can get a tester at the auto store for $50.00 it will prove that combustion gasses are in the coolant.

 

Excellent advice. Napa sells it as a "Block Test" kit. Uses blue dye and a special device that will turn yellow if combustion gasses are present in the coolant. It really does work and should help give you some direction as to where to go with it.

 

The dealer has had the vehicle for 3 days. They replaced the radiator and refilled the coolant. When they restarted the car the mechanic reported hearing noise from the motor. They did a wet and dry leak down test today and reported problems with the #8 cylinder. When i bought the RR last November i also purchased a 4 year 50K miles extended warranty as the regular warranty had just expired. The dealer reported today the warranty folks were not going to cover the motor because the vehicle overheated...I will have a conversation with them tomorrow. Interesting thing is the car temp gauge never made it to the red and at no point did any warning lights come on. I am very frustrated right now!!!!

 

IMHO if you have the Bosch based engine computer it delivers a constant mid point reading on the temp gauge between "X" and "Y" temp, and only when well above "Y" does it begin to move. It is not linear. Many owners have opted to install a scan gauge or Ultra Gauge to see the temps in digital fashion rather than depend on the optimistic meter. You may have been running at what people would consider very elevated temp for quite some time, and now it finally moved to the upper end of the scale.

On the style Rovers that use a coolant sensor and a separate temp gauge sender, it is a similar problem, it is designed to have a slow response, my D1 will read just above midpoint, but it is already 236F at that point on the scanner.



If the shop will first commit to what is a too hot temperature, and then If the shop was to cover the rad somewhat and cause the temps to get back to where you were on the gauge, you might find you were above their threshold. So that the first failure was a misreading gauge, which lead to overheat, as you did not see any reason to suspect a problem. Don't try that at home kids, it is a sure way to fry the head gasket or worse.

I would suspect that the warranty may not be honored. Too much fine print by legal beagles.

 

five bucks says the limp home light and the other warning messages came on but were ignored. why didn't you call roadside immediately. sorry but running on twenty miles cooked the motor. they won't cover the cost of the engine because of customer neglect. check the fine print, if you drive this vehicle while overheated you are responsible for the damage.

 

Uggghh I'm not saying anything....

Hows things going Rovinforlife?? Thought you gave up on us...

 

Do you want me to email you the address where you can send the five bucks? Not one warning light came on! Not what i would expect from a $85K vehicle. I guess the lack of warning lights is somewhat common with the RRs as my wife did some research and found many RR owners that experienced similar situations to ours.
We checked the phone records (my wife started calling emergency services right away) and mileage marker and calculated it was actually 11 miles and less than 15 minutes from the time the car started acting up until we stopped.

As for why we didn't pull over right away...this was very late at night on narrow back country roads with no shoulders...I wasn't about to put my family at risk of being rear ended by another vehicle.


To everyone who replied....thanks for the input. I am taking the RR to another shop to have the work done and hopefully it will be back up and running in 2 weeks.