A little thread necromancy here.... But one of my searches brought up this thread and I wanted to add some info I found and verified. This LR4 thread indicated that contrary to shop and thus the dealer, the AC expansion valve is quite east to access and replace in the LR3/4. And indeed it is.

https://landroverforums.com/forum/lr...s-easy-116374/

I have a left hand drive NA 2006 and the pic in the tread above looks the same as mine. From my driver side foot well I could look way behind the center dash and sure thing, it was right there wrapped in some black foam stuff. I will actually replace mine tomorrow. But it looks very straight forward and it looks like little, if anything, needs to come out.

In my case I had a major leak it seems so I am taking the opportunity to replace all sorta of bits. The high and low valve stems (one had a tiny leak), the pressure sensor/switch (just because). New dryer will go in too although I am temped to replace the entire condenser. Will do if it is leaking, first batch of refrigerant will have leak dye. But one issue I have always had even with perfect pressure readings was a lack of AC at idle. It was always very weak, would even cut out on really hot days. I do photography and leave my truck running so it was never fun getting into a hot humid truck until I started driving again. So may as well replace it even though they do not fail often. I will also replace the numerous o-rings at connections, at least all I can get at.

 

Update - as shown above in an LR4, you can indeed remove it from below. I did mine today. Half hour is about right, maybe more if you spent most of the time removing the tar-like covering that they wrapped the thing in. I assume for sound deadening? There are two long Allen head bolts that come out then you just carefully bend the line a little back. You will need an assortment of Allen tool though, space is limited and you may have to switch things up to get them out. One tip I can share is that if you lay on your black you can easily get your right hand up in there to pull the lines and replace the o-rings. Both hands tho, will never happen. I had started by laying on my side and using my left hand. That worked to get started and remove the tar covering. make sure you use PAG oil on the new o-rings when putting it back together. Overall not difficult, just a pain because of the limited space. But I would rather have done it this way than remove the entire dash. It may even be possible to remove the core from underneath but I did not spend a lot of time considering it.