In your PM you talk about the brush bristles on the fan shroud rubbing.

yes, this will stop the motor from spinning. Driver side engine mount is toast.

change the mount or remove the fan, remove the shroud. Take strip of brush bristle off, reinstall everything without brush bristle strip.

fan should work fine.

 

Thank you once again!

 

I had a few coolant leaks that I was putting off running down, then a huge coolant failure with a huge amount of steam. Luckily I was able to pull off safely and kill the engine before any damage to the head gaskets. I had replace the rear cross over back in 2022, but OEM wasn't available at the time. I figured it was just that part that failed.

What a journey, sure enough the rear crossover failed so bad. While I was in there I checked the front crossovers that were replaced prior to my ownership. In 2022 they were good so I left them alone. In 2025 the "new design" lower front crossover left its top and the o-ring in the block. Turns out there is an official JLR aluminum set for those guys now!? They cost a fortune, but I now have piece of mind there. I buttoned everything up, vacuum filled the coolant and couldn't get a mile down the road before I was overheating again. Turns out it was the fan, and the blown rear crossover was likely just a symptom of an overheating system due to a non functioning fan. It's tough when the easiest to access part fails and explodes parts that are infinity harder to get to!

I may need to chase down the engine mount replacement. Will the foot on brake revving trick reveal a bad driver's side mount or only the passenger side? The old fan seem to make a "rubbing on bristles" sound if I rotated it one way, but not the other. Could have been the sound of the clutch though I guess, or something else. Replacing those mounts doesn't seem too terrible, but I'd love to get a better diagnosis before burning another Saturday.

 

OP here, still sorting mine out, but my fan only makes the “rubbing on bristles” sound when turning counter to normal rotation (clockwise when looking at it from the front of vehicle).

I’m going to try to remove bristles from shroud first, looks like DIY job. Silly question- looks like I have to disconnect some parts to get in there, some of them cooling system (YouTube videos watched). Does the cooling system have to be vacuum filled/bled once everything put back together? Mind you, not doing anything to cooling system other than disconnecting the minimal parts needed to get fan shroud access.

May try to DIY the motor mount as well, but the videos I saw online where you jack up motor with 2x8 under oil pan seem to have disappeared. Anyone have a guide or video?

 

You shouldn't need to disconnect anything with coolant in it to remove the shroud, at least the top portion. There is a coolant line that lies on top, just use a zip tie to get that out of the way. The air plenum that connects to the right and left air filters has a vent hose that connects to the bottom driver's side of the plenum and there's no coolant in that either. Note, when reassembling, it is A LOT easier to connect that vent tube on the bottom of the plenum BEFORE you get the plenum all hose clamped into place. If you do end up disconnecting something with coolant in it, I believe you may need to vacuum fill to avoid the risk of any air gaps in the system. Everyone talks about how easy the vacuum filling is, and they are right, but it does have a bit of a learning curve and as a YouTube weekend mechanic, I find it stressful. If you do it, just make sure you follow the startup procedures and if you don't get hot air, then you e got air in the system and you'll need to drain and do it again. In those cases it's fine to reuse the coolant as long as you've drained it into a clean pan.

I'm not sure but I assume you have to remove the fan in order to remove the bottom of the shroud. If you do this you'll need a 36 mm fan wench, in addition I used a universal pulley holder to hold the pulley hub in place instead of the larger fan wrench that is most often recommended. It worked really well. Remember, if you have an SCV6 to loosen the fan nut turn it towards the passenger side. It can be quite tight sometimes.

I've seen a couple of YouTube clips about the engine mounts but I'm not sure any that are LR4 specific. If you find a good one post it here.

 

Thanks to Abran for all of the advice. Brought it back to shop to have fan shroud brush/bristles removed and possible motor mount replacement. He took off fan to get bristles out, reinstalled it and everything else works great. He did not replace motor mounts. Fan runs smoothly and continuously now.

Lesson learned… you could barely hear bristles rubbing when spinning the fan backward and no sound when spinning forward. I really did not feel any resistance when manually turning fan. When car first started the fan initially spun fine, but once engine settled down from initial start fan turned very slowly. I did not think it was a simple bristle problem, but sure enough it was. If I had to do it again if I needed to replace water pump or fan in another LR4 I might just have them remove fan shroud brush/bristles while in there.

 

Well, guess I responded too soon. Drove the truck to and from work (8 miles) and it didn't overheat, but quickly got over halfway on the temp gauge and when I shut it off the engine was smoking. No coolant leak/loss, fan is working fine now.

I guess it could be a water pump? I'm probably going to trade it in for a Subaru for my daughter unless someone has any Hail May advice.

 

@honolulugator Define smoking,sounds like a coolant leak, you can not tell if you have lost coolant until the engine as cooled down completely.

But a small amount of coolant on a hot engine can generate a lot of steam

 

Smoking- when I stop and open engine bay, smoke/steam coming off engine, primarily on passenger side and behind engine. Coolant level does not appear to be dropping, but am only driving limited distances.

 

You have a coolant leak back there, hose, cross over pipe something is leaking coolant, it may be hitting the exhaust. If you look there is a coolant pipe at the rear of teh engine on the passenger side with a bleeder. My bet is the leak is right there.