Here at the green oval museum and house of pain my 06 L322 gave me a wonderful scare today when under medium acceleration it made Greta Thunberg weep and post derogative statements, the amount of smoke that came from my tailpipe was like I was rolling coal or fogging entire neighborhoods for the tsetse fly.

The smoke was a whiteish grey and I immediately feared it was head gasket related. The morning started with a low battery condition as we had a -20 night. Can't say for sure but the cold likley contributed to what turned out to be a stuck/frozen PCV valve. Luckily I had a spare from the LR collection and a quick swap and some time to burn off the polluted Intake and exhaust system and the rig is back to normal and back in favour.

After checking oil and coolant and finding no cross contamination I took apart the limited PCV system and the hose at the TB was soaked with oil. The loaner PCV went on and the hoses were cleaned with the TB getting a quick clean out with some carb cleaner spray.

Truck fired up beautifully and idled smoothly. I hadn't noticed any rough or lumpy idle previously. What I did realize were signs of the failing PCV I hadn't acted on. Working remotely I only drive the thing every few days now so I kept forgetting to check out why it had a couple of performance issues that I would forget about until the next time I drove it.
- High slightly prolonged engine rev at start up, Now it's back to a nice peacfeul calm start.
- One or two hard starts where now it fires immediately.
- Throttle had been feeling a little sluggish in recent days where I had attributed it to new winter boots I was wearing.

Hoping my scare and explanation might help others on a quick easy diagnosis.
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I saw the same thing and I had it diagnosed at a 3rd party shop as a PCV problem which was cleaned out. It was ok for a few weeks then it came back again. I took it to a dealer when I couldn't stand the embarrassment of the huge plume of smoke upon hard acceleration anymore, so I took it to a Landrover service department where they told me it needed a new engine! This engine has about 80,000 miles on it, does not normally smoke, doesn't lose oil, doesn't have any engine knocks, there is no oil in the coolant, and it sounds normal. When I pressured the service department on how they came to that $29,000 conclusion, they had no metrics, no data to back up their assertion. I would have at least expected them to run a compression check on each cylinder. When I return to the dealer to fix another issue that, I have asked them to justify their decision. We'll see...

In the meantime, I'm going somewhere else to get a second opinion. Has anyone else besides @Lotus7 seen this? When I say it's spewing a cloud, think cars scattering behind me in panic since they can't see anything. It's really bad.

 

@Lotus7 - love your username, I presume that is what you drive when not driving your LR3?

Here is mine...

 

This is an update. The second opinion is that I don't need to spend $29K on a new engine - $1.1K charge to replace a valve cover + a PVC kit should fix it. It remains to be seen if this is the final fix, but I like working with mechanics who don't suggest quick fixes, such as a new engine.

 

That seems rather steep a price for a simple job. Are there any independents you can find in your area if you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself? It's certainly better than the replacement cost however their initial assessment would make me steer well clear of those people!

 

Yes mine is a 67 Frankenstein, heavily modified from it's original form and since I got a hold of the poor thing.

 

I thought so too. I replaced both valve covers on my 1991 GMC truck and it cost me about $150 and about 3 hours of work, but then the amount of plumbing is a fraction of the landrover. The quote I'd gotten from the dealer was $1500 for the LR4 valve cover replacement (only 1, not 2). I guess it's more involved......