How to Avoid Overheating Your Vehicle

With the hotter weather coming up we can have some awful overheating problems happen.

In particular, the TDV6 engines in Discovery 3, Discovery 4, and Range Rover Sport have a plastic water outlet in the valley of the engine. The hot coolant water comes out of the engine, and into the top radiator hose through this spout.

We have had several of these leak on the join between the two halves of the unit, and we have been throwing this in with our timing belt service at 168,000 km. It’s a cheap $50ish part, and while you have the whole top and front off the the engine, it takes no labour at all to change it.

However, we have had a Discovery 3, 2.7 litre TDV6 made in 2008, with 100,000 km on it, come in this week having split the water outlet on the join enough to blow most of the coolant out, and then overheat the engine. Overheats are never good on modern alloy head engines – the heads warp and crack, and always need to be replaced with new heads. The bottom of the engine is also a question as well, and often the best course of action is to overhaul the whole engine. This is very costly, do not be surprised if it costs well in excess of $10,000. We do not want this to happen.

So, I’m going to start badgering my customers to replace this annoying black bit of plastic every second major service (every 4th is the cam belt service and we do it at that time anyway). This brings it to every 96,000 km. It’s a $120 ish part, but as you can see in the picture it’s quite a complex area on the engine, so there would be 3 hours labour to change it on its own. If we strike any job that needs the valley stripped out, we will do this job at the same time to get some cost savings.

We can get you in any time to do this job for you.