Good idea on the metal Tee pieces. Something to look into when I've got the hoses off.
Don't remember my plastic Tee as being that thick on the sidewalls but it was about a decade ago that I fitted the hoses so they are probably due for a change anyway. Got a nasty feeling that the "whole engine" hose set I bought shortly after purchasing the car might have been Britpart in a plain bag. Have since been told that the spring clip types are better on plastic as they, supposedly, have effectively constant clamp pressure despite any thermal shifts of the plastic.
That Tee isn't something I'd fabricate. More trouble than its worth to do it right unless totally unobtanium. Its taken a few years but I'm finally learning that just because you could doesn't mean you should.
Clive
Great. Going in via the engine radiator side sounds like the best plan it I do confirm that its an oil cooler leak and not something totally outlandish.
Need to change the top hose assembly anyway as my stubborn cool down water leak eventually turned out to be from the top T piece connection. Got the short trip timing just right about 3 weeks back and it was lots more enthusiastic than usual with visible leakage from the smallest pipe at the T. Screwdriver tight on the jubilee clips obviously wasn't enough so they got a socket spanner heave. Which I seriously didn't like on plastic. But leak is now back to a couple of itty bitty drips at worst. Always felt that that new hose set was touch slack on the pipes.
Clive
Thanks. Brake cleaner sounds a good idea but is it paint safe? Back in the day we used to use cheap cellulose thinners!
Naturally I haven't got any in stock. Guess I'll wait for another super warm day, gunk'n water it down then tape a bit of cardboard, white painted hardboard or whatever onto the panel to collect the spray.
I guess its just me but I never seem to think in terms of looking for leaks, sprays et al real time with things running. Always want to try and trace the path afterwards with everything stopped and cooled down.
Clive
Thanks for the help folks.
The fundamental problem is that all the bits and joints I can see on both oil coolers are clean and oil free save for the very small misting deposit on the top drivers side of the transmission cooler. I really need to get better visibility of things around the coolers so I've got a decent chance of figuring out where the leak is coming from. Stripping out the air conditioning condenser will give me all the visibility I need but de-gassing and re-gassing is a problem right now as my usual mobile air con service gal is obviously not working at the moment.
The radiator/cooler/condenser pack side of the drivers side metal panel is sufficiently oil wetted for it to run down and collect on the radiator bottom corner. The start of the wetted area looks reasonably consistent with a pinhole leak on the transmission oil cooler possibly just at the joint of the core and end cover or, more likely, an inch or two from the end towards the middle of the cooler. Just far enough in not to be visible. If it were at the end cover I'd expect a bit of "up-spray" to be visible.
Can't seem to get a decent run in with my fibre optic "borescope" camera either. But, to be honest, I'm pretty much pants at driving and interpreting the image from that thing. Despite being cheapy LiDL it works well. But most of the time I just wish I could figure out what its seeing.
Clive
Rob
My car is a V8 4.0 HSE model year 2000.
Went out for another look as its not so bright outside today which makes it a lot easier for me to see things from underneath. I can now confirm that all the unions on both engine and transmission oil coolers have no leaks. Nothing from the ends of the coolers either. All I can see without pulling everything off is a very light dusting of dark oil on the just visible recess at top driver side of the transmission radiator. Clearly now't to do with the oil I'm seeing.
That is collecting all over the inside of the metal panel on the drivers side outboard of the radiators et al and running down to make the bottom of the radiator wet in that corner. The actual oil wetted area on the metal panel starts about level with the fan spindles which I feel to be consistent with spray from a leak at the bottom of the transmission cooler at the end plate joint or close to it. But I can't see any oil evidence elsewhere. Generally its all remarkably clean under the front of the car. not perfect, there is a touch of oil around, but weeps / oil dampness not leaks.
Clive
Hi Rob
Thanks for that. Your count on those nylon retainers is about the same as mine so 20 on my next order. 20 years is a good life. The frustration factor when one gives up is about a million times greater than the cost. Annoying that the ones I rescued from my Lancia Beta HPE are bigger, I guess 35 years isn't long enough to marinate into something useful! As its only one right now I can always make another if I absolutely have to. Bitchy job. Hate machining nylon.
Colour looks as if it might actually be more black engine oil than transmission red but not really enough to be sure of the origin. Yet! Mostly its just dirty. At least if it is the engine one I only have to take out one reducing the risk of lunching the threads on the alloy radiator stubs. Absolutely not among my favourite playtime toys. But if it is engine I'd have expected the evidence to start higher up. Shoulda taken pictures when I had the aircon condenser out so I'd know what I'm looking for.
Clive
A film of oil is collecting around the bottom drivers side corner of the radiator and over the connecting pipe from the thermostat. With the grill off it can be seen extending up the sheet metal side cover for the radiators assembly to around half way up the fans.
I reckon the most likely source is the transmission oil cooler.
Whats the best way to get at things so I can see if the leak is on the radiator itself, connection or pipe. RAVE implies that you can see straight in once the grill is off but I'm blowed if I can see the source. Be nice if it were just the O ring seal but that is probably way too optimistic. If I do have to change the cooler is it a drain the transmission job or can it be done with minimal oil loss by setting the car nose up so only the cooler contents escape and topping up the transmission afterwards?
If it is the cooler which brand to choose? LR Direct have Britpart £100, Allmakes £150, Land Rover £250 approximately.
On a related note does anyone have a feel for how many of those nylon nut thingies that take the grill fixing screws are used on the P38. Part CZK3264L. I need new ones for the grill but, at 20p each, its awfully tempting to get a decent bunch for stock. All the suppliers say used in various places but give no idea how many or how various. Got a thing about not reusing over age plastic stuff if at all possible. £10 or £20 worth on top of my next parts order is hardly going to break the bank but no point in getting 3 cars worth!
Clive
Wow! Super job Marty.
Now I have an acute case of the wants. Just when I had finally convinced myself that I don't really need a screen display too!
Clive
To be fair Screwfix have had the click'n collect business pretty sorted for some time. About the only change seems to be that you now wait outside and the collection pile is inside the front door rather than out back of the counter. Never known Halfords to actually have their act together in any sorted way. My experience has always been that if you can't find what you want on the shelves yourself its down to picking the least dozy looking floor guy or gal.
Opie oils keep insisting they are managing close to normal deliveries so I guess I'd go with them. I just wish they'd tone down the marketing E-Mail frequency.
Currently I'm playing motorbikes between gardening. A friend inherited an BMW R75/7 from a mate of his who had been sort of doing it up over the last decade. Now it sits on my lift whilst I figure out what bits got thrown away, what bits are wrong etc so we can sell it. Motorworks are hitting pretty much normal delivery times which is good as I have around £500 into it so far and would prefer to get it back sooner rather than later. Something of a revision course in how much I hate BMWs. "A cross between a Volkswagon and a motorcycle and an insult to both." I say the 350,000 home serviced miles or so between 2 Rs and 2 Ks makes for an honest and accurate opinion.
Was supposed to be getting on with fitting an electric waterpump and car alternator to the Norton once the planting season was done. Then that BMW arrived.
At least I seem to have pretty much sorted the cool down water leak on the P38.
Clive
One of my old SAAB 900 combi suffered from serious water retention issues, eventually traced to blocked drain holes. Like squidge out water when you stepped in level, sometimes actual shallow puddles if parked at a suitable angle.
I stripped the carpets out, gave them a good shampoo by hand with 1000 and 1 or similar (hey they were already saturated) and put them outside every sunny day for a month or so. Which dried them out. Basically practice for the potato harvesting season!
These days I wonder what would happen if you took them out and gave them a really good go-over with one of the vacuum cleaner type carpet washing systems. As I understand it they leave your house carpets pretty much dry when you have finished.
Helped that daily transport was a motorcycle so could arrange to do very few miles sans carpets.
Clive
I fitted "OEM" Boge dampers with the correct Land Rover part numbers on the box to mine not that many miles after a bought it as one of the originals was weeping a touch of oil. As I recall it the old, original looking, dampers were still pretty much OK after maybe 75,000 miles. Unfortunately the damper replacement is about the only thing I haven't noted in my service records so I don't know the exact mileage. The new ones were, obviously, a bit better but it certainly wasn't the usual completely knackered to nice new improvement.
About 15,000 miles later it was wobbling around in a near dangerous manner with serious directional stability issues. Despite replacing all the ball joints, pivots, and bushes. I mean it couldn't be the dampers clapping out that fast. Could it! It was!
£350 for four new Bilstein dampers and a steering damper from Paddock Spares later its behaving itself again. The ride is a bit firmer, very much so for the first few hundred miles, but now they are settled in its very "road biased" in nature. About twice the cost of Monroe at Paddock prices but you can pay rather more.
I'm inclined to think that Boge quality isn't what it once was. My boxes said made in Spain.
Clive
Sloth
Have you seen this blog reference to gearbox control with an M57 which just popped up on the facebook side
Clearly the author never really resolved the problem but looks like there is a fair bit of data there which should help in getting something that works, albeit imperfectly.
Also a little bit on getting the HEVAC going too, click a link on the right hand side.
Clive
Took a break from weeding the veggie plot to slide under the front for yet another look for my cool down water leak. A minimum distance run up to the shops on Wednesday barely got the car warmed up, perhaps 200 yards with the thermostat open, so the overnight leak was pretty much maximum territory marking level. Was hopeful that this might finally leave enough evidence to pin point the source.
Unfortunately not. Clear evidence of coolant collecting on the clip holding together the two smaller hoses to the thermostat before running down the front one and dripping off the stat itself. I'm inclined to think that its actually from the upper end of that hose or from the three way joint itself as there seems to be some dried out coolant residue on the hose at the upper end but its not wet and the UV torch doesn't show dye traces.
I'm tempted to modify the old pressure cap with a schrader valve so I can put 10 psi on a cold engine to see if that makes enough of a leak to trace.
Or maybe just say stuffitt and change the top hose assembly again. But it got a new set shortly after I bought it and all looks good. Dunno if it was a BritPart set or not tho'. Crack in the three way plastic joint could sort of explain whats happening tho' if the radweld in the system is closing the hole when hot but then being dislodged when the plastic moves on cool down. Hate running with radweld in the system but was getting desperate.
Suppose I could just carve a billet three way from alloy or pull a T in a piece of steel tube, weld a stub on and track down something to roll the ends. Then I'd know the T wouldn't leak.
Clive
Nice to hear from you again Marty. Hafta admit I was beginning to get touch worried!
Your boss sure gets his moneys worth out of you. Don't envy your job. Week or fortnight military equipment and research trials about once a year with a month or two to prepare were quite enough for me thank you. The idea of unloading at -21C makes moaning about 3 AM on a windy mid-winter airfield or test range with (apparently) nothing between me and the North Pole except the odd stray reindeer sound more than little wimpy!
Best regards
Clive
Thats the way to do it.
Gut everything engine side, manual box so you don't have to sort the engine / autobox interface complications needed to get a smooth gear change and a barebones BECM replacement. Just enough to run essential functions. Presumably no over-sophisticated alarm & immobiliser crap.
Simples, well relatively but still shedloads of work.
Clive
I fitted a Maplin kit shortly after getting the car. Put the sensors in a row down the middle of the bumper to be sure that there were no issues with scattering off nearby parts of the car. A friend decided to go all neat with his installation and put the sensors under the bumper so the back face of the bumper was a little behind the sensor. To his surprise and my non surprise the darn things saw the bumper and just wailed all the time. Ended up making little pods for them with short shielding lips. Many of the cheap aftermarket sensors are partially recessed to avoid similar problems.
Naturally another mate did a similar just below and behind the bumper installation with a different kit on a different vehicle with no problems.
I ran the sensor wires up through the long tailed "grommet" running up through the floor close to the right hand rear lights. Its a bit of a squeeze and you have to take the grommet out so it hangs down below the car. I taped my wires together in a staggered arrangement so only one plug was going through the grommet at a time. Put one section of my glass fibre rod cable puller thingies through first, taped the end of the wire bundle to it and just pulled them through. I reckon the larger diameter of the glass fibre rod as compared to string or wire helps open the grommet so the first plug goes through easier. Waving 3 ft of rod around under the car got interesting!
Best to get the back end nicely up in the air for this job. Theoretically it could be done by just pumping the suspension up into high mode but I reckon you'd need more than the standard complement of joints in your arms to manipulate things.
My control box lives in the rear light access area. Added a teeny toggle switch on a small bracket so I can turn the beast off if it has a meltdown.
Clive
If you are that forgetful its probably worth signing up for automatic notifications about MoT, Tax et al. At least you get a nice letter from DVLA about 3 weeks before your tax is due. Mine turned up around 7 th Feb and got paid online last weeks "finance evening". I do tend to overlook these things so have a pretty rigid methodology. Which doesn't mean piling stuff up on the windowsill!
All written down on the house and workshop calendars. Maybe its time for a few more baby steps into the 21 st century by putting reminders on the phone too!
Clive
Given the colossal number of parts, part numbers, suppliers, suppliers references and cross references folk like ECP have to deal with I'm surprised this sort of thing doesn't happen a lot more often. Especially when half the part manufacturers are just re-boxing and rebranding a generic pattern part from a supplier who, hopefully, has copied the OEM part properly before ordering in from the China Division of "CheapAsChips Inc".
Clive
Graph on page 5 of this link https://www.widman.biz/uploads/Transaxle_oil.pdf shows very little difference in dynamic viscosity for 75W-90 and 75W-140 over normal temperature ranges.
Graph and table here https://wiki.anton-paar.com/en/gear-oil/ for the fully synthetic version of 75W-140.
Page 10 of the first link https://www.widman.biz/uploads/Transaxle_oil.pdf shows a comparison between synthetic and ordinary 75W-90 dynamic viscosity. Synthetic is, as is often the case a little thinner.
However dynamic viscosity is probably not the best measure of what is actually happening in a differential as what happens to an oil film under load can be quite different between differently made oils. For sure the 75W-140 will be a better oil than what was originally specified. The wider range simply means that viscosity holds up better with increasing temperature. 75W specification is the viscosity at 0°F (-18°C), the 90 and 140 numbers give viscosity at 212°F (100°C) which are both thinner than 75 at 0°F (-18°C). Far more information that you want here https://www.substech.com/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=gear_oils , click the links at your own risk! You may miss dinner.
Frankly I'd not worry. Gear oil viscosities are much less than you'd expect from experience with single weight engine oils. Found that out way back giving my Norton Commander its first home service as the book called out SAE 140 gear oil for the gearbox. I was expecting to need a spoon but it just poured!
Clive
I was taught to leave in D with foot on brake for short stop, select neutral for red lights and similar. But that was on an Austin A60 with BorgWarner three speed and steering column selector.
I still think its worth learning to drive a manual, if only just in case. If nothing else it forces a much better understanding of whats actually going on dynamically when driving.
Folk I've ridden with who have only driven automatics often lack feel for the natural flow of traffic.
Then there is herladyship, the girl who re-defined the concept of MadameLeadfoot.
Allegedly passed her test on a manual but recent experience riding with her in a Mini Cooper showed serious clutch pedal operation problems coupled to a near total inability to judge and anticipate traffic movements. Thirty miles on quiet roads and my nerves were shattered. Back in an auto JCW Mini now thank god. In retrospect the experience explains a lot about her L322 = Hayabusa (or maybe cruise missile) driving style. No wonder the thing broke up on her. As the original laid-back-Larry who goes with the flow it irritates her no end that my normal road time over distance is as quick, or quicker, than hers. Motorways being different as she still figures blondes get to talk their way out of speeding tickets! 120 mph on a GSXR 1100 was pushing the envelope tho'.
Clive