[Orion]

I'll keep it as brief as I can...

My old man came up today in one of his (52 reg) Freelanders. We went out for dinner and I noticed that he was having real trouble demisting the windscreen.

Long story short, I decided when we got back to give the car a shake-down, as I know how crap he is at maintenance.

The coolant header tank was empty. I refilled and bled it, and in all, the car took 3 litres of coolant. He does not know over what time the car lost that amount.

What I noticed is that the engine does not have the new green inlet manifold gasket. My question is - are Land Rover still fitting the old ones? It just seems a bit suspicious as the car has done over 30,000 miles, and that's when the old ones fail...

 

[Dave turbo]

It would shed some new light on why Freelander owners were making a fuss on Watchdog, if the engines are not upto Rovers K-series specs updates. As Rover don't actually make the engines, Power train do!!

I wouldn't have thought a car at that age would have had the better inlet gasket - does anyone know if/when these were revised and fitted at new engine build stage?

Also could the heater matrix have a leak as that would cause misting of the windows!?!?

Also if your dad doesn't want to become a HGF statistic, suggest to him that he should carry out the weekly maintenance checks as described in the Owner's Handbook.

Also it would be good to know if Freelanders still have the plastic dowels, as I did hear about someone replacing broken plastic dowels with plastic ones!!! :doh:

 

[Guest]

Could the cscreen misting just be because the heater is not working (and so not producing the hot air needed to demist)?

As an aside, nothing beats aircon for clearing screens - warm, DRY air does the biz in seconds.

 

[Orion]

Cheers Dave - I wasn't really sure whether they were including all of the service updates. Probably not, by the look of things. Still, it is only a year old or so - I'm surprised that the older-type gasket has been used as that has been around for at least two years.

I've advised him to keep an eye on it over the next week and to tell me if the level drops, (sudden drop=bubble in the system working its way out; gradual drop=probable gasket failure).

Richard - the heater was blowing hot-ish air, but not enough. That's what made me check in the first place. He also ran a Cabrio for about 80K miles without an oil change, so I figured it might be an idea to give the car a once-over!

Thanks for the replys, guys! :beer2:

 

[1796cc GTi Se]

There is also a problem with the thermostats on the 1.8k freelanders (early one's) afaik it should be changed to a remote unit. As to wheter your dad's is affected by this im not sure

 

[MiniMan1275]

Any sugestions for a source on the remote thermoststs?

I race a 1.8K front engined, rear radiatored motor and am worried about the thermal shock of the cold water hitting the engine when the thermostat opens (which is in the 'cold' side of the water system). I would prefer a remote setup.

Giles