Rover V8 - Critical engine failure from composite valley gasket

I'm bringing this very important failure to all those that have or about to embark on a journey to rebuild their Rover V8's, it relates to the composite type valley gasket, in other words the one that has the black rubber finishing as per the pic below.

What if the above valley gasket ended up looking like the one below after a mere 5 months and 8000km's in operation following a full engine rebuild.

More...

Not pictured here is the oil pick up which completely blocked up, the result was oil starvation and caused severe damage to camshaft and hydraulic lifters.
The rest of the engine was saved as it was shut down immediately due to a flickering oil light.

The 2nd camshaft (with yellow circles) was the original Land Rover part and was as new when the motor was rebuilt, the camshaft to the top of the picture is the new replacement.

Compare the two and you can see just how severe the damage is.

Camshaft and hydraulic failure picked after removing sump to investigate possible oil pump failure, the remaining oil in the sump had a silver shimmer which indicated that something was seriously damaged.

So what happened:

Bad part, simple and to the point, brand in this case is not important and that includes genuine.

While I say a bad part is to blame for the above major failure we do need to consider another factor.

Engine oils, I'm a big fan of quality brand oils

Why am I pointing to the engine oil..... but should I.

Today's modern oils have what the industry call "additive package's" to make their oils lubricate and protect our engines better, the problem we have here is that these additives can be quite harmful to old technology parts such as the composite inlet manifold fitted to the Rover V8's.

In theory I'm not blaming the oil, after all good quality oil is important and I'm not about to change that policy

Solution:

Use non composite inlet manifold gasket from a 3.5 V8, yes it is the same port size etc right up to the 4,6

Install as per workshop manual

Non Composite valley gasket.

If gasket is in plastic wrap please remove, its not a sealing agent

Gasket is marked "Front" which must face up and to the front of the engine

If you want it black then use high heat black spray and only do the top (exterior) of the gasket.

You may use a high quality silicon sealant as we do but only around ports and apply to the thickness of lets say cling wrap, in other words very very thin layer and a mere 3 to 5mm in width (Pic to follow)

Brief history:

Engine rebuilt July 2011

Engine failed 3rd December 2011

Engine Oil replaced every 7500km's or sooner depending on condition

The worst part about the above failure is it happened to my very own Range Rover, one of two that I own (Did)

No doubt about it I was not impressed and it "seems" that this has never happened before....yeah right.

The reason for the newer composite gasket is noise suppression, the plain steel type is alot nosier as it transmits through it easier



Range Rover models we repair

Description of the vehicles we take on for repairs:

Range Rover:
Range Rover II (P38) up to current RRIII (L322s aka "Big Body") including Range Rover Sports

We do not repair Range Rover classic's.
We do not answer over seas e-mails which we have been receiving as different markets vary.

We are unable to assist in who can repair the above vehicles we do not take on as we operate independently.

Please also note that we do not provide a phone in technical service

Also note that the info we have gathered is through our own research and hard work and is for our gain, if you are a independent repairer we are unable to assist in any way with repair and urge you to carry out your own research to keep pace with the fast moving motoring industry like we do.

Range Rover P38 accessories booklet for reference only

More to come but just a taster for those who are addicted to the vehicle that brought a new meaning to "Comfort 4X4's" or as most would say "Luxury 4X4's.

This is a scanned original catalog of what "was" available at the time, if you dig deep you may still be able to find the odd "A Bar" (one in stock, rare)

From research there are some bits and pieces still available to buy new like interior wood finish, although aftermarket it does look good and made to a high quality.

Front door wind deflectors no longer available, if you know where we can sourse these please let us know

P38 wind deflectors, only fronts are available.
Great for when its raining and you still like to have the window open a little

More of this catalog to follow soon

Rover V8 engine - updated Oct 2012 (Bottom of page)

Please refer to important update regarding timing chains HERE

We seem to be having a sudden surge of engine rebuilds coming in so I thought for a change we'll snap away and post up some pics for you all too see.

After all we may as well have fun showing you how we go about rebuilding these great engines.
I highly doubt there are other re builders that give attention to detail as we do on these fine V8's.

Every single part is stripped down to as far as we can go including the front timing cover oil pump housing and checking the clearance on the rotor parts, on the cover very few realise there are two oil pressure control plungers that require inspecting, here again O rings are replaced as age without a doubt causes oil leaks on the round inserts that is retained by Circlips.

If your engine is oily up front its a sure sign these O rings have had it along with the front crank seal or possibly by now ALL the gaskets need replacing.

I'm not going into deep detail so I'll just post some pics to show you all how bad these engines get.

If your motor is hitting around the 230 000km or 160 000mile mark and its had some "extended" service oil changes (Overdue) then chances are its going to look like the one below....

There's only one reason why these motors look so bad......bad maintenance and cheap oil, be it by a DIY'er or a independent workshop, now you'll understand why I go on about quality of oil so much....yeah I know I never stop going on about it........it seriously is that important

As we started stripping it was clear all was not well..

High sludge build up like this is a sure sign this motor is well worn.

To aid in preventing this happening we remove the catalytic converters which become blocked up over time and add restriction to the exhaust resulting in severe back pressure, it has to go somewhere and this is where it ends up, past the valve stem seals and back into the engine

But its not the main reason this motor looks so bad, not the worst I've done in the past.

These tappet covers will be cleaned and sand blasted and then sprayed to bring them back up like new again.

Clearly someone was here before us, silicone sealant on a composite gasket and clearly a cheap repair.

In this state we expect the worst and I wasn't wrong.

This is clearly a bad repair gone wrong, if this was a mechanic then his/her certification should be withdrawn. 

More of the red stuff, (cheap junk) it was plastered all over the engine....

Dirty stuff.....not good....note how badly worn the bearing shells are

Despite the bad state of this motor the cross hatching is still very clear with no severe glazing taken place, the block is yet to be measured up to see if a quick light hone with a flex honer will do, my guess is it will be ok to hone without re-sleeving. 

Pistons will be chemically cleaned and inspected, here again it all looks good but the camshaft is no longer usable as 2 lobes are severely worn, new is the way to go along with new Clevitt hydraulic lifters.

Overall condition of pistons shows that compression was good (It sounded willing before stripping), the only issue here is the rings were overwhelmed by the extra oil splashed up by the badly worn main and big end bearings

Severe carbon/sludge build up, yipe nasty cheapo oils and lack of oil changes does this.

according to the engineering company heads are good (valves,  guides and seats) when we stripped off the heads there were signs that the heads had been off previously, I'm now hoping that all is well with the head bolt threads as they were severely over tightened to a point where three bolts snapped on removal but we got them out...ouch and lucky indeed.

Pity I didn't take a snap of this timing cover before it was cleaned, stripped, inspected and cleaned again.

Even inside the oil pump it looked like the pictures above this one and is not normal even on a worn engine

The oil pump rotor and housing passed the clearance check with flying colours which tells me it was replaced at some point.

TIP: If you have low oil pressure don't straight away suspect the oil pump, other factors like worn cam shaft and cam bearings need to be considered, big and main ends will need considering but don't forget the rockers, shafts and hydraulic lifters also play an important part in keeping oil pressure up.

Changing oil before it gets dirty is critical to any engine but so is the quality of the oil..

Another tip: Had a call from a desperate owner who just rebuilt his own engine, after 500km's his oil light flickered on idle, after numerous questions I came upon another important question "Did you replace the timing cover gasket" His Answer "No, I just applied Silicon" need I say more, the failure of oil pressure due to a simple low cost gasket can ruin a rebuilt engine in no time, its one of the many reasons why a engine rebuild should be entrusted to pros like us, on average we recheck everything three times, no chances are taken as alot of time and money goes into rebuilding engines.

I'll also add that rebuilding these engines are not that profitable but we enjoy it all the same.

Anyway.....

Every part of the motors will be cleaned and inspected to like new condition, yes I know I said it before..
Non of our cleaning involves sand or bead blasting apart from the engineering company, we use special chemicals that is safe to use on aluminium and is very effective in removing stubborn carbon.

Another successful engine rebuild buy us here at  "WILLIAMS 4X4"

Rusty water pump impeller means that this motor ran without anti freeze for sometime

Oil leaks everywhere along with red silicone sealant means this motor was worked on before and doubt the attention to detail was lacking it should have received.

Utter mess.....say no more and we'll have this looking like new in and out.

Red silicone on the valley gasket area means somebody was here that didn't have a clue what they were doing, I see alot of this on DIY repairs as owners are to tight fisted to do it correctly

****UPDATE****

First up......Rover V8 timing chains.......

USE ONLY GENUINE LAND ROVER CHAINS.

If you use aftermarket chains you will need to replace after 5000ks, seriously they are that rubbish.

The Aftermarket chains wear so badly fast it starts hitting the timing cover and eating into it.

If it does this long enough it will eat through to the water channel and you will have water in oil mix 

2004 Discovery engine rebuild from 4.0 to 4.6 high compression

The below pic is not from the disco engine but bearings were as pictured below, engine with 106 000 k's.

Cause of wear: Oil pump

Hydraulic liters.

Yes those little round steel tube like parts are vey important in any rebuild.

We only install Clevitt Hydraulic lifters.

White box lifters supplied by various suppliers are not worth touching.

Clevitt Hydraulic lifters are the best, the finished swirl marks on top circled in red is for lifter rotation.

Its important to note that if a new cam is installed then lifters must be replaced, you cannot install new lifters without replacing the cam, both MUST be replaced together at the same time.

Adding lots of oil to the new parts is very important.
Adding so called assembly cam lube (Red) is oddly enough not made by any of the big oil brands so use it if you really must,

Front and rear wheel bearing's

Eventually a batch of wheel bearings have arrived for a new life rolling Range Rovers around town and  country side. Dealer prices on these hub units is around R7900 and that's just plain mad.

At any time we have two front and rear hubs in stock with new bearings pressed in.
If your Range Rover has 160 000km or more its time to replace these hubs, some will argue that this is not true but once you replace the hubs you'll soon understand and agree to feel the difference.
After replacing front and rear hubs on my own P38 it has made a very noticeable difference to fuel economy, performance and overall feel of the vehicle.

We send the hubs to a engineering company for bearing replacement, this company have made up a few special tools to ensure quality replacement and they understand our strict quality requirements, its one of the reasons why we deal with them is because their standards are naturally high.

Once the old bearing is pressed out of the hub, the unit is then sand blasted using glass, cleaned and then a new bearing pressed in, finally a nice coat of gloss black paint is added for protection and even here we don't use cheap paint.

We offer these as a exchange only.
Your hub must be original and no attempt to remove the old bearing.
If your hub is not in original condition we are unable to do a exchange.

Front and rear in stock, see parts section for pricing
NOTE: Hubs are sided (pics of front only)

Refurbed hub

Every corner is sandblasted, rust is a metal destroyer

Even the flange face is sand blasted

New bearing within hub

The final product, spray painted for protection

And another boring picture of a hub

All back together, what a difference

*Previous attempts by customers pressing out old bearings have resulted in the hub unit being warped thereby making the old hub useless as it has been distorted by heat, special jigs have been made up to ensure precise fitment of these bearings which require extreme force to press out and press in new bearings, heat can and does make the steel loose its tension ability and if a bearing is pressed into a de-stressed hub the bearing outer race will soon work loose resulting in premature failure. 

EAS diaphragm

The genuine part (Pic A)

Aluminium retainer ring is there for a reason

 

Our background on pneumatics goes back a long way and we can truly say we are air suspension specialists and proud of it, saving you time and money and hassles in the long run.

Electrical connections

In the above picture the main fuse box power supply cable has been soldered but underneath there are another three BeCM power cables that should also be soldered and under the right seat on the BeCM the connectors there also benefit from re-crimping soldering, the benefits are worth the effort.

In typical fashion all electrical circuits will benefit from a slight tweaking and soldering is one of them.

Crimped joints over time develop tarnish; this tarnish is a typical and natural occurrence with copper and ends up building a resistance to current flow, this restriction to current flow can cause damage to components from overheating as it throttles the circuit of current.

Tarnish can and does cause all manner of odd operations on vehicle from dimly glowing lights to odd operation of complex electronically operated or controlled devices.

The Range Rover is not immune to these problems as age, time and climate all have undesirable affects on these part's and joins and it’s now starting to show up in true old car fashion.

When soldering the lead flows in between the gaps of the wiring and the lug, this in turn produces a clean connection where electricity can now flow without resistance.

If the problem is left for too long the resistance can increase and cause damage in the form of heat on the affected area and load demand where a electrical component requires more current, if the electronic part is starved of sufficient power it too will over load and blow.

So it all has a roll on effect right from the start when the alternator starts to produce power
Even this simple lead from alternator to battery can cause misery with charging.

On many cars you will see additional cables being added and the main area always seems to be earth straps either from chassis to engine or chassis to battery negative but the positive is also at times boosted with more cabling.

Most times if the affected cable is simply removed and the contact area lightly sanded then cable lug soldered it would solve most of the problems, very rarely is the actual cable at fault and is often accused of being the culprit.

Auto electricians do this so you can see what they have done and can justify ripping you off.
In a nut shell soldering joins is a very good action to take but there are procedures to follow before simply grabbing your soldering iron and jamming your cables with solder.

1) Be sure to remove any muck on cables, use a electrical cleaner or if that’s not available carb cleaner or thinners works well.
2) Use a quality ratchet type crimp tool to re crimp joins before soldering.
3) Solder quality is important, the cheaper solders you can get just don’t cut the grade, silver solder is the best if you are unable to get decent normal solder but it comes at high price tag.
4) Small soldering irons are ok for small wire connections but not for the larger lugs, larger 80watt and up soldering irons are expensive but will pay for itself once all the work is done considering the cost if a auto electrician has to do it, even they at times don’t have all the right equipment despite it being their game.
5) Do not over solder joins as there is no benefit, just enough is right and too much will cause the solder to flow down the cable and make it hard.
6) Carrying out this repair requires time and patience, if you don’t have any then let someone who has patience do it for you.
7) Don’t always assume once you have done this important operation you will now have a racing car at the flick of a switch cos it wont be, in my case I was fortunate to notice a difference, some will, some wont.

Either way it’s a good thing for the future and immediate life of the components.

Coolant overflow pipe mod

We all know that a anti-freeze/summer coolant is important in cooling systems on any engine, so great off we go knowing that the engine is well protected, as part of the cooling system there is a overflow to allow excessive coolant mixture to flow out if over filled or to vent excessive air pressure as the engine warms up.

Great, its designed like that but on P38s this vent pipe is badly positioned because as the cooling system starts to vent it does so where there are electrical connectors etc, in the pictures you'll notice two connections and if you separate these (depending on age) you're sure to find corrosion as I did on mine.

These connectors are various inputs into the engine ECU and could give a bad signal.

The mod is very simple and takes around 2 minutes