The Safari test - not enough to beat my Freebie!

Hey guys,

Had a fantastic day out at the West Mids Safari Park yesterday with a car full of mates. The teperature was bloody scorching inside the car and I was really worried it would overheat as it was really busy at the park. A two hour first gear traffic jam (albeit featuring giraffes) got me worried but not a peep was heard. Got us there and back with only a minor issue with the indicator fuse on the way back.

I reckon if you're going to try to overheat a Freelander that's the sternest test it can face, surely. I'm chuffed that it survived ! Anyone else get up to anything cool (or hot) over this weekend?

Will.

Hey Will,

good news on the overheating issue then, bet you're relieved.

I have just done a filter and oil service on mine, replacing all that needed it. I was going to look at the inlet manifold to see how coked up it was, but will leave this until next weekend. Then a quick test drive to make sure all was fine, and that's been it.

It did drop some coolant on the way down and then on the way back up again, which is very dissapointing as I thought I'd solved that. There must be a leak somewhere in the pipe system. Having read up on it, I'm going to mix in some K seal into a fresh batch of coolant and refill it. K seal is unlike radweld in that it only congeals when it contacts air (i.e leaks) so from what I've read on searches it should be fine and not gum up my engine.

It doesn't drop coolant when doing shorter non motorway journeys. My guess is that at high revs (55 mph +) the water pump is working very hard and is forcing coolant around at a much higher rate and pressure thus forcing the coolant out of a small leak. Yet another good reason to fit the Electric Water Pump and controller - at higher revs you get the flow rate you need and not a pascal more, ditto for low revs. There is no cooling advantage to high flow rates (according to research by Davies Craig) so it's just ****ing energy away and making the weaknesses of the cooling system worse. IMO anyway.

Riskeeeeee Keal or radweld. Neither recomended.

Has the electric pump been tried and tested?

In a Freelander? I don't know, probably not. On other cars certainly, they are specifically designed for the Australian motors and their massive cooling requirements. I think it has been put into Elises though as they were looking for a way to stop heat soak on track days, a search on MG rover might turn something up. I'm going to try it though, I don't mind being a guinea pig . As i said, I reckon that this is only happening at excessively high flow rates which won't happen with an EWP. The whole mechanical pump system looks a bit bollocks compared to the other tech we are putting in cars now - I think DC have been trying to get it bought up and fitted OEM for a while but I think the manufacturers still see it as too expensive. Not enough cost benefit on a Merc, but for us it could be a godsend.

So yeh it didn't blow up in the middle of the Tyrannosaur paddock, but I don't fancy HGF down the line, so for me it's worth a punt I think .