On my current rangie, heater's not bad, though only had it since april, so not REALLY had to rely on the thing to keep winter cold out.... and it has a heated front screen...... a toy that's new to me and I LIKE!
Anyway, previouse Rangie, almost identical, bar the number plate, and it had a sun-rood instead of heated screen...... heater was pathetic from day one, and no amount of flushing or messing with the LPG evaporator seemed to make much difference.
There do seem to be 'good' and 'bad' ones about and nothing obviouse to distinguish between them.
APART from the old bodge of by-passing the heater matrix when the seals start to leak, rather than try burrying into the bulkhead to get at them!
As for evaporator freezing; 'new' range rover came with inoperative gas system, and I spent a long while trying to de-bug it; during the course of which I DID manage to get the evaporator to freeze....... it covered itself with condensation and looked like it had been chucked in the freezer over night, so much condensation formed on it so fast, and it REALLY took a lot of heat to get it to de-frost; more than five minutes running on FPF, and in the end I poured kettles of boiling water over it to get it hot again!
If the LPG is set up wrong, AND you get a force change to gas before warm, they really CAN such a heck of a lot of heat out of the water jacket.
Normally, yes, the V8 makes plenty of warmth; and recently I was flushing the system, for reasons I'll get to in a mo..... with a garden hose, connected to the heatrr matrix pipework, so I had a forced flow running through the system, and straight out down the drain.
Water went in cold, came out steaming!
Made me wonder about using the engine and its LPG system from the 'old' rangie to make a 'Combined Heat & Power' station..... you know, stick a big generator on the back of the block where the gear-box should be, chuck the thing in an sound proofed coal bunker behind the house, run it off mains gas, and plumb the electric to my lights and the water to my central heating! But that's an asside...... but gives you an idea how much heat they will chuck out, even at tick-over!
Anyway, reason I was fluching the system was, I had just come back of holiday with the kids, towing the caravan, and suffered chronic overheating.
Lots of pottential causes, having been debugging the gas system and trying to get that set up properly; but on the return leg home, I'd discounted lpg mixture and ignition timing, as I was getting the same power (loss) on hills and the same over heating problem on FPF.
Fluching the system, actually didn't chuck much crud out the system; and it turned out, I had a shed load of silt in the outside of teh cooling fins from some Green-Laning down on Salisbury Plain.
Had been warned about the talcum like properties of thier 'mud' and done what I thought was a thorough cleaning job on my return; but obviousely not thorough enough!
SO!
I am having a similar problem with no heat, however my v8 has got hot on a few occasions, after towing a small boat yesterday and the engine getting too hot i bypassed the heater matrix and this seems to keep the engine cooler
That sounds odd; the heater matrix takes heat out of the water jacket, and turning the heater on, used to be an old trick to help get the block temp down when hot running...... removing it from the loop, would then deny its ability to take any heat out and NOT help the engine run cooler.
If the matrix was completely 'clogged', then maybe it was impeding flow, which meant that the jacket water lingered longer and got hotter; BUT, as soon as the water gets to 72 or 88Deg, whatever your thermostat's rated to, it should open and the main water flow should be through the rad; so a clocked matrix, in therory, should only make the thermostat open sooner.
Not to say that the matrix couldn't be in need of flushing or replacing, but on its own, I dont think its likely to be the sole 'fault'.
Running hot on load; and you say you have LPG; often the ignition is advanced for LPG, and under the sort of load normal running puts on the motor, the mixture and ignition is set 'lean' for ecconomy and never gives a problem, until its run 'hard' on hills or with a heavy load, like a trailer. (as my case, with the caravan)
Might be worth checking the gas system and ignition peramemeters; poss putting ignition back to 'stock' advance, around 4deg static, setting gas mix for that, then tweeking from that.
But, as my case also, worth chcking the efficiency of the rad and water pump; RV8 pumps have a tendancy to go lazy and or get a bit furred up; while the rads themselves are hugely over sized for the engine, to cope with hot climates and a bit of mud restriction; over time, they can easily get clogged inside or in the finning, or even loose a lot of finning through corrosion, but still work acceptably..... until you put the motor under a heavy load, as when towing.
also some advice on the parralell fittings for the lpg water pipes.
Normally when an LPG evaporator is 'cut' into the cooling system, the two pipes that feed the heater matrix are cut, near the bulkhead (or somewhere more convenient) and T-pieces fitted into the cut.
Pipes are taken from the T-Piece junction to the two heater ports on the evaporator, so that water circulating in the block circuit, feeding the heater matrix, also feeds the evaporator.
This is a 'parallel' plumbing arrangement
To plum in 'Series', you'c cut just ONE hose in the heater matrix supply, and use straight unions to join the pipes to the evaporator into the gap, so that the water jacket circuit goes through both heater matrix and evaporator rather than one or other.
There are pro's and cons to either arrangement.
If you plumb in series, if the evaporator is the first heat exchanger in the line, then it gets water that's block temperature, then the heater matrix gets water that's been cooled by the evaporator.
This is good for LPG warm up time, as effectively, until the water jacket is up to temperature, it gets the lions share of the heat.
It isn't so good for de-misting windows, becouse until the evaporator is up to temp you wont get much heat, if any, out of the heater matrix.
And once up to temperature, the heater matrix, only ever getting water thats been cooled by the evaporator wont get as hot a water supply, so wont deliver as much heat, even when the engines up to temp.
Plumb in parallel, is a bit safer; water is shared between the two heat exchangers, and they will both take a bit longer to get up to temperature, but they should both eventually get up to full operating temp.
On older engines with a 'block tap' heater control, where the hot/cold control in the cab turned a tap on the engine block to increade or decrease flow of hot water through the heater matrix to make it hotter or colder, a series arrangement would mean that the evaporator temperature was entirely dependent on the heater setting!
Here the parallel arrangement is almost essential, with a T-piece cut in underneath the heater control valve, so that the Evaporator gets full flow from the jacket circut, at full temperature, without being in any way dependent on the heater matrix.
Personally, I favour the parallel arrangements, and believe that it is the 'normal' within instalation guides, becouse it is the safer and more reliable of the two.
