Expansion Tank burst!

Just spent an enjoyable time at the side of the M25 (not) - Range rover decided to emit a 'pop' whilst doing the normal crawl in traffic and empty all the coolant.

Not happy.

Eventually me and the RAC man found the leak (pipes were fine - rad looked fine etc - the entire side of the expansion tank had split and was happily emptying any water that was added.

Been told this is not an unheard of problem due to the tanks not being the best manufactured product in the world.

Can anyone confirm this?

Its a 4.4 V8 53 plate.

-Simon

No mention of it in rangerovers.net `common faults section`, but a quick skite shows 4 threads on this subject. Seems known for `em to split on moulding seam. But thats 4 out of ??? how many?? I don`t know if that counts as `common` or just `known` ??

just had a trawl round rangerover.net and found what looks like my issue....

Radiator Leak / Overflow Tank Leak
Ross Abaya reported in with a leaking radiator, with less than 19,000 miles on the vehicle. Curt Anderson reported the same problem when his RR was 2 months old --the dealer had to replace the coolant overflow tank (also called the coolant expansion tank) "and it was fixed but what a pain!" This radiator overflow tank seems to be a weak spot and I have since heard of a number of owners who have had it leaking. Sometimes it develops a hairline crack.If you see a pool of coolant near the front on the rght side, chances are that is what happened. On the good side, a replacement only costs $40 (see the RR III parts sources page), and is easy to instal. Just snap on hoses, add coolant, done. I even heard of a dealer who advised carrying a spare overflow tank in the cubby box in the trunk, just in case. The bad news is that these engines need special coolant, as specified in the owners manual, and it is extremely expensive -- I paid $50 for a gallon of it once, and I have heard of others paying $70.

Guess I must have had the hairline crack that under pressure burst open. Hopefully the dealer will agree with me and its nothing more than that.

Thanks for the reply.

-Simon

get yourself an alloy one id love to see the rangey blow that apart

Mind you if a fault develops (blown gasket etc), I`d rather pay for a plastic header tank than a R-R radiator!

Looked into an aluminium one but so far can only find ones for Disco's - anyone know where I can get one for an L322?

MrP said:

just had a trawl round rangerover.net and found what looks like my issue....

The bad news is that these engines need special coolant, as specified in the owners manual, and it is extremely expensive -- I paid $50 for a gallon of it once, and I have heard of others paying $70.

-Simon

Click to expand...

What's special about the coolant? I filled up with regular - was that a mistake?

Thanks
Henrik