Freelander 1 Head gasket vs inlet manifold gasket

I feel the pain, Br not something to repeat on the engine change, and no I was not rubbing it in, I leave that for the tratter boys.

It's not the fact that the key was turned, the point is the battery should not have been connected at that time, cos you can drop something on the starter and before you know it the tip of your finger has been sliced off

freelance said:

It's not the fact that the key was turned, the point is the battery should not have been connected at that time, cos you can drop something on the starter and before you know it the tip of your finger has been sliced off

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Fair point and have to admit it never occurred to me to disconnect the battery for a HG change.
Will do it next time. Shouldn't be long, I have a K series.

Yeah i didnt remove the battery connections when i did the main head gasket, in fact i never bother disconnecting the battery when i do jobs. Probably should, but just one of those things!

I don't think I've ever disconnected the battery while doing a HG change.
Unless it was in the way, but I don't make a habit out of it.

Then again, I'm not prone to leaving tools in places that can be dangerous.

That being said, accidents do happen so usually at the first bang/clonk/rattle hands come flying out of engine bits pretty quickly.

I always remove the battery negative connection when working on timing or drive belts. I've seen fingers trapped in belts by an accidental key turn. However if you haven't worked in a garage environment, these simple safety precautions can get overlooked, especially when working on your own.
Thankfully the K series engine is easy to obtain and cheap to fix. It's all experience after all.

So my donor vehicle got dropped off on sunday! Had to wait until the rain stopped before i even looked at it today but here it is...





Got a couple of other bits that are in a tidier condition than mine so going to swap those over as well. Finally got the dry weather today to spend a little time taking the timing belt cover off and guess what... the timing lines up exactly how i had mine!! Cams lined up with the crankbolt aligning just slightly off centre for the two dots on the crankshaft pulley. Only i know this is a working engine and timed properly.

When it came to repositioning the cars on the drive though the clutch was a completely different animal, no judder, no having to rev to pull away... it just worked. To which my friend pointed out that maybe my engine had been timed all along, but all the problems when the car was decelerating on hills, struggling in high gears to accelerate quickly and wouldn't pull away on the clutch alone meant that my clutch was just absolutely ****ed. What do you guys reckon? That would be a pretty big kick in the teeth to find out now that i wrecked my engine trying to time something that was already fine and that it was a different fault all along!


Also, regarding the engine swap. The new donor engine is vastly different to mine. Different injection body, different ECU and dash, different engine loadout and uses coil packs not a distributor. New engine is at 74,000 miles and min is at 172,000 miles (although the engine is supposedly a 45,000 miles test bed and one of the last ever produced). My engine has low liners and is a little smokey from the exhaust still but the new one is FULL of k-seal to the point where the expansion tank is a dark sludgey mess. New one has uprated oil rail and PRT fitted, mine is basic oil rail and old thermostat with a hole drilled in it. New one has suposedly never had the head skimmed before, mines been done twice.

What to do? Fully strip both and rebuild one solid engine or just do a swap and replace the head gasket on the new one?

If it had been clutch the engine would have been revving freely but not pulling the car so you would have known it was the clutch. The fault you described was the engine was dying and had no power. My Freelander has an intermittent judder in the clutch too but it pulls fine albeit it isn't very pleasant to drive in traffic, and our last Freelander had a slipping clutch and it was very obvious what the problem was.

I'd suggest you get the new engine fitted as is and get it running, this will be a big enough task. If you start messing with too many things at once you might never get it running. Then once you know you have it working in your car do a full flush of the coolant and take it from there. I don't believe Kseal would stop a headgasket leak but it may stop a leak else where, such as a hose or radiator, so the HG might be fine.

Alibro said:

If it had been clutch the engine would have been revving freely but not pulling the car so you would have known it was the clutch. The fault you described was the engine was dying and had no power. My Freelander has an intermittent judder in the clutch too but it pulls fine albeit it isn't very pleasant to drive in traffic, and our last Freelander had a slipping clutch and it was very obvious what the problem was.

I'd suggest you get the new engine fitted as is and get it running, this will be a big enough task. If you start messing with too many things at once you might never get it running. Then once you know you have it working in your car do a full flush of the coolant and take it from there. I don't believe Kseal would stop a headgasket leak but it may stop a leak else where, such as a hose or radiator, so the HG might be fine.

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Yeah i've just been looking at clutch slipping on google and i remember the revs didnt fly up when the loss of power kicked in, both needles seemed to move together... just very very slowly. I also stalled the car a couple of times using the clutch to test the handbrake cable the day before the mot, which everyone says wouldnt have stalled if the clutch was shot. Not been driving for long so never experienced a slipping clutch before!

Sounds closer to this to me to be honest:

Acceleration Problems – Another good sign that draws optimum attention to check whether your car’s fuel filter is clogged with dirt or functioning properly. This frequently occurs when your car starts behaving funny or oddly, and suffers from a slowdown syndrome when driven at certain speeds due to lack of sufficient fuel, required for it to go any faster. Even with the fact that you might be stepping hard on the gas, the vehicle fails to bulge and the speed remains the same.

Awful Exhaust Fume Odor– In the occasion where you sense some awful smell permeating from your car’s exhaust, chances are your fuel filter is clogged or immersed with dirt and hence need to be checked. Additionally the car’s exhaust fume, initiated from the engine may appear somehow dark and cloudy, which also indicate a great sign your car’s fuel filter need to be cleaned or replaced. Frequent misfiring is also a vital area to check whether your car’s fuel filter is functioning properly.

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More visible smoke from exhaust, exhaust has a noticeably strong smell to it (could smell it easily outdoors from in front of the car) and no power/fading up hills or when putting foot to the floor at 55+mph.

I'm sure I recognise your downer car from this forum. Maybe just coincidence though.
As to the engine. I would get the replacement out, strip off the head, fit a new Payen gasket and rebuild it. At this point I'd move all the different ancillaries over then refit it, ready to run so to speak. It's much easier to do the HG and timing belts with the engine out of the car. It'll save you possibly having to do the HG again later on.

Yeah

Nodge68 said:

I'm sure I recognise your downer car from this forum. Maybe just coincidence though.
As to the engine. I would get the replacement out, strip off the head, fit a new Payen gasket and rebuild it. At this point I'd move all the different ancillaries over then refit it, ready to run so to speak. It's much easier to do the HG and timing belts with the engine out of the car. It'll save you possibly having to do the HG again later on.

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Yeah it belonged to diesel on here. Took his bumpers off and was going to scrap it so i bought it off him.

So i've swapped over his cambelt out of curiosity. Turns out one of the cam pulley bolts had cracked, might have been why it was so stiff to turn. Put a bolt on from the donor engine and copied the marks on the belt over from the working engine to mine to ensure the timing was right. It started!!! Sounds a little low on the revs like its on the point of stalling and a little uneven. So ive swapped the fuel filter over from the other car too... taken it for a 10 mile drive and it seems fine up to about 3000 revs, between that and 3500 revs the power is a little lacking and past 3500 revs the fuel pump gets noisier and noisier up until 4000 revs at which point it sounds like an old washing machine. Possibly damaged fuel pump?

Other noise is clutch related. Slight grinding noise is heard when clutch is engaged in neutral, noise dissappears when clutch pedal is pressed, comes straight back when clutch is raised again. Sounds kinda like a light sanding noise and a bit whiney when driving along. Any ideas?

So its not the fuel pump, tried a known working fuel pump in there too. Same noise and same lack of power. Blockage in the fuel line, blocked injector?

Got very fed up with the noise so dropped to 4th at 70mph and pushed the revs to almost 5,000rpm. The noise got louder and louder then stuttered a bit before disappearing completely. Looks like my blockage has gone!! Much less smoke out the back at idle and no noisey fuel pump, slightly better mpg and low-mid acceleration.

Got a slight misfire at idle now and its a little bit underpowered still so going to put fresh plugs and leads on to see if that'll sort it. Looks like i might be almost there!

Nice one, just needed an Italian tune up then.

Haha, yeah, something like that

Alibro said:

Nice one, just needed an Italian tune up then.

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5K Rpm isn't an Italian tune up. Modern cars can't get them these days as there's a rev limiter!!
However the modern K series Freelander equivalent is to run it at 6,000 Rpm plus for short bursts before the up change. That'll get it cleared out but I'm not convinced that it'll do bent valves much good. Be aware that if a valve head breaks off, the engine will need a full rebuild

Yeah, i know. I'm running this engine for a while to get me about and in the meantime i'm going to start making work of stripping down the engine in the spare freelander and cleaning it out, tuning the ports, new seals all over etc. etc. once it's gleaming and absolutely perfect it's going into mine to replace the current one. I'll crack this beast and make it a good runner yet haha.

krisboats said:

Yeah, i know. I'm running this engine for a while to get me about and in the meantime i'm going to start making work of stripping down the engine in the spare freelander and cleaning it out, tuning the ports, new seals all over etc. etc. once it's gleaming and absolutely perfect it's going into mine to replace the current one. I'll crack this beast and make it a good runner yet haha.

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Great idea, I'd love to rebuild an engine from scratch too. I read a long thread by a guy on mainland Europe (can't remember where but he worked for months trying to resolve an issue with his Rover 75 but ended up doing the same.