Munch Freelander Project.

Bought a gorgeous (in my opinion!) Freelander 1 1.8 Kalahari in the fantastic Borrego Yellow.
The bodywork of the car is immaculate - it has had a full back to bare metal respray with paperwork provided. It did however have a few of the usual Landy 1 issues. My main concerns were -

• Guzzling coolant
• Big Bang on gear change.
• Handbrake ineffective.

So far I have done a lot of work on my own to the car. I’ve previously done disc and pads, brake shoes and drums, replaced window mechanisms and drop glass and lower suspension arms on various cars. I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty, but never been into an engine!

I bought the car at a great price, knowing that it needed work. After reading everything I could find, watching YouTube videos and buying the Haynes manual I decided to have a go at the head gasket myself.

I jacked the car onto axle stands and got stuck in. Since I was in there I changed:

• Head Gasket (MLS)
• Head bolts
• Water pump
• Intake manifold gasket
• Exhaust manifold gasket
• Rocker cover gasket
• Timing belt and tensioner
• Auxiliary belts.

It all went fairly well. Got a fright when I took out the old head gasket to find it WAS MLS! Upon inspection though, it became obvious that the head had been torqued down as hard as possible and not in the right order. It was totally distorted and the layers were stretched with overlapping coolant and oil holes. Amateurs! I had to get the head skimmed 17 thou to get the fire ring indents out! Went back together smoothly with the exception of the exhaust manifold. I need to remove the head again and drill out and tap m12 bolt holes. 2 of the M10 are chewed up so will probably get a leak warning at its MOT.
I also tightened up the handbrake and it’s ok now. Decided to do it while I had the centre console out to fit the parrot hands free.
I’ve removed the VCU and prop shafts to eliminate the Big Bang on gear shift. It’s from the rear diff forward mount. The bang is gone. I’ll get round to replacing the diff mounts at a later date.

Other jobs to do:
- change diff mounts
- new breather hoses.
- New front discs.
- possibly replace the VCU with a reconditioned unit.

Welcome to the mad house! Sounds as though you've had a similar task as I had with mine. Ended up replacing the cylinder head and completely rebuilding the top end of the engine. Very rewarding though. I've also rebuilt the front suspension, the brakes (although not yet tackled the rear drums - I think they'll need doing soon) and I have noisy VCU bearings. But the car has been great, and a hoot to take on greenlanes

Any pictures? Borrego Yellow would be perfect on a three door FL1

Yeah, I'll get photos up later today. I love the colour, always wanted a yellow car. It's looking particularly nice right now as it's sitting with the hard top removed since it's so warm!

Since doing the head gasket and top end I'm thinking it might all need to come out again. When I did the gasket the liners were all 3 thou above the block, fine to fit the MLS gasket to, but despite doing it all carefully the coolant system is still being weird. The strangest symptom is that when I go on a longer drive (30+ miles) the engine gets so hot I can feel the heat radiating through the bulkhead. Looking under the bonnet the coolant expansion tank is empty. However, when I unscrew the cap to top it up, it comes flooding back through the return hose and fills the bottle past the max line! Any thoughts? I was pretty sure I'd purged all the air from the system by removing the bleed screw on the metal pipe above the bell housing until a smooth flow of coolant came out at idle. I then removed the bleed screw from the heater hose, lifted the revs slightly to make the water pump spin faster and waited for a smooth stream from there too. I'm unsure if air is getting into the system somewhere or if the head gasket is in fact not sealed. (if that's the case I might try the other one with the elastomer in it).

Apart from that, I love it! Had to fix the handbrake which didn't work on hills but not a lot of work in that!

I'm tempted to hire an engine hoist and remove and overhaul the entire thing outside the car .

My worry is that exhaust gas is blowing past the fire rings: if the head had deep and wide liner indents in them, the cylinder head has gone soft. You’ll either need to get inserts to recover the head, or a good replacement head.

A bad head will look like this (guess how I know!):

That's what the head looked like, yeah. Had to skim a fair bit to get it flat. Where do I pick up the inserts to recover the head? Sounds like a good solution!

Try: http://www.modusengineservices.co.uk/rover/kseries_solution.html

I haven’t tried them myself, but saw mention of them on another forum. I don’t know if it recovers a dead head or not?

I’ve heard of another solution where new material is added to the cylinder head, and it too ought to recover an otherwise scrap head - can dig out details if you’re interested

That looks like an interesting prospect....might give it a go and see what happens. I drove to Glasgow and back today (roughly 100 miles) and it didn't miss a beat. It's a confusing wee engine!

The only her possibility is that you’ve just got some trapped air in the system - so a thorough bleed is certainly worth while

This is my baby! Needs a wee wash but that's low down the list of jobs!

Sheesh... where's me sunglasses.....

richarddenton1982 said:

View attachment 152385
This is my baby! Needs a wee wash but that's low down the list of jobs!View attachment 152386 View attachment 152387

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what you urinate on a landy...shame on you...


just joking...nice colour...

Love it!