Overheating at higher revs after a gasket change

Hi

I wonder if any one can help me with a bit of advice.

Today, we got our freelander (1.8 petrol) back from the garage with a new head gasket, water pump, Cambelt etc £680 (aparantly, needed some new leads, distributor and air filter).

Car seems to run fine apart from one problem. The car temperature rises to just above 3/4 at higher revs (3000) and comes back down, just below half with anything less than 2500 revs. At idle it stays at below half. Driving around town or sitting idle, all is well, but as soon as you get out into open road and get up to about 50mph, 3000 rev, the temperature goes up to 3/4 quite quickly and stays there until the revs drop down below 2500. Heather temperature seems to be blowing out the temp i'd expect.

I called the garage and they said that the only 2 things it could be is a small blockage in the coolant, such as bit of gasket from the blown gasket, but they flushed it and saw it flowing. Plus they said, if their was a blockage the engine temp would struggle to get back down below half after overheating and would also rise if left on tickover.

He thinks the thermostat might be the cause. The only problem I have with this is that before he got the car there where no signs of over heating or thermostat problems. The temp guage was always below the half way mark (until the head gasket blew !) He said he cannot gurantee that it is the problem, but more than likely. He also said that his "book" told him this was a 90 minute job, but was happy to call it an hour. £50 for hour labour and £20 for thermostat.

My question is do you think he might be right about the thermostat problem and is this usually an 90 minute job for a garage.

Thanks for any help

Same thing happened to mine after a right palava about getting the HG sorted. Turned out to be a small leak from the exhaust manifold gasket.

Have you been losing any coolant or anything?

Will probably be something simple like pump, blockage or thermo if you've not been losing coolant.

No coolant loss as far as I can tell. Level seems to be constant in the resevoir. If there is a loss it isn't much.

Thermostats are prone to failure, there are lots of threads about it, try a search to see if the symptoms are the same.

90 min is about right, maybe more, stat is at the back on drivers side, they are < £10 from LR

There is no recommendation of changing it in the techie bulletins, but it is good practice to check the operation of the wax bulb.

There are remote stats (standard stat only in a different location) and remote Pressure release stats (PRT).

Checked out where the thermostat was and lucky for me it had the conversion kit fitted. I bought a new thermostat and housing for £20 and then fitted myself in 15 minutes. All sorted, no heating probs any more Thanks everyone !