running hot

hi can anyone help i have a 96 dse the temp as always run at the middle but it has now start to run 3/4 to red if the aircon is on it wont come down until i put the hot heat on the 2 fans on the front dnt seem to come on should they? is there fuses for them somewhere ? can anyone throw some light on this please cheers

Hi bigtone, increases in temprature could be caused by a number of things in my view. I'm no RR expert so bare with me. Have you had the vehicle offroad?, if so there is a chance that you radiator fins could be blocked, try looking into the grill from the front for any obstructions.
Have you changed you water/antifreeze recently? I was told a few years ago that Antifreeze corrodes gaskets, therefore the loose parts can block water channels etc, and in any case sludgy water is not good so a flush and refill will do the car no harm.
When you talk of the 2 fans on the front i assume that the RR has electronic cooling fans rather than a viscous fan as fitted on the Defender/Disco etc?? if so they will be supplied from a temperature sensor on the engine block or thermostat housing i should think, and should be fused. If you have no manual just take a look in the fuse box for any blown fuses and replace them.
Hope this will be of some help to you..

hi havent been off road just normal road use it has viscous fan which does come in but im thinking the 2 at the front should come in before hand no water or antifreeze has been touched all the water level is ok thanks

O>k so the RR has a viscous fan and electric too.. I must check the Disco. I would pressume that these are air conditioning fans, but i'm not sure if they are at all linked to the cooling system.
The only other things i could suggest would be the water pump, which i would doubt very much,Your radiator could be corroded on the inside, therefore restricting flow through the system. Iread somewhere that the LR rads are only good for about 50k miles before they start corroding but don't quote me on that...
Last and which i would think more likely would be a faulty viscous coupling.
Please excuse if i am telling you something that you already know. The fan is driven off the water pump by a viscous coupling i.e. it does non run at full engine speed all the time. if you are noticing your temperature increase at low speeds then this is where i would look. If the viscous coupling is faulty the fan will not be running fast enough, and the car will seem to overheat. There is a test that you can do, it is possible to cable tie the nut on the viscous coupling to fan and start the car, the fan will run extreemly fast and noisily, and only for a short time but it should prove a point..

hi just done that with v/fan it clicks in n out no probs what ive just done is put air con on auto n the temp is half way then when i put the aircon on manual so to speak it starts to creep up this tells me there is a fault on the air con side & that is why the 2 fans are not coming on what do you think cheers

That could well be the problem. I don't know much at all about aircon or the way it works sorry. Maybe someone else will be able to help more. best of luck.

hithanks for ur time n help il get the aircon checked out in the week thanks again

hi all still no joy had aircon checked out no probs what else can it be heeeellllpppp

I will have a think, see if i can come up with any ideas..

I have just bought a 99 2.5 DSE and while going up a steep hill the other day it overheated, I have found out the electric fans are only for the aircon and hardley ever run and the P38 RR has a problem with radiators "sludging up". I filled it with water (after it blew it out the headder tank) and ran it untill warm. I turned it off and felt the rad, the top was hot but the bottom was cold, (no water flowing down there)... You can get them rodded at a rad specialist but the end tanks can leak after refitting, so I am getting it re-cored and hopeing that will fix the prob.

That sounds like a sensible decision to me. If the radiator is blocked it could lead to greater problems ie. head gasket, and none of us want that!!

Well, I took the rad out to get it re-cored, but, the bolts holding it in at the bottom were rusted, I used a drimmel to make a groove so the rad would slide up but due to a lack of clearence i cracked the lower tank while removing it (it catches on the thermo fan hub). I was quoted £130 +vat for the re-core but was not looking forward to the cost of a new one, I got 2 quotes from aftermarket rad companies both around £180 +vat and just for the hell of it called the LR dealer... "£142.80 +" came the reply and it'll be here in the morning. I asked the guys in the service department if they had many problems with head gaskets on the bmw 2.5, they said they had never fitted one, the parts people said they had only ever sold 1 and never kept them in stock.
When putting the new rad in I undid the 2 17mm bolts on the either side of the rad side guides and levered it forward to drop the new one in, Its just had a good caining up the same hill it overheated on and the temp stayed bang in the middle of the guage. By the way, while the rad was out I also put a new thermostat and fan belt on as its much easier to get to...hope this helps anyone else.

Nearly forgot, once the rad is out of the way you can then undo the bolts at the bottom or get a mini hacksaw in to cut them off and replace them, (try greasing them before refitting just in case you need to remove it again sometime).
The original rad part no was superceeded so I wonder if they know theres a problem and have changed the design????

andy u wre lucky mine topped up bein the head cracked £1700 later n she is fine the temp stays strate in the the middle of the gauge n dont move it turned out the fella i bought it off gelled it up 2 sell THANKS MATE with thr stuff u can by

im in the same boat. ive had had a couple of probs with my 96 DT. It was loosing coolant and overheating, i thought it was one and the same problem, but it looks like it is two seperate probs.

It ran fine on the motorway, temp gauge stayed in the middle. but when i started to go onto A roads, or up steep hills, or get down below 30mph, it started to overheat. I could always tell when it was going to overheat, as the air into the cabin suddenly went cold. I could temporarily fix the overheating by dropping it down a gear, and revving it for all its worth, that brought the temp gauge down again.

I have just been through the same illimination process. Ive had a new head gasket and heads re-skimmed. That has sorted the coolant loss, but is still overheating after being ran on the motorway. so it is now starting to look like viscous fan / radiator / water pump.

How do i tell if i have the old / new type of radiator?

cheers

oh i forgot to say. the first thing i did was replace the thermostat.

Aparantly, the old rad is just the rad, the new one has a combined oil cooler for the auto box, you just dont need to use it if you have a separate cooler in the NSF wheelarch. (I was told it is the same part no for the auto and the manual)
Mine was definately the fan, as the temp went up or after starting the engine the fan makes a lot of noise when it was working. Even with the window open and the temp guage really hot I could hear nothing when it wasnt. It then seemed that using high revs just allowed a little more cooling air through the rad.

also check the heater matrix that is mounted at the back of the dash. the feed/return pipes can be seen at the rear of the engine bay near to the coolant resevoir. if they are blocked/leaking it may be your problem?