TD4 coolant leak possible head gasket?

Hi

Just wanted your take on this, the land rover has been sitting in the garage for the past 3 days and there has been a small puddle of coolant under it and the expansion tank is completely empty. So the symptoms are-

-Rough Idle
-Smoke out the exhaust throughout the rev range when cold,
-Slightly Sluggish when running cold,

All these point to a head gasket failure but i've run a sniff test and that came back negative. Got it to the garage now to get them to run some diagnostics and pressure checks. Do you think this is a head gasket failure?

Car background - Freelander td4 3 door. Built in 2005, done 80,000 miles.

mine was the thermostat housing (look down by the lower pipe coming out of the expansion tank and follow it down to the engine, et voila) it could also be your core plugs... let us know how you get on and good luck.

Well the mechanics said today that the head gasket is sound. And all the tests have shown that there is nothing mechanically wrong with the car. The mystery deepens.....

They also said that there was no coolant loss when they had it. Or oil loss. Suppose that the little bit of rad weld has done its job. Gonna keep an eye on it. Just like all the other problems with the land rover it throughs a small fit then decides its gonna work.

The love hate freelander relationship continues

Was it coolant or perhaps run-off from Aircon

Mine was losing coolant but didn't have any running problems (although it seems to be sluggish all the time, never mind just when cold lol!). It wasn't until the leak got worse that I eventually found it and it turned out to be a split hose at the back of the engine. It was the lower one of the two that comes out of the bulkhead (from heater matrix) and then has a t-piece on. Didn't see it until it got bad and the water started steaming off the exhaust!

I had the same problem, mystery coolant loss but over a long time. Turned out to be the pipe at rear of engine too. Lift the front of car up and put the wheel on full lock. You should be able to reach into the back of the engine from the drivers side and feel round for leaks. Check in particular above the ball/knuckle joint that is part of the steering as this was rubbing against the coolant hose on mine and had caused it to wear away a cut into the pipe.

The fix was to cut the pipe and slide a piece of copper pipe into each end with dubly clip.