Coolant Leak

[rosemary]

Hello Mike
Too right, feel free to share. Car on SORN until my mate can have a look, Even then I have no faith in the car even though I am attached to it. With 70% of new cars in China being returned to dealers for defects and reliability issues JLR deserve to go to the wall. They've lost their way anyway going headlong in to the Mass SUV market with all the better competition there, just as they did with Diesels, instead of niche luxury and sports cars. Why for heavens sake are we "enthusiasts". JLR bemoan the disappointing sales of the XE, it's not surprising the sales are not there when buyers professional and private have one word on their collective minds :- "Reliability". They don't really care about technophobes and aluminium architecture, they just want a nice car to take them to work and the next meeting. With a few exceptions the basic premise doesn't exist in JLR products. Land Rovers have always been a" Welders Heaven", Bring on BMW, VW and Mercedes. I could go on a bit but I'll stop there.
Dave

[rosemary]

An Update.
Well I and my friend Michael (the best mechanic and car repair specialist in the world) had a look at my latest coolant leak on the heap in the yard. S-Type 2.7d
The local garage said nothing could be done without taking the engine out for a £1000 or so. I read and re-read the article in the 350 section of the January Mag and decided we'd have a go because my leak seemed to be coming from this general location. Low and behold after much fiddling cursing and scraped fingers we found the leak. The pictures tell it all

The leak is in exactly the same place as on the one in the article and the removal of the unit was an exact replay of the effort noted by Tony Akram. The car is still, however, going to simmer in the yard.
Dave Hart

[rosemary]

Hello Folks
Re previous post the photos seem to have turned 90 deg counter clockwise when uploaded, never mind you can still see the area we had to work in, in the bowels of the engine bay, absolutely awful, Jaguar should be ashamed. The most difficult and time consuming jobs were releasing the auxiliary drive belt, we had to make a special tool to release the tension on the belt, the removal of the steering pump location/mounting bracket rear bolt, and the removal of the 2 bolts holding the plastic manifold where the crack was. We took the plastic manifold off including it's hoses still attached, disconnecting them at the first joints away from the manifold. So we didn't have to cut the hose clips to release them.
Got to put it all back together now with a new manifold. Got to wait a bit though until Mike finishes his current job for a bloke, building an original GT40, which his wife, the bloke's, say's Mike has to finish it soon before the bloke gets too big to get in it..
Dave

[rosemary]

Hello Folks
All back together now except the under-tray, sheet of cardboard under the car, engine run, temp up to Normal Operating, coolant system topped up 3 times as air locks were purged. Cardboard dry so far. Only problem:- one of the pulley's is fouling one of the air ducts, can't seem to get it to re-position away from the pulley where it should be and stay there. Going to remove the Air Filter box again and use some cable ties to fix it. Final job is to fix new mounting brackets (JLR Classic Parts) to attach the Under-tray properly in position, these had rotted away and was the cause of the Garage not being able to fix the under tray properly leaving it hanging on precariously under the car after the last visit. A confidence booster!!!!!.
Dave