Blown head gasket or did water spill into cylinder while taking off intake manifold?

[Mike94531]

A month ago or so the rear water manifold broke and our LR4 overheated and left my wife on the side of the road. Towed truck home, started it up to put up on the driveway and parked it.
Decided to do the timing chains while I have the vehicle down for the water manifold replacement.

So far intake off and the valve covers along with spark plugs and injectors. As I was turning the engine over by hand to put at TDC I saw something squirt out of cylinder #5. The cylinder had water in it and I could see it in both the injector bore and spark plug bore. The intakes for all cylinders have tight fitting rags in the ports.

Has anyone had water get spilled into an intake port while taking off the intake manifold and nearby hoses?

I'm now wondering if I should pull the heads off and check and replace the head gaskets?

2010 LR4 HSE 5.0

 

[powershift]

Land Rover did some unethical things and I think they intentionally want people to ruin their engine by designing in defects. Most of the time when the engine overheats from a burst plastic pipe its a one-and-done situation. The overheat situation also applies to diesels too that are aluminum and they cost 2x as much $30k and more.

Aluminum heads & aluminum blocks aren't as durable as the older cast iron material. If it were mine I'd replace the entire engine with a long block and do all the other preventative maintenance while you are in there.

 

[mav100]

Agree with Powershift in that aluminum blocks and heads do not handle running above normal temps for hardly any length of time and the coating on the MLS head gasket gives way and the coolant makes its way into the cylinder chamber. They sometimes fail right away and sometimes it's delayed. Purchased a used 14 RRS w 99K which had evidence of being overheated by the previous owner and took a chance and ended up having to replace the head gasket at 120K this past December. Since you already pulled the valve covers and injectors doing a cylinder head pressure check would require reinstalling those, but the other thing you can do is use a scope to inspect the tops of the cylinders and see if there is any evidence of the cylinder being "steam cleaned" with coolant. Since it overheated and you're that far into it, pulling the heads and replacing the MLS head gaskets is good to consider depending on how long it ran above temp. If you do make the decision to replace the head gaskets, I highly recommend going with LR Dealer head gaskets; in my vehicle they have specific indentions that appear like staple imprints in random places and are not flaws but engineered for maintaining a stable seal at temp.

 

[Mike94531]

Thanks, I think I'll start pulling the heads today. The hardest part will be finding a neighbor that can give me hand lift them out of the engine bay.