Cooling System/Crossover Pipe

[Land Rover Joe]

I used ChatGPT to create print version, I like a bit of an old fashion type of instruction. I attempted to iron out the guide as best as possible- I will be replacing Serpentine Belt, cooling hose, Intake Gasket and Plenum and perhaps a few more items. Did I miss anything?

I am pretty old fashioned and like the paper copies too; that said, being old fashioned, the ChatGPT summary looks pretty good (and I have no idea how to do that).

Here are a couple of thoughts:

1. as @djkaosone notes: use only OEM or better and get from a reputable seller. I use Atlantic British for a lot of my parts and they are excellent. In fact, I had replaced a bunch of coolant stuff about a year ago (summer 2024) to include a "new" water pump (which I must have gotten from Amazon). Well, the pump failed pretty hard (internal gasket failure because that gasket is paper and not the proper metal kind which was slowly leaking coolant everywhere) and I didn't even know until we pulled it as part of a major service presently ongoing. This is actually the third water pump in my truck (the first was the factory install that catastrophically failed on me Christmas Eve 2013 and the dealer replaced under warranty; the second was that one which I replaced last summer and had not yet failed but was looking rough; I just bought a fourth from Atlantic British to replace the one installed last summer and that I should have sourced from them to begin with). I have photos of the failed pump and we are going to try and tear that pump apart and rebuild it with better gaskets to see what happens.

All that to say that the cooling system is really complicated (and large), operates at a pretty high pressures, and puts a lot of strain on that little water pump.

2. While you are tearing through all these hoses under the hood...you might as well replace as many as you can. There are a lot up there and you never know which ones are going to go bad and when. My philosophy is to try and refresh as much as possible when I am working on a specific area. But as pointed out in Point 1 - you need to ensure you buy the best quality parts (unless you like constantly tearing down your engine).

3. Buy extra (OEM / high-quality) gaskets (they are metal ones; also, there are TWO gaskets for the one water pump [inlet + outlet] so every time you pull it off for a job...you should replace those gaskets; I have been buying mine at Atlantic British and those seem to work well) for the water pump and extra bits like the stupid plastic tube which connects the water pump to the oil cooler assembly. These pieces need replacing when doing services or simply break / crack because they are silly plastic parts: better to have a few extras on hand just in case (in my opinion).

4. Get one or a set (I bought a kit with a bunch of them on Amazon) of the nifty hose-clamp pliers. They make life way easier when dealing with these high-tech "constant tension" hose-clamps on the AJ133.

I Hope that helps and Good Luck!

Keep us Posted!

 

[Rendak]

I'd definitely avoid using ChatGPT as the only source of guidance. My company has an enterprise license and I would consider myself a power user of the various models (4o, o3, etc) and they are amazing at many things, but reasoning about complex automotive systems is not one of them (and if you want to hear a horror story, ask me about ChatGPT insisting that my 2015 LR4 had an electric radiator fan and not a viscous fan -- even to the point of hallucinating evidence from what it claimed to be a Land Rover shop manual). Use this video instead:

Also, I just did the job twice (because I had a vacuum leak that I thought might've been coming from the lower half of the front coolant crossover pipe) -- the first time around, when I went really slow and watched that entire 2.5 hour video and worked in 2 hour intervals in the evening after putting my daughter to bed, it took me about 15 hours. Second time it took about 9 hours. Definitely doable by an amateur DIY mechanic, just make sure to be detail oriented and have all the right tools!

 

[jamaican_ninja]

Oh blimey, that certainly must not have been the most ideal thing to complete it twice. I decided to let an indy shop complete the job due to some time constraints and a nagging back problem, but at $3k, I felt a little guilty not doing it myself just for self-gratification more so than even the cash. Thanks for the Vid, I am absolutely not a fan of videos, I am more efficient with text-based instructions as it allow me to fill in the gaps sequentially. I have used vids as reference as companion guide to my text, but I find them less efficient. My brother on the other hand likes them.

I typically work on my vehicles (Jaguars for the past 22 yrs) myself except for a few rare occasions. And yes, ChatGpt, along with other LLM's hallucinate and even worse exclude key info at times, luckily, I work 90% of my days with LLM's, and currently building out a FinTech system, so machine learning is one of my very competent areas of comfort.

Having said that, turns out my valve cover gasket is leaking, so avoiding cooling system job is something in the end I should have taken my time to complete with a bottle of Motrin next to my tool kit. I will complete my valve cover once my schedule permits.