Hey guys, first want to say hello as I'm new to the forums here. So, I have a 2001 Discovery II, 4.0 V8. I live in Colorado, US, and the other morning I started the rover to warm up before work like always, and when I came out of the house 20 mins later it had steam coming out from under the hood. I quickly noticed my gauges and shut it down. The temp gauge was flat cold (as it looks with the ignition off) the red light was on though. I let it cool for an hour and then turned the key over; temp gauge read cold but the red light was still on, i put my hand on the block to make sure and it was barely warm so I added antifreeze and started it up. It had a hesitation to start that it didn't have before, but it did start and sounded fine - no ticks or taps. I thought it may be the thermostat, and since that was an easy fix anyway, I replaced it. I restarted it, with the same hesitation, and checked for leaks. Now I notice that the radiator seems to be leaking and may have been the problem in the first place. I was keeping it full of water though as it ran just to see if it would get up to operating temp and hold there. after 15 mins of running it still read dead cold and the red light on (which hasn't gone off since this all happened.) I pulled the passenger side rear plug to check for coolant but the spark plug was bone dry after just running a few moments before. Pulled the dipstick, it looked fine too; no milky white residue. inspected all over the block and didn't see any coolant leaks around there, so while I haven't ruled out blown head gasket entirely, I remain hopeful that it isn't. Only leak I could find was lower corner of the radiator had a pretty steady drip.
So now that you know all of that, I was wondering; could it overheating have caused the temp gauge to stop working? A sensor perhaps? And could that sensor be responsible for the hesitation when I go to start it up? Obviously I'll need a new radiator, but I feel like the leak may be the easy part to fix. Oh yeah and it has 140,000 miles so I am sure it is due some new parts. Thanks for any help or advice you could give me on this
So now that you know all of that, I was wondering; could it overheating have caused the temp gauge to stop working? A sensor perhaps? And could that sensor be responsible for the hesitation when I go to start it up? Obviously I'll need a new radiator, but I feel like the leak may be the easy part to fix. Oh yeah and it has 140,000 miles so I am sure it is due some new parts. Thanks for any help or advice you could give me on this
