It is done...

Pull the leads. Try not to electrocute yourself ;-)

Hope its a dud plug / lead - these things are notorious for cam wear which produces one (or more) duff cylinders, usually 7 & 8. Other problem areas point towards the dizzy cap and the rotor arm.

If its what I think you are referring to, I think it is a warm air feed - iirc to provide warm air to carbs. Not essential.

Remove it and plug all the relevant orifices with appropriate plugs/bolts.

HIH - Mike.

So if it is a cylinder that is to blame, due to a worn cam what would be the best way to cure the problem and is it expensive?;-) The reason I'm asking is that we have one cylinder that is failing a compression test on the Disco.

We took ours to a local Land Rover specialist for an ECU check to find this out.

Nikki:

Typically a bad cam will not give you a bad compression. Bad compression stems from either cracked heads, bad rings in the cylinders or a bad valve seat or to really screw up your day a combination there of. All of which are not easy nor cheap. Oh and to answer the question on the cam being cheap to replace...NO. The only cure to a bad lobe on the cam is to replace the cam which involves taking apart the front of the engine and front end of the vehicle to allow the shaft to be easily removed and installed. Labor intensive. Specialty tools needed to degree the cam as well. Good Luck.

Well, iirc, when I had it done a few years back the bill was around £500 I'm afraid - cam, followers etc - oh, and a new timing chain too. Pull the rocker covers and spin the engine - you should be able to see if the lobes are badly worn. Other syptoms on mine were noticable backfiring on overrun.

Btw - was that a "proper" compression test or one of those electronic thingies?

Mike.

do them). If I remember what others have said the detox kit was a half hearted attempt to improve emissions at the expense of performance/economy. As I'm running LPG I had no compunction about removing it!

Neil

Just as a matter of interest, is the detox kit what I've seen referred to as Pulsair?

P.

I dunno, but I had one on my 2.6 Six-pot and I took it off, as it was causing explosions in my back box.

Alex

On or around Mon, 27 Oct 2003 14:29:30 GMT, "Jack Kerouac" enlightened us thusly:

or of course a head gasket...

the actual camshaft isn't expensive, about 59 quid I think. but fitting it... actually, isn't too bad either - can be done by removing the grille, rad, inlet manifold, valley gasket, and front engine cover and rocker shafts. I daresay the book tells you to do more'n that, but I reckon that covers it...

most-common thing on V8s seems to be head gaskets, in fact - especially the tin ones. Just ordered some for mine, going for composite ones this time, and I'll accept the slight loss in compression if they last longer.

Just fitted a pattern valley gasket to mine. The original one appeared to be pure steel (it had rusted through the centre section in a few places.) The new one appears to be plasticised something.

Hopefully a sign of pattern parts being better than the LR originals.

P

Yes.

cheers

Dave W.

On or around Tue, 28 Oct 2003 09:25:12 +0000, "Paul S. Brown" enlightened us thusly:

just got a composite one for mine. plasticky stuff either side of metal, it looks to be.

after me after-dinner coffee, gonna go and play at replacing the rocker shaft, then probably do the same to the other head. Man at Real Steel reckoned that it would be better to do both head gaskets while going to composites, as otherwise I'd have different compression ratios on each bank, to which I basically said "so?"...

but there's a good argument, especially as I'm doing that rocker shaft too, in changing the other head gasket as well, as all the removing stuff to get at it bar for the exhaust manifold that side is already done.

Real Steel no longer supply the plain steel valley gasket, apparently.

On or around Tue, 28 Oct 2003 09:10:06 +0000, Austin Shackles enlightened us thusly:

I'd reckon, thinking on, that I could replace a camshaft in about a full day, possibly slightly more. say 10 hours labour, so it really depends on how much the labour charges are. Of course, if the cam's badly worn, you really ought to replace the followers too, which I think can be had for about 60-odd per set, trouble is, on a worn engine, where do you stop? what are your rocker shafts like, and pushrods, and so on...

It was a feeble attempt to improve emissions (mainly for the States) by bleeding air into the exhaust gasses - an interesting approach!

Mike.

Exactly where do you stop. Which is why we would consider a transplant engine so that Bruce can decide where to stop, whilst its sitting on his workbench. Anybody got one? ;-)

An electric thingy. What does a proper compression test involve?

We have had a problem with poor starting, and when plugs were checked they were wet. Replaced these and all the other parts like the ditributor etc are less than two months old. As well as high petrol useage it had a dead spot when pulling away which is why we took it in. It's running much better since its went in but the report was that the timing chain is noisy and poor cam condition and the print out I have in front of me is from a CUDOS System

900 and what they did was an Automatic tune-up test. The results are pass for Battery, Distributor, alternator, coil, all plugs and leads passed.

There was a fail for idle speed under the Carb/Injection heading, then it moves on to Cylinder condition, where Cylinder No 7 has been circled three times as a fail.

Never, ever, ever replace a camshaft without replacing all the followers. Because of the scuff pattern old followers will wreck a new camshaft in next to no time. If you're going to all the trouble and cost of changing a cam the extra cost of the followers is relatively small, especially in comparison with doing it all again in not very many thousand miles.

Regards

Phil Gardiner alt.fan.landrover FAQ compiler -

There was someone on the MuddyTyres mailing list giving a V8 away yesterday, but I think it's gone :-(

I suppose I'm a luddite but I've never really understood how these electronic tests can actually measure compression! Certainly they can indicate whether a cylinder is working effeciently.

I guess the best way to check the *actual compression* is to pull the plug and use a compression tester thingie - that at least allows you to identify whether there is a leak / poor compression when you compare the readings with other cylinders.

Cam wear is sounding like the likley culprit though - whats the milage?? I had this trouble on two V8's - both at about 90k ish.

Mike

The followers will have picked up bits of metal as the hardening has worn thro - that embeds in the followers etc and is what writes off the new cam. The RPI site at

has some good info - if you rakearound a bit you'll find it. Mike