1. Home
  2. Land Rover 4WD vehicles
  3. P38 diesel - oil in intercooler pipes - anything to worry about?

P38 diesel - oil in intercooler pipes - anything to worry about?

Aft'noon all,

As some of you may remember, i bought a P38 diesel about a month ago. My K and N air filter finally arrived and when fitting it i noticed a little but of oil under where the intercooler pipe meets the intercooler itself.

I felt under the pipe and got oil on my fingers. I then noticed that oil had dropped down onto inner wing et etc.

I whipped the intercooler pipe off and there was a fair bit of oil in the pipe. Not a huge amount I suppose but enough to create a thick film on the inside of the pipe.

I remember that the Tdi engines used to need an intercooler flush at

80 odd thousand miles and wonder if the P38 needed the same treatment, or have i got problems looming. I've had it for a month or so and it doesnt seem to be using any oil (its done 77k miles) so i'm guessing / hoping that it's natural kinda thing. I'm hoping that it just needs an intercooler flush and the pipes and things are oily because its never been done.

I've ruled out crankcase blowby.

Any ideas would be greatfully recieved, but answers would be even better!

Dave

Reply to
Dave R
Loading thread data ...

Nige's engine was smoking a lot too, blue-ish IIRC, is yours?

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

No, not that I have noticed. The only smoke i get from it is when i boot it, which must be diesel smoke. I keep going back to thinking that if the turbo is really knackered then it would be using a fair amount of oil?

What do you think Ian?

Reply to
Dave R

Sounds OK really, I've not had a single car yet that's not put some oil film on the air hoses. My defender has a very tiny hole in the intercooler, it doesn't affect the power but the only reason I noticed it is because you can see that some oil has, over the last 5 years, made its way out of the hole and stained the surface of the intercooler. It's also got oil-stained hoses, or it did have when the intercooler top hose was replaced but nothing else needed doing. My landy has never needed even the slightest dribble of engine oil topping up between major services.

If it starts scoffing oil and dumping it in the exhaust like Nige's did that you need to start worrying! If you read back over Nige's posts over the past two weeks then you'll see he had all sorts of smoking going on from his turbo leak.

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

Cheers Ian,

That makes me feel a whole lot better. I've got to admit that i've never had a vehicle which i've been so "nervous" of. With the RRC Tdi i knew that pretty much anything that went wrong with it would be either easy to fix or relatively inexpensive, but with the bad press that surrounds the P38 i think im looking for trouble. I'm hoping that I would have noticed if the thing was using an excessive amount of oil. Like i mentioned earlier i've not put any oil in since i topped it up because i thought the level was low. Having checked the oil level today after a long journey (100miles each way) over the tops of the mountains on fastish roads plus some heavy towing i'm fairly confident it hasnt used any oil. Its got to tow my trialler on the weekend and then blast up the motorway to work on Monday so I should know for sure in a few hundred miles if I keep an eye on it. I'll clean the intercooler out next service Its a shame I dont trust it really because it truly is fantastic machine (despite missing my 90 - sigh....), I travelled back from Builth Wells yesterday after working 4, twelve hour shifts, in absolute comfort and security. It also has a certain presence on the road. In certain respects it is the natural sucessor to the Tdi, think of a bigger more comfortable RRC Tdi with more power, aircon and heated everything but with the simplicity of a manual gearbox and cloth seats. I will have a tear in my eye when the old stager goes on ebay next week. Mind you, if the P38 is using oil it wont be sold at all. Thanks for your help, fingers crossed!

Reply to
Dave R

There's a few P38 users in here who hopefully might be able to offer more info than I can regarding their trouble-spots, I think I'd be nervous of one too, I get nervous about my very basic Defender despite it being the most reliable vehicle I've ever owned!

Still, if you get RAC/AA cover with the "onward journey" option and a mobile, you should be able to get to your destination in the P38 ;-)

Reply to
Ian Rawlings

MotorsForum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.