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This is SO FUNNY taken BUT ALL TRUE from LANDYZONE author "Finlander"
This is a brief summary of my whole experience with the Trans overheat and safe mode rubbish… It’s a cautionary tale with some interest to people who have not discovered the joy of the pub or watching television X free view when the missus has gone to bed….
Anyway… soon after buying my L322 I was advised by my brother in law who is a certified mechanic, and an idiot, that to be on the safe side I should bung a bit of K seal in the engine to guard against head gasket failure.
The reason he said this is because it turns out that he is a  who confused the l322 with a gaylander… how I don’t know but he did … and assumed they had the same problem.
Anyway when the balance of mind was disturbed… and, I suspect I was suffering from some sort of Manthrax so was prob delirious, I put some in.
All the gaylanders reading this will all be saying ‘very wise..K seal the stuff of the gods’… but believe me I regretted it.
The reason was this . Weeks later the car started behaving strangely by all sorts of electrical faults happening. The sat nav would cut out, the HDC would flash inactive in a arrogant sort of way and the television would just cut out while I was trying to watch Suzanna Reed in Tesco’s car park while Mrs. F was shopping (she is a slut..Ms Reed that is is not Mrs F)
Anyway two weeks later the alternator went and the car was dead in five minutes. That was fun. After being trailered home ,with the whole village turning out to laugh and point, the car was taken to my local garage. Whilst there they pulled off the alternator and pronounced it dead on arrival. They said that the water cooling had failed and it had overheated and then took its revenge on me. I called LR and got a price for a new one which was £1000.
Anyway after I woke up on the living room floor still feeling faint Mrs F suggested that instead of lying around why don’t I look for a recon one. I did and found one for £250. The garage fitted it and all was well.
Well until week later… then when driving along there was a small bump and I found that the gearbox point blank refused to go above 2nd gear unless I stood on the throttle and got the revs to 22000.Surely this cant be right I thought. I couldnt believe that David Beckham and the queen would find it acceptable to be driven around in a car that was meant to only go as fast as a little blue mong mobile. What could be wrong I thought?
I stumbled indoors confused and broken hearted. After much searching I found that this was called ‘safe mode’. Apparently the RR selects this to save the gearbox from overheating. The idea is that the high revs cool the fluids and after a short disagreement the gearbox will cool and allow me, the silly bastrad who actually owns it, to drive it again.
I contacted Bemble on another forum and he informed me of the cause. It appears that the bottom 8 rows of the radiator block and therefore cant cool the gearbox fluid through the water cooled oil cooler. The radiator must be changed as these rows, due to some incompetent german bastard at BMW, are below the last hose attachment and therefore can’t be flushed.
‘Go grasshopper’ send Bemble ‘and change that rad’. So I did… I stood in front of the bedroom mirror to psych myself up , did some Luftwaffe exercises from my granddads war memorabilia book ’20 exercises to do before invading Poland’ and made way down to the car.
A simple job disconnecting a few hoses and clips and out it pops.
So a week later I finished and declared my car fixed.
I and Mrs F went to a black tie do a week later and due to some sort of allergic reaction to the beer she had to drive home. Half way home the car decided again that it was to hot and assumed command of the vehicle and tripped into ‘safe mode’ again. Mrs F was quite vexed and in quite a well reasoned argument she declared that the car was ‘a piece of ’ and that I was possibly the ‘stupidest man in the world for buying it’ . This all wasn’t helped by the fact that I was in the back seat attempting to eat my own shoes at the time and the car was quite stubbornly refusing to relinquish command of the vehicle.
I woke up the next morning and as Mrs F wasn’t speaking to me I researched further.
It appears that changing the rad is not enough… the trans cooler will also prob be blocked as will the lines and it’s possible that the thermostat controlling it will also be at fault. Now all these things aren’t likely to fail at the same time but the point is this. If you have possibly cooked the ATF then you have to replace it. Or risk replacing the gearbox.
There is a well reasoned argument that a gearbox is probably cheaper than the ATF .Currently RR ATF is the rarest thing known to mankind. It retails at £10000 a drop..or pretty near it. So if you only replace one component at each attempt there is a very real possibility you will go through three lots of ATF until you find the real problem which will always be the last. At that point you will find the car useless anyway as you would have lost your house , sold the children for medical experiments and lost any will to live.
Bearing this in mind I bought the following.
1.One trans cooler
2. The trans cooler lines
3.One thermostat
4.One good quality motorcycle helmet.
5. The correct quantity of original ATF fluid.
I then put the car in the garage and had these replaced. The car came back and I put on the motorcycle helmet and told Mr F the bill.
I’m recovered now. The stitches are out and the car now works perfectly.
The moral of this story is that whilst researching I came across countless people who had the same problem and had gone through all the components only to fry their ATF each time they hadn’t cured it. I made the decision that rather than spend nearly £250 each time to replace the ATF that it was probably best to assume that blocked Rad had probably blocked the trans cooler and the thermostat was only £20.
On the subject of ATF fluid one of my local dealers, when I enquired whether the ATF should be changed and if so flushed, gave me an important tip. We met later on at midnight in an underground car park both wearing false beards and dark glasses so no one would overhear and he said
‘ yes it should be changed at 50000 miles and don’t flush it as this can cause more problems than it solves . Just change the filter and the fluid that will drain out’.
‘This is madness’ I said spitting out pieces of false beard ‘Why haven’t the people been told this?’
he replied ‘I know its and enigma within a puzzle’ then disappeared into the night shouting ‘follow the money’.
I suspect that the reason all this happened was the K seal. I think it killed the alt and then proceeded to block the rad and trans cooler or at least accelerate their demise.
I cant prove it but then I can’t prove that Michael Jackson was a paedophile or that all those people who drive 5 door gaylanders are on some sort of register….but we all know its true don’t we. But I can say ;-
Watch your radiator and do the test to see if its blocked
Don’t assume it’s the first component and then try and corner the market on RR ATF
Don’t listen to that think that all LR’s are gaylanders and then put like K seal in your coolant. Unless of course they tell you they are and their gaylander /landrover synergy theory in which case tell them to
Don’t try and eat your shoes whilst your wife is already having a sense of humour failure
Watch Suzanne Reed as often as possible.
Anyway…. That’s my story… The free view is on now…so take it or leave it……
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13th Nov 2012 11:35am
