Over the weekend I went wheeling with our local Land Rover club. Great fun, unfortunately around the end of the day a beautiful 1994 Defender that was part of our convoy flipped on its side into a ditch (probably due to the inexperienced driver taking his eyes off the road while fighting the manual tranny...) Neither driver nor passenger were hurt and we recovered the vehicle quickly with a winch from another Defender and some good old fashioned elbow grease... Damage to the body was relatively minor, but after putting the car back on its wheels the engine would not crank. While everyone was trying to figure out why, I flipped through the owner's manual to see if there was a hidden inertia switch that needed to be reset or something else we might be missing. They eventually got it started by removing all spark plugs and cranking. The engine was flooded with oil, a condition called "Hydrolock" I was told. After spitting out a bunch of oil, the spark plugs were reinstalled and the engine started right up. It spewed out and burned the leftover oil in thick clouds of smoke for a good 20 minutes, but then it ran just fine. Other than some body work, might need new catalytic converters. :wink:
Report, lots of pictures and videos of the trip and recovery have been posted on our Club's site: http://www.sclr.org/roverboard/11-trip- ... -2010.html (I was the only Sport there...
Lots of LR3s, though.)
What struck me as funny is that the D90 owner's manual was elegantly bound in leatherette and about as thick as our RRS' chapter on how to operate the navigation system. It was divided in chapters. Chapter 1 (controls and instruments) was maybe 4 pages long: "Here is the key and here is the ignition. Turn key until you hear engine start. This tells you how fast you are going. This one tells you how much gas you have left. That's the radio ON button - if your vehicle is so equipped. A volume knob is also provided for your convenience. End of chapter one". The bulk of the manual was the "Workshop Maintenance" chapter, a thing of beauty. All kinds of detailed information and drawings on how to check and adjust the alternator belt, renew main gearbox, transfer case, front/rear axles oils, replace spark plugs, brakes, and on and on.
I miss the old days where you could open the hood, look at the engine bay and more or less figure it all out. If something similar had happened to my Sport on that trail, I may still be there waiting for a tow truck... How do you even get to the spark plugs in our engines? :lol:
Report, lots of pictures and videos of the trip and recovery have been posted on our Club's site: http://www.sclr.org/roverboard/11-trip- ... -2010.html (I was the only Sport there...
Lots of LR3s, though.)What struck me as funny is that the D90 owner's manual was elegantly bound in leatherette and about as thick as our RRS' chapter on how to operate the navigation system. It was divided in chapters. Chapter 1 (controls and instruments) was maybe 4 pages long: "Here is the key and here is the ignition. Turn key until you hear engine start. This tells you how fast you are going. This one tells you how much gas you have left. That's the radio ON button - if your vehicle is so equipped. A volume knob is also provided for your convenience. End of chapter one". The bulk of the manual was the "Workshop Maintenance" chapter, a thing of beauty. All kinds of detailed information and drawings on how to check and adjust the alternator belt, renew main gearbox, transfer case, front/rear axles oils, replace spark plugs, brakes, and on and on.
I miss the old days where you could open the hood, look at the engine bay and more or less figure it all out. If something similar had happened to my Sport on that trail, I may still be there waiting for a tow truck... How do you even get to the spark plugs in our engines? :lol:
