Not the best start to a job!

[Burnerman]

Decided to fit a new timing belt kit to my Yeti today (2 litre cr diesel)......parts cost £190 inc coolant and a water pump with some sort of thermal clutch - which was a new one on me. The price made me wince a bit.
Anyway, the locking wheel nut key decided to cam out and I thought I was stuck, but thankfully my windy gun managed to shift the bolt, much to my relief, 1 hour later. It’s bye bye to locking wheel nuts from now on if I can shift the others!
4 hours later the job was done.....the old parts were perfect but the car is a 65 plate with 43k miles so I figured it was a good move.
It’s probably my imagination but the engine seems quieter now.
John

 

[norseman]

Decided to fit a new timing belt kit to my Yeti today (2 litre cr diesel)......parts cost £190 inc coolant and a water pump with some sort of thermal clutch - which was a new one on me. The price made me wince a bit.
Anyway, the locking wheel nut key decided to cam out and I thought I was stuck, but thankfully my windy gun managed to shift the bolt, much to my relief, 1 hour later. It’s bye bye to locking wheel nuts from now on if I can shift the others!
4 hours later the job was done.....the old parts were perfect but the car is a 65 plate with 43k miles so I figured it was a good move.
It’s probably my imagination but the engine seems quieter now.
John

Good friend of mine swears by his Yeti, bought at 18k now on 62k & has never given him any problems. Runs on the smell of an oily rag, unlike my straight 6 & V8 petrols.
If it wasn't for the fact that I don't like diesels & prefer autos I might be tempted.

 

[Burnerman]

I have to say I've been very pleased with mine (4x4 Outdoor) - it's had an issue with the Haldex control unit and a few brake discs due to the thing standing around for weeks at a time but nothing I can't handle.
They do have a rust spot though at the bottom corner of the doors where the paint seems thin which I attend to regularly which spoils an excellent product.
It'll cost a fortune to replace though, and the 4x4's are all DSG, which is why it stays for now.
John

 

[norseman]

I have to say I've been very pleased with mine (4x4 Outdoor) - it's had an issue with the Haldex control unit and a few brake discs due to the thing standing around for weeks at a time but nothing I can't handle.
They do have a rust spot though at the bottom corner of the doors where the paint seems thin which I attend to regularly which spoils an excellent product.
It'll cost a fortune to replace though, and the 4x4's are all DSG, which is why it stays for now.
John

Never consider anything without a torque converter as a 'proper' auto.
BW 35, GM powerglide & ZF in cars or Wilson per-select on buses (yes, I know the latter was a fluid flywheel) but all this twin clutch nonsense ...

I can't help being old

nb. Freelander owners have Haldex issues, my old RR has a manual diff lock ... KISS.

 

[carmanmemoranda]

Never consider anything without a torque converter as a 'proper' auto.
BW 35, GM powerglide & ZF in cars or Wilson per-select on buses (yes, I know the latter was a fluid flywheel) but all this twin clutch nonsense ...

I can't help being old

nb. Freelander owners have Haldex issues, my old RR has a manual diff lock ... KISS.

I'm somewhere in between torque converters and haldex type autos. I'm old too.. I think modern autos give a better gear change and initial take up. But the problems that go with them !

and locking wheel nuts ! The aggro they cause and the amount of time spent looking for them ! When was the last time you saw any car with its wheels taken and left on blocks?

 

[norseman]

and locking wheel nuts ! The aggro they cause and the amount of time spent looking for them ! When was the last time you saw any car with its wheels taken and left on blocks?

That could depend on the neighbourhood where the car 'lives'
Never had a problem with LWN myself.

 

[Avocet]

Decided to fit a new timing belt kit to my Yeti today (2 litre cr diesel)......parts cost £190 inc coolant and a water pump with some sort of thermal clutch - which was a new one on me. The price made me wince a bit.
Anyway, the locking wheel nut key decided to cam out and I thought I was stuck, but thankfully my windy gun managed to shift the bolt, much to my relief, 1 hour later. It’s bye bye to locking wheel nuts from now on if I can shift the others!
4 hours later the job was done.....the old parts were perfect but the car is a 65 plate with 43k miles so I figured it was a good move.
It’s probably my imagination but the engine seems quieter now.
John

Was it a clutch, or was it a moving shroud that goes over the water pump impeller when the engine is cold, to speed warmup? (The latter being what is in our 2 litre diesel Kodiaq and they're famous for sticking).

 

[Burnerman]

I didn't realise that my car actually had one of these pumps......the pump impeller has a shroud over it that presumably moves out of the way as the engine warms up - a new one on me and I've no idea how effective it is.
I unbolted the original sensor and fitted it to the new pump.
Thankfully the original one was just fine and had been completely reliable so fingers crossed for this one!
This fancy pump is around £100 more than the standard item - whether it's worth it is unknown to me.
John

 

[Avocet]

I didn't realise that my car actually had one of these pumps......the pump impeller has a shroud over it that presumably moves out of the way as the engine warms up - a new one on me and I've no idea how effective it is.
I unbolted the original sensor and fitted it to the new pump.
Thankfully the original one was just fine and had been completely reliable so fingers crossed for this one!
This fancy pump is around £100 more than the standard item - whether it's worth it is unknown to me.
John

They're a brilliant idea, poorly executed. One the back of the impeller there's a little hydraulic pump that takes a bit of coolant and tries to pressurise it. When the engine is hot, there's a solenoid valve that just bleeds that pressure away internally, but when cold, it "pumps" this shield out against a return spring, and covers the impeller, which all but cuts off the water flow and speeds up the engine warm-up period. Once warm, the ECU tells the valve to open, the pressure bleeds away, and the shield retracts. Sadly, they're famous for sticking and causing the car to overheat! Received wisdom is to change them when the cam belt is done. Funny enough, ours overheated (slightly) a week before it was due the cam belt, so we got it done. They definitely do speed up the warmup time in cold weather (and they're loads cheaper than having to fit a combustion heater)!

 

[Burnerman]

Thanks for that, Avo
I'm hoping that if the thing should fail it will at least fail safe so my engine gets cooling.......no problems so far but perhaps time will tell!
John

 

[Avocet]

Thanks for that, Avo
I'm hoping that if the thing should fail it will at least fail safe so my engine gets cooling.......no problems so far but perhaps time will tell!
John

Alas, they don't seem to! I asked the dealer to give me ours back after they'd changed it, and I chopped it up to see what was inside:

Here it is in the "cold start" position with the shield over the impeller.

and here it is with the shield retracted.

This is it, having been very crudely chopped up.
I think the problem is that putting it into "cold start" mode, requires the pump to build up some pressure and push it there, but moving it to the "warm" position, is only done by the return spring. My guess, is that there are some nylon moving parts in there that swell and stick in their bores, so that the shield can't retract, but the pump will always be strong enough to push it out.
Sometimes, they do it intermittently, and a few people say they have been lucky enough to pull the connector off the solenoid valve on engine shut-down when the temperature is OK, so that on the next cold start, the shield can never come out again, because there's no feed to the solenoid valve. The pump just works normally then (but the engine takes longer to warm up).

 

[fixitflav]

Decided to fit a new timing belt kit to my Yeti today (2 litre cr diesel)......parts cost £190 inc coolant and a water pump with some sort of thermal clutch - which was a new one on me. The price made me wince a bit.
Anyway, the locking wheel nut key decided to cam out and I thought I was stuck, but thankfully my windy gun managed to shift the bolt, much to my relief, 1 hour later. It’s bye bye to locking wheel nuts from now on if I can shift the others!
4 hours later the job was done.....the old parts were perfect but the car is a 65 plate with 43k miles so I figured it was a good move.
It’s probably my imagination but the engine seems quieter now.
John

43k miles doesn't seem very far. My old Mondeo was every 100k (it got 2) but that wasn't a timing belt.
Trust you've given your wheel nuts a smear of grease!

 

[Burnerman]

The mileage is low but the car is 7 years old now so I thought best to play it safe......even so, the parts that came off showed no apparent wear.
The coolant was due for renewal too.
I managed to shift the remaining locking nuts today, although the key would cam out using a long bar. I used my impact wrench - which wasn’t powerful enough to shift them - but it seemed to settle the key in enough to shift them with the bar. Great relief there!
John

 

[fixitflav]

Great relief there!

I bet!

 

[Burnerman]

I guess it must be around 12 months since the wheel nuts were shifted - I can only blame myself for them being so tight!
Banged one of the alloys with the socket, too.
John