Thursday, May 22, 2014

Cooling system overhaul

After all the weird issues with the hose and coolant spilling out and what not, I decided it was time to overhaul the whole thing.

I took the radiator out and took it for a good rod/clean out. Thing was a mess, but the results are great, if you need someone in the Valley for this check them, here

Rad out:
















In the mean time, I had noticed than from the 3 fans I should have, barely half was working: no viscous and A/C fan motors were dead.

I also got new oil hoses since the ones I had were leaking bad.


All of that was straightforward enough, but the motor fans, gave me some issues.

First I found posts where they claimed that VDO PM9116 was a compatible part for Discoveries. Since the RRC 95 is pretty much the same, I ordered 2 of those. They arrived and guess what?




Yeah, they don't look the same to me either.

Went back to the source and I saw that they actually had a Discovery *II* not I, so this motor is no good.

Back to finding something for it, after much google use, I found this time, that some CR-V from Honda have the same fan motor, so this reference 38616P3G003, actually did the trick and I got myself 2 fan motors that were pretty much the same as the ones in the 1995 RRC, they just push the fan a little closer to the radiator, but I checked clearance and all was good:






So after a lot of swearing and sweating, I did all the little adjustments (the connector wasn't the same but the cables were the same colors).

Also notice, how easy it is to access all this when you remove the big radiator.

So here we go some images for your enjoyment and I am happy to report that today the RRC was not hot at all, and the hoses did NOT collapse after driving. No coolant has been lost. No over pressure. All is good so far.