Don't forget some photos of the s/c removal I'm doing mine soon and see it can be removed with out pulling all the coolant pipes off. Or much else for that matter.

Waiting on my smoke machine to arrive £95 nothing to loose. EBay special.

Supercharger is now removed.





It’s now also stripped and ready for the new bearings to arrive from Powerhouse.









Gaskets should be in Taggarts tomorrow so with a bit of luck reassembly by the weekend. 🤞

David. 2002 Range Rover 4.6 Vogue SE - Alveston Red with Lightstone Leather
2007 Range Rover Supercharged in Java Black with Ivory Leather
2012 Range Rover 4.4 TDV8 Autobiography in Baltic Blue with Sand Interior

Tonight saw a bit more time on the lathe to make an adapter for the smoke tester



That was then screwed into a scrap bit of steel that I’d drilled bolt holes in the right place on.



I then put some foam on the back of that to help it seal and bolted it to the charge cooler.





And connected the pipe from the smoke machine to it.



Initial pressure testing at 10PSI didn’t reveal anything. I then upped the pressure to 20PSI and there was a tiny bit of smoke visible from underneath the charge cooler on the OS bank of cylinders.

I removed the charge coolers as I’ve got new gaskets arriving tomorrow. If I could get my hands on the little 🤬 who had been in there before me I’d willingly do time for killing him. Instead of replacing the gaskets, everything had silicon on both sides of it. It’s taken me 2 hours with a Stanley knife blade removing all the mess.

Anyway, once the charge coolers were off I decided I’d do the valve cover gaskets as they were leaking oil down both sides of the engine. If you do it when the charge coolers are in place you need to depressurise the air conditioning. Thankfully, doing it this way you don’t.







First job for tomorrow after a trip to the dealer to collect parts is to spin it over on the crank pulley and check the valve clearances. That’ll give me a good idea on how badly the valve seats have suffered on LPG as when the seats are knackered there’s no clearance.

I’m hoping that they’re OK as I don’t want to go any further then this at the moment despite having a brand new set of cylinder heads on the shelf in the workshop.

David. 2002 Range Rover 4.6 Vogue SE - Alveston Red with Lightstone Leather
2007 Range Rover Supercharged in Java Black with Ivory Leather
2012 Range Rover 4.4 TDV8 Autobiography in Baltic Blue with Sand Interior

🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬 🤬

At 11am this morning I was wondering if it was too late to start drinking…

Spot the difference:

Right Hand Cylinder Head



Left Hand Cylinder Head



The cam lobes on the drivers side head line up with each other and the chan is nice and flat.

The cam lobes on the passengers side head aren't in line and the chain looks like a 🤬 humpback bridge. The chain has so much slack in it that the tensioner is fully extended.

On top of that, the valve clearances are shot to too… they should be between 0.018 and 0.022mm if memory serves me right. I’ve not got the manual to hand. On mine I can’t even get a 0.009mm feeler gauge in so it looks like my engine is suffering from valve seat recession and timing issues.

Good job I bought a spare pair brand new cylinder heads on eBay the other week then I guess!

Here’s a video showing the difference in the chains:



Just priced everything up…

LH Head Gasket - £70.56
RH Head Gasket - £70.56
LH Manifold Gasket - £35.41
RH Manifold Gasket - £35.41
Large Front Timing Cover Gasket - £28.24
Small Front Timing Cover Gasket - £27.32
Timing Cover O-Ring - £5.83
Crankshaft Oil Seal - £37.36
Charge Cooler Gaskets - £74.72
Valve Cover Grommets - £31.20
Cam Sprocket Bolts - £11.12
Tensioner Bolts - £31.64
Crank Pulley Bolt - £9.55

Total in gaskets and bolts - £463.78. Then there’s the timing chain kit on top of that at £465.

That’s on top of the £180 I spent at the dealer this morning for all of the intake gaskets and injector o-rings.

Best don my crash helmet before venturing home from the workshop this evening as my wife ain’t going to be best pleased!  2002 Range Rover 4.6 Vogue SE - Alveston Red with Lightstone Leather
2007 Range Rover Supercharged in Java Black with Ivory Leather
2012 Range Rover 4.4 TDV8 Autobiography in Baltic Blue with Sand Interior

Couldn't the chain issues, just be where the engine stopped, if you were to rotate it round, maybe that would look different ?

EDIT: watched video now, maybe one side is a tooth out ?

Need to rotate the engine to get the flats on the cam flat, and see if they are flat at the same same time

if you want to keep running LPG you'll wanna get hardened seats in those heads.

I’ve done a full rotation of the engine (8 revolutions of the crank) and the tensioner didn’t move.

On the drivers side head the flats on the cams are matched and would accept the tool. On the passengers side bank they flyers aren’t level with each other.

I’m trying to debate what to do with the heads… I’ve got a brand new set of NOS cylinder heads complete with valves that I bought from eBay. I’m going to fit them. However, as I see it, I’ve got 3 choices:

1. Send them away, spend another thousand pounds on them and have the seats replaced with hardened ones.

2. Fit the heads as they are. My car has done 100k on LPG. Seeing as I do around 5-6k a year it’s going to take a long time for it to become a problem.

3. Remove the LPG from the car.

Got a while to think about it yet as I need the crank and timing tools and the chain kit to arrive.

David. 2002 Range Rover 4.6 Vogue SE - Alveston Red with Lightstone Leather
2007 Range Rover Supercharged in Java Black with Ivory Leather
2012 Range Rover 4.4 TDV8 Autobiography in Baltic Blue with Sand Interior

a budget fix for 40-50k i think is to just reshim the engine. but sometimes it might be too past it for that.

i guess it really depends how long you want to run the car for.

out of interest did it have a valve lube kit?

Yea, it’s got a pumped flashlube kit fitted to it.

Previous owner had the system serviced annually and kept the reservoir topped up with flashlube too.

David. 2002 Range Rover 4.6 Vogue SE - Alveston Red with Lightstone Leather
2007 Range Rover Supercharged in Java Black with Ivory Leather
2012 Range Rover 4.4 TDV8 Autobiography in Baltic Blue with Sand Interior

Hopefully found my evap leak fingers crossed it doesn't escalate like yours

Is that the rigid plastic pipe? If so, mine was leaking there too.

There’s a picture of a part on page 1 of this thread, it comes with a brass insert, o-ring and push fit collet. That’s the right size to fit in there. I used the o-ring and collet but didn’t bother to change the brass insert.

David. 2002 Range Rover 4.6 Vogue SE - Alveston Red with Lightstone Leather
2007 Range Rover Supercharged in Java Black with Ivory Leather
2012 Range Rover 4.4 TDV8 Autobiography in Baltic Blue with Sand Interior

Indeed it is and I've had a good read and saw your post regards this but only now realised its the same part

O ring replaced hopefully my vac leak issues are fixed smoke test passed OK fingers crossed for yours

I’m getting mine stripped. Tool to remove the crank pulley arrived yesterday.

I removed the crank and did some more disassembly last night. Couldn’t be bothered tonight.



Timing cover will be off tomorrow, along with the heads hopefully.

David. 2002 Range Rover 4.6 Vogue SE - Alveston Red with Lightstone Leather
2007 Range Rover Supercharged in Java Black with Ivory Leather
2012 Range Rover 4.4 TDV8 Autobiography in Baltic Blue with Sand Interior

More progress has been made today!



To get the timing cover off you need to remove the air con compressor and the bracket that holds it which is mounted to the block. Some who has been in here before had cross threaded one of the bolts and it sheered whilst removing it so that’s going to need addressing before reassembly.

Other then that, disassembly has been very straight forward.

Here’s how the block looks this evening.



The heads are now both on the toolbox with the cams and timing gear.





Interestingly, the timing chains that go from the crank to the intake cams were still tight. It was both chains that link the intake and exhaust cams in each head that had a lot of slack in them.

With the heads off, you can actually see a difference in the way the inlet valves are seated in the heads.

Cylinder 1:


Cylinder 2:


Cylinder 3:


Cylinder 4


Someone has definitely been in at this engine before. One of the bolts on the cam bearing caps was loose, half of the bolts on the exhaust manifolds were loose, and one of the cam caps was marked with black marker pen.



Unfortunately, I also think one of the camshafts is scrap.



David. 2002 Range Rover 4.6 Vogue SE - Alveston Red with Lightstone Leather
2007 Range Rover Supercharged in Java Black with Ivory Leather
2012 Range Rover 4.4 TDV8 Autobiography in Baltic Blue with Sand Interior