andy_half0rd wrote:

Hi All,

Posting all the way from Noumea in New Caledonia, about 2 hrs east of Brisbane, Australia. I work as a fisheries researcher throughout the Pacific Islands. Covid has shut down our travel for best part of 2 years but that's okay as I've got my boat to go fishing and my trusty 2006 Disco 3 TDV6 to tow it with - NOT!

Been having issues with the cooling system for some time, replaced water pump and expansion tank but still loosing coolant slowly - but couldnt find out where. Driving along highway and suddenly temperature shoots up and I get off the highway with all sorts of horrible eruptions under the bonnet. Lift hood and the coolant is a brown, viscous mess - something has mixed with the coolant and I assume its oil. Anyway I waited for temperature to cool and topped up again with coolant to get home. Temperature went back to normal and car drove fine for trip home (another 5km or so).

So I decide to pull everything apart and see where i was at. There was a horrible mess in and around the oil cooler area - not the colour of what I saw in my coolant reservoir just oil and grime. I checked dipstick and it was also just oil. Drained a litre out of the sump and also no indication of coolant in oil.

Next step pulled radiator out and got it cleaned and checked and its OK. Pulled off all hoses and cleaned out goopy brown gunk. Ordered new oil cooler and replaced, changing oil at same time. While all the bits were out, I read about blanking off the EGR system so thought I would do that - even having 2 less pipes under the hood made it worthwhile in my book. Put everything back and thought I would start the car and drive off tired but happy.

Nope - started car and smoke is pouring out of the exhausts, it will start but sit in a very very low idle and eventually stop. The accelerator does not respond at all. I am pushing it to see if I could get the engine revved up but it does zero - absolutely no response. So I shut it down as all the smoke is freaking me out. I then check in, around, and under the engine to see if there is something really ugly happening. I cannot find any leaks, dipstick checks out OK, coolant level hasnt moved from the level I topped it up to. There remains some brown goop in the system which I assume flushed out of the inner parts of the system when I turned the car on initially.

I have let it sit for a day and come back to it with fingers crossed but same thing again.

In retrospect all I can say is that whats different is I blanked off the EGR valves, but otherwise just bolted and screwed everything back on. The only other possible issue I can think of is whether I put some piping back on the wrong connectors - especially behind the oil cooler.

Any and all advice welcome. Apologies for the length of the post but this is my last port of call. I have a manual and youtube to help me with most things but I dont even know where to start here.

cheers

Andy

andy_half0rd wrote:

All I did was remove the 2 pipes and blank off the ends with the kit. I didnt remove any wiring as such.

The car is a 6A so its definitely a 2006 model and yes I thought that would stop me getting any errors when I blanked the valves off.