A client recently came to us with a Range Rover Sport 3.6 TDV8 which had suffered from engine failure. He had literally only purchased the vehicle from the dealer and barely managed a journey home in it before experiencing issues.
For those who are unfamiliar with this model, it packs a monstrous V8 twin turbo diesel engine which powers out about 268bhp as standard. But having such a beast of an engine has its drawbacks as its a real handful of a job to replace it and most standard garages wont go anywhere near it.
Once we took the clients engine apart, we found that it was one of the worst engine failures we’d come across in recent times. The engine block, crank and one of the heads were all completely ruined by the engine failure and the oil pump had literally exploded into pieces!
We replaced the clients engine with a rebuilt one, supplied him him 2 replacement turbochargers, 4 injectors, a water pump and glow plugs. Its safe to say his baby was purring again. Although roaring is probably the more appropriate terminology for this beast of a vehicle.
One of the biggest common problems with these TDV8’s is turbocharger failure which eventually leads to engine failure. If you do start experiencing turbocharger problems, always be sure to get your garage to do a compression test on your engine before replacing them. The last thing you want to do is to replace the turbochargers only to find that you now have to replace a faulty engine. Each of these tasks on these TDV8’s is massively labour intensive and will burn a huge hole in your pocket if you have to go through the process twice.
