WILL THE V8 START?

AFTER CONNECTING the battery, the dash lights all lit up as expected. And with 20 litres of petrol added to the dry tank, the low-fuel warning light finally went out. There was also a flashing red low-coolant light to remind me to fill the cooling system and ensure all air was expelled.

The first turn of the key produced a click from the starter solenoid, then the engine spun rapidly. It didn’t fire, but those initial few turns circulated the oil and confirmed the engine was free, with no noises.

When a petrol engine refuses to start, it’s usually lack of a spark, or lack of fuel. On removing a spark plug and reattaching it to the lead, a good spark was seen jumping to the engine block when it was held close. So attention turned to the fuel system.

There was no hint of a fresh petrol smell emitting from anywhere on the Range Rover and no sound of the in-tank fuel pump operating. However, the fuel pump on an EFI V8 is not operated by simply turning the ignition on (whereas one can hear the in-tank fuel pump on a Td5 Defender or Discovery with the ignition on before the engine is started). The Range Rover’s fuel pump is normally activated by the cranking of the starter and/or the operation of the throttle via a throttle position sensor at the intake manifold flap. This means that it cannot really be checked by listening alone – the cranking of the engine drowns out any chance of hearing it.

To discover if the fuel pump was working or not, I decided to test it by unplugging the fuel pump from the wiring harness and temporarily wiring up a second power supply at the rear. The pump immediately came to life and petrol could be heard travelling through the fuel lines, away from the tank, and returning with a splashing sound at the return point in the tank.

Now that the fuel pump was whirring away efficiently, the ignition key was turned and the engine roared to life. And it screamed and screamed alarmingly! Feeling quite shaken, I shut the engine down immediately. This was an extremely worrying sign, but there surely had to be a simple explanation. I believe that when parts or components are carefully removed, and equally carefully reinstalled, they rarely stop working by some mysterious failure. It is nearly always down to some mistake or wrong connection during the installation. And so it proved with our 3.9-litre V8.

The extremely fast running of the engine had me thinking of some issue with the injection system and its ECU, but it actually turned out to be a silly mechanical problem. The throttle cable was too tight, meaning at rest the inlet manifold flap was open – the engine was never going to idle like that. How the cable had become so far out of adjustment remains a mystery. The problem thankfully was really quite simple to correct.

Now that the throttle cable was correctly set (still with auxiliary power to the fuel pump) the engine started as though the Range Rover had just been driven yesterday, and it settled down to that lovely purring idle that V8 owners adore and expect. But there was still that other installation problem relating to normal fuel pump operation that must now be traced and put right but, for now, the engine was starting and running easily, and all seems to be in great condition.

The second and third moments of truth soon came – the operation of the new clutch and the effectiveness of the brakes and the power steering. Pleasingly, all of these systems were perfectly fine, and I was able to drive the Range Rover out of the workshop under its own power for the first time in a long number of months. And what a relief it was.