Land Rover Series I, II, III Club - Forum

Hi Team

Need some help if available.

My LR 2a 109 exAussie Military (and exVietnam) 2.25 petrol came to a halt on the way back from a Memorial service a week ago.

Just lost power, no coughing, just no power slowed down through gears.

It had been having a rough patch when looking to accelerate- up hills from lights etc.

This is similar to a few weeks ago when it ran very rough - and what seemingly “fixed it” after a lot of carb/fuel side work- was to tighten some ignition wiring and then clean and retighten the condenser. Purring like a kitten after that and full power

So after pulling over- sprayed a bit of SYB (aero start in uk) cranked it and nothing.

Had the Wife crank it while I watched and had the Dessie cap off - no spinning rotor button !!!!!!

Repeat and maybe an 1/8 of a turn- one last try and the engine did not move

So that’s where I am at.

There is plenty of oil on the dipstick and with rocker cover off everything looks lubed.

The car has a radiator full of coolant.

So with lots of oil and not overheating, am I dreaming that it may be “stuck” and not siezed, and what should I do first.

I did remove the Dissie for a look - can’t see anything obvious.

Question 1 - why was the rotor not spinning?

Question 2- at one stage it did move a little by hand on the fan, but then locked. Is there something common where it breaks/comes loose/ drops down and that locks the engine.

My first step is to remove the starter- couple reasons - Wife say she heard a noise on her side from that area, when it did turn over on test 1 and test2 it did sounds “different” to normal-maybe like less load from cranking ?

Plus if the Land Rover Genie is looking after me in some weird universe, the starter could theorically jam on the fly wheel and lock the engine


I been told pull the sump and look around.

I’ve been told pull the foil filter mount and make sure the drive for the dissie/oil pump that connects to the cam shaft looks all good the the lock screw is in.

I had a not bad suggestion that maybe the timing belt is broken/locked up etc.

I have a remote camera I can use to inspect inside so again any ideas on where to look and what to access would be great.

Any one with any similar experience/ more common things to test?

Anyone know a similar situation with a post attached and a solution

In any case this will be a post about me fixing it - hopefully after some “simple” repair and not documenting a full engine rebuild.

Thanks in advance

Shane

The distributor is driven by a skew.gear ftom.the camshaft which also drives the oil pump. Pull out the distributor and turn the engine over by hand and see if the distributor drive is turning. If it does, then the fault is in the distributor. If it doesn't remove the rocker cover and turn the engine to see if the valves operate.. if they don't it's a broken timing chain which is unlikely because the pistons would have hit the valves.

Neil Bymouth wrote: Sun Apr 26, 2026 9:25 am The distributor is driven by a skew.gear ftom.the camshaft which also drives the oil pump. Pull out the distributor and turn the engine over by hand and see if the distributor drive is turning. If it does, then the fault is in the distributor. If it doesn't remove the rocker cover and turn the engine to see if the valves operate.. if they don't it's a broken timing chain which is unlikely because the pistons would have hit the valves.

Hi Neil

Thanks for the advice - always open to info :-)

The challenge I have is the engine no longer turns - when I can work out why I will test those things so thatnks for the suggestions.

My understanding is the 2.25 is not an inteference engine so if the chain breaks the valves don't hit the piston - that's a gfood thing I reckon :-)

I will update this post as I move forward :-)

Thabnks again

I thought the engine did turn . Have you tried cranking it by hand? I dont know whether it's definitely not an interference engine but I seem to recall it is. It's not easy to diagnose without seeing it but it's somewhat odd.

I seem to recall that the Diesel is an interference engine whereas the petrol isn't (could be wrong though)

In this case, this is a petrol engine, so fingers crossed!