I have been working on old Land Rovers for a good few years now, but I’m still learning, and I don’t always get things right first time. The vehicles I work on can be 50 or 60-years old, have usually had a hard life as working vehicles and will often have had newer parts substituted at various times, or had repairs improvised using parts from completely different vehicles. The potential for making mistakes is rather greater than it would be on a five-year-old Ford.
Having said which, I don’t often have vehicles come back for rectification after they have been in my workshop. Over the last few years the most common cause of early returns has without doubt been rear crankshaft seal failures on five-bearing 2.25 and 2.5 engines. I have learned the hard way that some brands of crank seal have a jagged edge to the seal surface and leak straight out of the box, some have the casing slightly too small so that it spins in the housing, and some have steel rather than aluminium casings and gouge the housing when they are pressed in. The easiest ones to fit are the old-fashioned rubber-cased seals, but these wear a groove in the crankshaft journal
