Terrano Runs Hot and Cold

[RuffNReady]

Hi Guys, Great web site,
Well I need your advise, I have just purchased a 1989 Terrano TD27T Auto, to go hunting in.
After running it for the last week around town to get used to it, I noticed it seems to run cold, needle sits at the 1/4 mark (1/2 way between the C and 1/2 mark in the guage) and takes seems ages to get to there. So when having an oil and filter change, I got the garage to put in a new thermostat and radiator cap..... Great I thought... all set to go and play just as we have the show weekend.
So.. Friday afternoon saw me heading west out of christchurch toward the hills, in a hot westerly headwind and the air-con on. Buy the time i got to the top of the Porters Pass the temp guage hit the 1/2 way mark, OK I thought, I'v brought a pup, and she's got a cracked head or blown gasket..bugger.. , now here is the strange bit, buy the time we got to the bottom of the other side of the pass the temp has dropped right back to just over the C. For the rest of the day the temp ran between C and 1/4.
Once the motor cooled down I pulled the radiator cap off and there was no loss of water, no sign of oil or discolouration - just nice and green.
Back in town and runing around the motor takes ages to warm up.

Well I hope someone can give me some ideas as to the next step to sort this out.

Thanks
tony

[oldblue]

Had the same problem with my Prado, tried all the usual things, had to take the top tank off. the radiator and get it internally cleaned out. The radiator gets a build up of calcum in the tubs. Try fitting a indpendent temp guage, more accurate

[DieselBoy]

100% perfectly normal.

The Nisssan engines are not like the toyota's, in that the temp gauge sits exactly at half way. In fact, their gauges are electronically damped, in that between a certain Temp range the gauge sits at half way, out side of the range the gauge starts to move.

The Nissans are set up so that you get a true reading of what the temp is doing.
Usually they run around the quater mark, up to half when under load up a hill, then just over half the fan will kick in and drop the temp back down to just under half.
Quite often you will get up to 3/4 on the guage, but usually no matter what you do you can't get it to budge much over that.

We have two Safari's in the family, they runn exactyly the same temp wise, and they are basically a TD27 with two extra pistons.

My terrano ran the same as what you describe, and so do a couple of peoples i know.

Hope that puts your mind at ease!!!!!

[RuffNReady]

Thanks for the replys and help guys,
DieselBoy - heck it was a great relief to read your reply, I used to play around with motors in my earliers years, but they have all been petrol, and after waiting for such a long time to save up my pennies buy a hunting truck, to have it look like a big problem (head gasket etc) on its first outing was gutting. Well now with your good news I can start fitting all my toys: gps, 3watt carphone, radio etc, oh yeh most importantly rifle mounts and spotlight plugs.
cheers
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......here ..pig ..pig ..pig

[surflover]

hi there

we have the same terrano, 2 92 i think, the terranos have no oil cooler and may get warm, (should not go over 3/4's) and ours does the same thing there is nothing to worry about, they had an over heating problem with the engine fi they had done higher k's when towing, even if you get a compression test carried out it will show nothing

[DieselBoy]

Is it Auto??

If so, for the health of your wallet in the future, wip into repco and grab one of their little transmission oil cooler kits for $147.

The standard coolers block up and starve the Trans of oil.

About 1.5hrs to put on if you haven't done it before.

If its auto, do it.

Ask if ya need some further tips on fitting it.

[Fourbyfour]

Ruffandready,
I also have a Terrano TD2.7T and have suffered the same running hot under load problem. I have already had injector nozzles replaced, radiator dismantled and cleaned, viscous fan unit replaced as well as doing the simple things like replacing thermostat and radiator cap.
All of these things have made small improvements. One of the things that also helped improve it was fitting one of the Finer Filter cartridges to the air filter, guess there must be a better air flow through those elements. All of the improvements have been small but have helped.
Automatic versions of the Terrano suffer from the heating problems to a greater degree more than the manual versions do.
A friend had a good improvement when he installed a radiator core that was about 12 mm thicker than the normal one.
My biggest problem is when towing a trailer ordinary home trailer (7ft x 3ft 6in ) over the Kopu Hikuwai road on the Coromandel Peninsular and I have often resorted to opening the windows and turning on the heater and fan to provide a little more cooling just to get over the top of the ranges, once over the top of the hills the temperature drops from just over three quarters back down to one quarter in just over two kilometres.
I think the main faults with the Terrano cooling system is that the Auto transmission cooler could be bigger and also the radiator is about 50% covered by the airconditioning cooler.
Later versions made after the change to the 3 litre engine with intercooler do not seem to suffer these problems.
Also another owner told me it only takes a five degree celsius increase in
temperature to go from half way up to the overheating mark, he said he had checked it with a thermometer, I cannot verify this though.

Murray

[Fourbyfour]

Diesel boy, just had the injectors done again and also had the turbo checked out, boost on the inlet was as it should be. I have purchased the extra Transmission cooler and was wondering how difficult to fit myself.
Also did you have enough room in front of the air/con cooler to mount it inside the grill. where did you connect the pipes to.
Murray