2006 Range Rover Sport Supercharged, Coolant Hose Replacement

Mark: Hi, it's Mark from Top Local. We're here with Bernie Pawlik, Pawlik Automotive in Vancouver, Vancouver's best auto service experience. How you doing, Bernie?

Bernie: I'm going very well this morning.

Mark: We're trying to get our second one in here. We're going to talk about Range Rovers, which we've done a few things one. This one is a ... one of the supercharged ones. There was a coolant hose replacement needed. What was happening with this sport ute?

Bernie: Well, the vehicle came to us, it had developed a sudden coolant leak, leaking a lot of coolant out of the engine. We did our usual pressure test. This one was pretty complicated to figure out where the leak was coming from, somewhere on the engine. There's a lot of covers and pieces buried. This is also a supercharged engine, so right in the middle of the engine there's the supercharger, which basically blows air into the engine, gives it all that extra horsepower. It adds level of complexity. It turns out that the coolant hoses that were leaking are located underneath the supercharger. We could barely see them, but, we could see enough to know that that was where the leak was coming from.

Mark: Under the supercharger doesn't sound like the best place to put coolant hoses.

Bernie: It's not a good location at all. I mean, it's ... you know, they're rubber hoses at an area where there's an incredible amount of heat being trapped. Although they might be good quality hoses, the vehicle is 10 years old. You know, it's ... things go wrong. It's not, from an engineering perspective, extremely smart. I'll just share some photos here. Let's get these up. There we go. This is the ... this is the engine with the supercharger removed. This is the ... you can see ... The blue arrow points to the supercharger. Now, that, that has actually been lifted up and removed. That normally sits down where the red arrow is pointing. The red arrow is actually where the hoses are located. However, we've actually removed the hoses from this picture. They sit sandwiched. This is the valley area. It's a V8 engine. It's the valley area of the engine. Hoses sit on top of the valley. Supercharger sits over top of that. Like I say, there's an awful lot of heat being generated. Also, you'll notice there's a yellow arrow there. It just points to another hose nipple. If you look, sort of at the front of that picture, you'll see there's actually 4 of those nipples coming off. There's coolant hoses on these items, and what those are, those are the intercoolers. As air is being blown in the engine, it heats up. It's cooled, actually by engine coolant, which is warm, but, it's obviously cooler than the temperature of the air. The intercooler cools the charged air down, so that it densifies the air, and it gives the engine more power. It's a performance enhancement, but, again, there's another number of coolant hoses. It adds a lot of complexity to the engine. While we're looking at pictures, this is the hose we replaced. We'll talk more about the hose after. You can see, there's a lot of bits and pieces. The little yellow piece on the left, that just holds a clamp. That's one end at the front of the hose. Then, the other end, just to the right of that is the other front piece. That was the part that was actually leaking at this particular time. This hose is available only from the dealer. It's a rather, you know, pricey piece, but, you got to do what you got to do.

Mark: What kind of cost are you talking about?

Bernie: Well, the labor's quite a few hours to remove the supercharger and get the hose off. The hose itself is over $500. I think the labor is well over that as well. It's, with taxes and everything, in the end, I think the bill will be somewhere in the $1500 range, which is a lot of money for a couple of hoses.

Mark: No kidding. It sounds like it's obviously labor intensive. Isn't that true when you get into these very high-end, high-performance vehicles with pretty complex systems? Their costs of maintenance and repair gets a lot more expensive because they're so complex?

Bernie: It does. This is a thing you got to walk into with your eyes wide open when you buy one of these vehicles. You're getting ... you know, you pay a lot of money for a Range Rover new. I think the starting price on a supercharged Range Rover is $120,000. Some of the HSE models go up to $100,000 more than that. I mean, we're talking like brand new. Even an '06 of this vehicle is probably $80,000 or $90,000. Now, you can buy one for $20,000 bucks, and you get a really, really nice luxurious sport utility vehicle. You're going to be paying a lot of money for maintenance and repairs. As long as you know that, not a bad thing because you're actually saving a lot of money over buying a brand new one. You get the ... pretty much the ... Well, it's a bit used, but it's a nice product. That speaks to the complexities of these vehicles. They all have air suspension, which we've talked about. Things go wrong with that. Supercharger, eventually when that part fails, and it may never fail, but, usually everything will at some point. That's a few thousand dollars. There's a lot of stuff on these vehicles that can cost you money.

Mark: Overall, how would you rate these vehicles? I've had my British cars, and my fun with those. They're unique. Let's put it that way. How would you rate their Range Rovers?

Bernie: You know, I'd say they're actually pretty good vehicles. The thing with ... My opinion on English cars is that they've ... Ever since Ford took over Jaguar and Land Rover, they really made the cars a whole lot more reliable. When you get into the early 2000s, it's really when these vehicles started to become reliable. It's kind of funny to say that for Ford, because I find we often criticize Fords for their reliability. They did improve the product enormously. You know, they're not bad vehicles. I would ... you know, when you're buying a Jaguar or Land Rover, you're buying a luxurious vehicle, so there's more to go wrong. They're not like the old English car where you have to meet at your mechanic's shop every week, having something tinkered or tuned, something's going to break. They're not like that anymore. They're much more reliable.

Mark: If you're looking for service on your Range Rover, the guys to see in Vancouver are Pawlik Automotive. You can reach them to book, 604-327-7112. Or, check out their website, pawlikautomotive.com. We have quite a few other videos about Range Rovers on there, and lots of other luxury vehicles. Thanks, Bernie.

Bernie: Thanks, Mark.