LR3 Maintenance - Throttle Body and MAF Cleaning - Story and 'How To' Video

[Angry_Man]

I have been having a blast with the new to me 2006 LR3 I picked up from Dale back in April. A lot of off road driving, on road driving, enjoying a beautiful rig. Lastly, this is a truck I can justify working on, turning a wrench and finding ways to make something drive better serves as a therapy to me.

I started having stumbling and rough idle at stop signs / lights. It actually stalled on me once while I was leaving a gas station immediately after filling up. I started to do some homework on google search and found out this 4.4L BMW mill is notorious for an interesting design feature. The air return from the crank case is upstream of the throttle body, and leads to a ton of oil particulates building up in the TB and MAF. Sure enough, when I opened mine up there was almost 1mm thick of the tar all over the TB. About an hour of work, carb cleaner and MAF cleaner spray and it was all better. I have been driving it for three days since this quick fix and it's night and day. I have seen another 3mpg in city driving, the engine fires up faster cranking the starter less, the responsiveness is much better and all the stumbling symptoms are gone. I highly recommend any LR3 owner take the time and 15 bucks in two cleaner products to do this.

Here are the videos I found that does a good job of detailing the process.

Throttle Body: http://youtu.be/FMq7vHoxIuk
MAF Sensor: http://youtu.be/R0B9k16gn1w

I'm going to check it again in about six months, and depending on what I see building up I'll be cleaning it every year or half year.

 

[jbullis]

After reading your post, i took mine off and had the same problem. Thanks for posting this....

 

[DukeTrout]

Air-oil seperator?

A lot of modified Subarus use air-oil separators to drop the aerosolized oil out of the crankcase air before returning it to the intake. Does anyone make a kit for Land Rovers? It sounds like the 4.4 L mill could use it more than my EJ257…

 

[unseenone]

As far as I have found there are zero modifications or performance gear available for the jag 4.4 engine. Maybe now that we've got a couple of part time racers on here with LR3's one of those creative people will come up with something.

It looks like this is the one you're talking about. It looks interesting. http://perrinperformance.com/i-14908570-air-oil-separator-for-wrx-sti.html

 

[Angry_Man]

After reading your post, i took mine off and had the same problem. Thanks for posting this....

You're welcome! Glad I could help.

 

[DukeTrout]

I have the Crawford Performance one on my Subaru (http://www.crawfordperformance.com/product/separator-air-oil-separator-universal-kit-version-2/), but the Perrin one is a great unit. Other than the mounting hardware, there is nothing particularly custom about these units. Other than getting them located and all the right lines run over to the separator and back to the engine, it should be pretty reasonable to install them on any engine that has a PCV system. The "universal" one contains lots of hose and flexible mounting hardware.

 

[TMR]

TTT. Anyone fit a catch can to the LR3 yet? Was thinking of doing this after cleaning my MAF and throttle body today. Some oil in the intake manifold - nothing excessive but would much rather do something about it sooner than later. IIRC, there are 2 crankcase breathers, one that feeds from the driver's side into the intake prior to the throttle body and the other into the pcv valve. Thoughts on this?

 

[DiscoDavis]

Oil consumption on these was never really bad enough to justify, at least not yet? Unless you really start to see your intake manifold getting gunked up I wouldn't bother. Save that money for the next repair! Maybe swap out the PCV, always a good thing to do every few years on these.

 

[Victory_Overland]

This is #1 on my short list of maintenance once I finally finish this bike project I've been working on. Connor gave me a good Seafoam advice and I plan to incorporate all of these together with new plugs, MAF and throttle body maintenance. I should have pulled the entire intake manifold when I had the front of the engine apart during crash repair.....lol

I'm going to give everything a good solid cleaning and replace my PCV cuz I know that has not been done since I have owned it.

 

[mac66bcn]

MAF cleaning

Last December I got the "check engine" light on my 2006 LR3. My local mechanic replaced the Purge valve. Two weeks later I got the light again, the same mechanic replaced the EGR valve. Last week the light came back again. This time I took the truck to Canadian Tire across the border and they suggested that I replace the MAF. Being wary of all there replacements I did some research on the internet and I found that cleaning the sensor may solve some problems with gas, idle, etc... I found a canister at auto parts, I took the MAF out and cleaned it. The following day when I started the car, the light was off, it was off for two days, now is back. I'm thinking about replacing the MAF since the cleaning didn't solve my problem, any thoughts on replacing vs cleaning?
By the way, the code I'm getting is P0226.

Thanks!