Originally Posted by
Uplinker
Fair points, Steve. Ah yes, WD40, the saviour of many an ignition system!*
Even more so when used in conjunction with Vaseline. As soon as you get a nip in the air, clean the contacts with switch cleaner, douse in WD40, make the connection and smear Vaseline around the rubber or plastic seal. This keeps it all clean and prevents water ingress.
This is particularly useful with electric radiator cooling fans, which are the Achilles' heel of a lot of modern engine designs. A lot of the time when you hear about modern engines being susceptible to head gasket failure, such failures are usually the result of the fan connections getting gunked up and stopping it from cooling the water in the rad when stationary. This leads to hot water being pumped back through the engine, overheating and - eventually - HGF.
The K-Series in the Land Rover Freelander was a special case though, and was down to the Ford engineers not understanding how the K-Series worked (specifically how closely engineered the tolerances were). Admittedly the stock gaskets were pants, but that was a secondary issue. A lot of grief could have been avoided if they'd simply moved the thermostat switch from the radiator out pipe to the in pipe.