Patrol 03 3L Breaking Down under Load

Hi all,

Just had to limp my brothers '03 Patrol auto back from Geraldton as it had a case of the stutters and wondering if anyone has any ideas. We are dropping at the dealers who did a service on it last week but would still like some other advice.

Scenario. He was towing 1.5t boat up from Perth on Sunday on the way north and got around Geraldton before it started breaking down under load. This was about 11am in the morning. Leave it for an hour and give the fuel pump a prime and goes again then starts doing it again once it gets warm.

I was only in Jurien Bay at the time (170 odd kms south) so went up and swapped cars with him. By this time it was around 5.30pm and during the day they'd managed (after lots of looking, changing filters and bleeding the fuel) another 40km before it happened again. They then took the boat off and got it back to Geraldton nice and easy to meet me at 5.30pm.

It was now pretty cool there as the heat of the day had gone. I then left Geraldton by about 6pm and drove the 170 odd km's back to where I was no problem at all and sat on 100-105kph. Didn't miss a beat.

Yesterday I left Jurien Bay and headed home to Perth with it. Was about 10am. I took it pretty easy but there are a fair number of hills coming back. About an hour into the trip going up some hills at about 100kph with overdrive on (about 2000 rpm I think) it started to happen. Just start shuddering and feels like no fuel etc. I then turned off o/d and the revs went to 3000rpm and it did not have a problem going up the hill.
Over the hill slow down and let it relax a bit etc. Temp on it had not moved at all. Problem from then just got worse regardless of speed or gear but dropping back and increasing revs gave a slight reprieve from it.
Finally coughed out as I turned into Cataby truck stop.

Left it for 30min and wouldn't fire even after priming. Left it an hour and it was happy sitting there at an idle and I even drove it around a bit.

Only conclusion I can draw is something in the engine bay is getting too hot and causing the problem as driving through the cool night it did not miss a beat.

As far as I know my brother did not put in E10 or anything.

Any ideas?

Regards