daslandroverman

Apparently a Peugeot 106 heater fan can also be adapted into a Series 3 for a useful increase in CFM.

Looking at it again, I'd say from the position of the main gear lever and that of the red lever for the transfer box, that if the kit is designed to utilise the existing holes in a series tunnel, then the gearbox mounts are right, and it was intended for the engine to be moved forward in the vehicle.

Now that's a proper relic. True an LT77/LT230 combo is a better idea for the job, but that's genuinely rare, and a real bit of history. Sitting the seat box and bulkhead on the chassis would give a clue as to where you want the engine and box to sit, either using the series brackets on the original mounts on the crossmember, or making up some fresh ones to suit where it hangs now. I'd wager that as it's likely an early Ashcroft kit that someone thought it through well enough that when it was built up in a vehicle the selectors etc would come up through the appropriate holes in the floor/tunnel. As an aside, the remote selector linkage almost makes the IIA FC setup look uncomplicated.

The input shafts seem to be the same length on V8 and Tdi boxes, the size of the spigot on the Tdi one is bigger though, I can't remember the figure off the top of my head, but enough you wouldn't have much of a spigot bearing if you made one to fit the Tdi box with a V8. It would work the other way though. How the Tdi spigot would compare to the BMW I couldn't say.

P38's have 4 into 1 tubular stainless manifolds. The cast ones were for earlier Range Rovers and Disco 1 and 2, so will fit fine.

Depends how easy you want to make it. The Double S stainless systems are good enough for the money with a pair of 4 into 1 manifolds and following the original pipe routing under the car. The P38 type ones are also good, although the engine is offset to the right rather than the left, so the N/S manifold may need a little massaging for clearance.

I know a couple of chaps who actually rate the Britpart swivel balls. They wouldn't use the bearings and seals supplied in the britpart kit, but for the cost of them -even with adding the cost of a set of decent bearings- they stack up pretty well against other more well thought of brands. As always, you pays your money...

All V8 boxes (short LT95 included) have the same pattern on the front of the bellhousing. Clutches are the only difference between them with the LT95 having a coarse spline, whilst LT77, LT85 and R380 are all fine spline. There was a guy on 'Land rover engine conversions' Facebooks page that had an adapter plate for sale in the past week or two.

The R6 was a South African only model, petrol versions had a variant of the 2.6 Triumph engine that was used in the SD1, and diesel versions had a licence built Perkins 4.236, Not sure what they had in terms of gearboxes, but certainly not the same as a UK model six cylinder.

Stage 1 positioning would be different as the engine sits a lot further forward in the chassis than it would in a conversion of a 4 cylinder vehicle. Best thing is to hang the engine in with the mounting brackets attached and use them to position the chassis mounts.

Not really. Throw enough time and money at anything and you can fix it. A new chassis is more a long term investment. 5 years down the line when you expecting spent more than the value of a new one on repairs and still have a rotten chassis, you get the idea... It's either that or strip the vehicle down completely, have it all blasted back to bare metal, and replace anything that looks even remotely suspect. Done it both ways in the past, each have their merits.

They normally come with a handle for picking them up nice and easy, you can even get galvanised ones for longevity. They do tend to leave a bit of a ring on your arse when you've sat on them too long though

I've heard of a couple of 'challenge' motors being done with a complete vehicle loom from a Disco, with all the unused bits being stuck together in a waterproof box hidden somewhere in the vehicle to keep the ECU's happy. It's doable, but the amount of extras a D2 has that the defender doesn't means there's a lot to deal with. Whatever you do you'll likely need to spend some time with it connected to a nanocom or similar, so you might as well do it with a simpler wiring setup and save yourself chances of grief later on.

Cam bearings were always fitted unfinished then line bored, for the V8's, and certainly all the 4 cylinder engines from the 2 litre diesel onward. It's a method used to ensure tighter production tolerances, and prevent any sort of misalignment.

Simplest solution is get a full vehicle loom from a Td5 defender. Plug and play, with perhaps a little fiddling of ecu settings to make sure everything's happy and it'll run.

I was going to bring that one up. Easier to work on? Timing belts, water pumps, starter motors, alternators. Common service items that are a lot easier to work with on a 300 than a 200. Not having a water channel running through the timing chest is also an advance in design to my mind, along with a single multi V belt driving all the ancillaries. As I've already mentioned they've got a few known foibles (timing belt pulley misalignmentn, leaking P gasket, heater takeoff pipe wearing through on the water pump pulley and a bit of sensitivity to bleeding the water system properly. The first 3 are easily sorted with readily available updates, whilst the engine sits low enough in a Series motor that a full radiator gives it a good head of water which makes them a lot less sensitive to airlocks and bleeding the system. I think it's fairly obvious which side of the fence I'm on.

American market Discoverys had the 4 litre GEMS engine from about 1996, so if you were keen enough you could get the bits required to make it run standalone without the hassle of making a P38 ECU and wiring work. 3.9 front end on the 4.0 and keep the 14CUX is probably the cheapest (along with the simplest) and how I'd most likely do it, Many ways to skin a cat though.

The holes are all in the block, you need to relocate the oil filter though. It's not beyond the wit of man to manage it I can assure you of that.

Weighing the options these days, the 300 is a better engine. Easier to work on, more parts availability and more refined. They've got a few known flaws, but the fixes are easily implemented. Given the choice the 300 wins.

Shocking isn't it, and no grammar nazis to correct him. Thought for the day; The man who proof read Hitler's speeches really was a Grammar Nazi.

Looks interesting, and very 80's, when more wipers were better!!!

The block castings were getting a bit ropey by the mid 90's, and depending on how the casting came out they could end up with as little as 0.5mm of cylinder wall material between the liner and the water jacket, hence why they cracked. From my understanding the production blocks were graded in terms of quality. At the time the best ones were used for TVR, Morgan, Westfield etc engines, with any left over joining the lower grade ones for use as Land Rover engines. The 4.6's were more prone as they were more likely to be used for towing, along with having more available torque the gearbox was more prone to holding a gear and labouring the engine rather than changing down as the 4 litre engines would do. That coupled with the lean mapping for emissions reasons gives a fairly clear picture as to the why. Later engines were reworked to utilise the Cosworth developed 'coscast' casting systems which greatly improved the quality of the block castings, and later ones seem not to have the issues. A bit of trivia anyways.

It's an 88" wheelbase. I assume it dates from the same time as the IIA FC development, so could be running either the early IIA FC box (a lower ratio, but not as low as later ones) or a standard series box. Apparently they would also have offered them on 9.00x16's to special order. The main killer for the project was that it would have been in pretty much direct competition with the standard 109.

That makes sense now I'm awake (first reply was a bit early to be thinking totally straight) and have remembered how it all goes together. I'd suggest that if you trimmed the plastic arches the right amount so they're a fairly tight fit against the outer wing then that idea would work fine and dandy, although I'd suggest attaching them with nuts/bolts and penny washers. My 110 currently has them held in with zip ties as the plastic trim clips tat were in there fell out. You could probably cut a bit of steel or ally strip to bolt on and add the width to the inner wing to fill the gap. It should be rigid enough not to need further fixing to the outer skin, although a bead of sikaflex or similar should be decent enough to give a waterproof seal, and probably better than the factory defender setup...

Doesn't look a bad little truck for the money. I'd go as far as to say that at £3200 it's not bad value either. A low offer of £2,900 or £3k would probably secure it, and I reckon you'd be doing well to lose money on it. It appears to be (mostly) a full IIA FC cab which has value on its own, and if the chassis and mechanicals are good there's no reason it would be worth any less than £3k should you choose to sell it in a few years time. I'd be tempted myself of funds allowed. It does bear some resemblance to the first factory prototype, although the body does appear to sit a few inches lower on the chassis. Axle wise it may well be standard SWB units, possibly with bigger brakes fitted. Worth noting that early IIA trucks came out of the factory with Rover axles front and rear, with an ENV on the back quickly becoming standard fit, with ENV's front and rear from late '64 to the end of production. All at the same track width as the standard 109 of the time. The wide track ENV axle was only fitted to the IIB forward control. It's likely a standard steering box too, again the early IIA FC's also used the same part, with the longer column and lower ratio arriving later in production. Depending on intended use for the thing I'd be looking at perhaps fitting a set of Disco axles to increase the track, and perhaps look at a set of springs that would allow it to sit a little higher, along with a PAS conversion and building a rear body in similar fashion to the factory prototype. The end result would no doubt be pretty capable, along with serving a more than practical use. There's my two cents as it were.