Seattle109

Finally getting around to an update. i finally managed to get the bigger engine mounts installed. Wow. What a difference! Gauges are viewable at idle and the rear view mirror is usable! The vibes were a big part of the fatigue I was experiencing driving this rig. I’m pretty excited about a go forward with the 200tdi now. I am temporarily at a pause waiting on production of the forbyn brothers brake kit. Apparently they’re 3 weeks out. Meanwhile, my new shocks and springs should be showing up soon. the next big decision is whether to do brakes and suspension this year, then spend the winter building up a new galvanized chassis or whether to bite the bullet and do everything at once...

I’m currently waging all kinds of battles to retain my Series 3 bonnet and recessed grille I already had to sacrifice the viscous fan for an electric one (which I hate) and just figured out that I’ll need to either fabricate a spacer above my windshield frame OR switch to a Defender windscreen frame OR source a Dormobile poptop instead of the Alucab. I haven’t heard back from Dormobile yet and we have a local Alucab reseller here in Seattle so at this point a spacer seems the path of least resistance to be able to retain the Series split screen. It’s a lot of hassle for a poptop roof! @Snagger The Pike brewery? Oh boy, we can do better than that. If you’re not up to going to far Kells’ serves a respectable pint. Getting parts that are not NAS V8 bits is a challenge out West, usually with a big markup. NAS V8 stuff is all over the place. I have 3 generations of Rover V8, 4-5 ZF V8 autoboxes and a few transfer cases sitting in my garage because I don’t have the heart to throw them away! thanks for the thoughts on the transfer case ratio. I like the idea of retaining the original dif ratio, it makes the project somehow seem significantly simpler (“just dropping in a new gearbox and transfer case” ) I haven’t looked into low range gearing yet. i’ve got some time set aside this weekend to play with the 109 a bit. I might even take some photos!

There's so much good info in this thread! Thank you, thank you to everyone that has contributed. Snagger, next time you get out to Seattle, holler and i'll show you where the good beer is to be had. A couple of things that I've learned while calling around in case anyone finds this thread in the future: The Forbyn bros brake kit looks like a really nice (but $$) solution for 4 wheel disk brakes on a Series. They're based in Northern California. It's ~$3500 for the "Big Brake" Wilwood kit. Not for the faint of heart but thats a lot of stopping power if you're going to be towing and running a heavier rig like I will. GBR in Salt Lake City can provide diff gears for both Rover and Salisbury axles. Originally I was thinking about switching to 4.11's in conjunction with a 1.2 (Disco) LT230 that I already have in my parts car converted to part time 4wd. Is there any advantage/disadvantage to keeping the current diff ratio at 4.7 and changing the transfer box to 1.003 ? (using the Ashcroft provided gears) I've spent significant amounts of time playing with the ratio calculator on Ashcroft's site http://www.ashcroft-transmissions.co.uk/calc/ratio_calc.html I've never driven an automatic TDI, I've been assuming that it would be more challenging to keep that little diesel in the sweet spot and the turbo spooling. Does it bolt right up to the tdi with the same stumpy bellhousing? I'm not sure if i really want to hear the answer to this question because today, my wife isn't able to drive the 109 (very few Americans learn how to drive manual). If i made the car that easy to drive then she'd end up "borrowing" it! While I'm waiting for parts to show up, I started hunting for a "Rock N Roll" bed/Z-bed style replacement for my current second row seating. My wife and I will sleep down below, with our boys up top in the poptop.There are quite a few options as Conversion Vans were a popular thing here but it'd be nice to find one that was designed specifically for the 110/109 interior. (like a Westfalia/Vw Camper setup. Luckily i'm only 5ft 10 and my wife is also a shorty so there should be enough room behind the rear seats. Whats strange is that I was expecting to find a whole community of folks retrofitting VW westfalia style interiors into 110's and most of the things i've found online are all homebrew efforts. The VW Westfalia folding bed in a VW vanagon Camper was 73" long, I reckon I have 77" in the back of the 109 all the way to the bases for the Front seats. In my mind, a set of swivel bases for the front seats coupled with a 73" folding Z Bed might be the way to go if I can retain storage space under the bed and still have a spot for the fridge. I don't have a perfect spot for it yet, work in progress

Want to buy my white one? It’s ready for a new owner. I’m going to order the new parabolic springs and shocks this week. The 1 ton shackles and military bumpstops arrived yesterday. I also heard back from Dave Ashcroft. He thinks that if I regear the diffs to 4.11 i’ll be able to run the 1.2 disco transfer case and achieve a decent compromise for driveability.

This may be the stupidest question ever, but how did you fit the round mounts on? (They’re significantly bigger

Some great responses on my thread! I want to thank all of you for opinions and contributions. It's really valuable because I don't have the luxury of showing up at my local weekend club and sticking my head under someone elses car that approximates what im looking for My idea is firming up now. My existing Disco 200tdi mated to a short bellhousing R380, part time Lt230 (with the Disco 1.2 ratio) then change the diff ratio in my axles to 4.11's. I was going to service them anyway before I started putting miles onto the car. The bonus to this strategy is that I can rebuild the petrol 2 1/4 i have sitting in my garage and R&R the Series gearbox and Fairey at my leisure. I was going to get the diff gears from GBR in Utah, the LT230 kit and short bellhousing R380 from Ashcroft and then if i need custom driveshafts i can get them made here locally. Larna86, with your Disco engined 200tdi, how did you address engine vibration? Are you still using the stock petrol mounts? I found this Forum after spending many hours reading Nicks Landrover site (http://www.nickslandrover.co.uk/new-engine-mounts-cure-vibration/) I managed to get hold of a set of the Bearmach mounts but the softer round bearmach mounts don't fit (wrong shape and are larger than the existing petrol mounts). I'll get some parts ordered and start a build thread for folks interested once I have something to report.

I made the loud exhaust mistake with my white lwb. I installed a full stainless Magnaflow sysrem and the thing drones me half to death I’ll need to take a look at my engine mounts this weekend but I’m pretty sure that they’re welded on.

Oh Portals.... (very envious) its very tempting to lift the entire drivetrain from my donor car. I’ve held off because I didn’t want to start cutting at my frame and with the 200tdi install you can mount it to the existing mounts.(struggling with the idea of irreversible change in case I ever want to revert the car back to stock) your reply does give me the hope that my plan may deliver what I’m looking for. It’ll never be a modern car but I want to be able to drive it for a series of consecutive 600-800 mile days while driving to “the fun stuff”. I’ll order a set of Bilsteins. I’ved used them on my RRC for years and really like them. regarding Parabolics, I’ve been looking at the Rocky Mountain ones.

I did consider both a Hybrid build, bolting my existing body into a RRC LWB frame and ordering a new galvanized coiler chassis but decided against it. I’d like to retain the 200tdi if I can reduce the engine vibration through the frame. I love the economy of the engine. The fuel range of my 109 is 2.5x greater than in the Discovery V8 I plan to replace. That’s a big deal for me as i’m often more than 200 miles from a petrol/gas station. A more modern manual transmission would allow me to keep up with traffic without going to an automatic. (Or at least I can in my D1 with 240,000 miles on the R380 in that.) Regarding couler vs Leaf springs I actually like and prefer the idea of staying with Leaf springs. What i’m unsure of, is whether the combination of Parabolics plus the Military bumpstops and 1 ton shackles is a bad idea or not. If anyone has run this configuration i’d love to hear about it. I did a quick search on this site but didn’t find anything.

Seeing as i’ve already talked about my white lwb, I figured i’d upload a photo. I took a rhino rack Pioneer Platform designed for a 110 and altered it for the shorter roofed LWB. The result was a significantly more compact footprint that on my D2 and very usable. The big advantage to a pop top style roof vs a standalone roof top tent is the ability to stand up inside the car and that you can run a diesel heater over night. (Which is really nice when camping st altitude)

Cheers for the comment! Pretty good advice actually and should be required reading for anyone buying a Land Rover, especially when parts are only available from specialist parts suppliers because you own the car in a place where they were never sold. Pottering, fun and tinkering pretty much about sums up what i've used the car for until now. It's about all its good for in its present configuration. That said, I've never really found any aspect of Land Rover ownership to be about economics, it's definitely more of a passion thing. I grew up loving Land Rovers, enjoyed driving MOD 109's when I was in the Navy and missed out on the final year of NAS D90 sales in 1997 when I emigrated to the USA. I could conceivably find a 110 project car for under 20K USD, but it'll need just as much, if not more work done to it and at the end of the day, won't be a split window, rust free Series. I do already have 2 LWB Classics and 4 Disco's (my wife's D4/Lr4 doesn't count). I like them as every day vehicles but they fall short for Overlanding.(IMHO) My white LWB just came back from a 6000 mile roadtrip tour of the American West. It definitely does better than the Disco as the flat roof allows for a lower profile rack and keeps the overall height of the rig down with the rooftop tent on board. To my knowledge noone makes a poptop for either generation of Disco or the LWB Classics, (crying shame and a missed opportunity for the LWB because the roof unbolts really easily) whereas for the 109/110 body there is a plethora of options.

Thanks so much for the reply! Believe it or not, getting a 200TDI CSW out here in Seattle is a very expensive proposition. One of the reasons that I've waited for 3 years to build my car is for exactly the reasons you mention. Today it's original(ish). Granted, I'd keep the parts I pull out of it, in case I ever wanted to return to stock but in it's current configuration, it's not really usable safely on American roads. The 200 tdi engine is plenty fast for sure. It's far and away the strongest part that I have on the truck today. Once i'm into 4th, I can keep up with traffic. In fact, I've seen it up to 80mph GPS indicated on one stretch of Interstate in Texas, where I was trying to get out of the way of a Semi that was trying to run me over from behind. However, in a culture dominated by powerful, (compared to my landie) automatic transmission cars, you just get swamped at take off from the traffic lights, and then people start cutting in front of you and slamming on the anchors at the next red light, right into your safety stopping zone. It's a fairly stressful driving experience. I'm not sure how else a 200TDI would install into a Series without the Crank pulley being directly over the top of the front axle. Maybe if you cut off the original mounts and welded on new ones then set the transmission further back in the car? Not sure. The only conversions that i've seen have utilized the existing factory petrol mounts. You end up losing the ability to run a viscous fan as well due to space concerns. Thats a bummer that with Parabolics, you don't think that the ride is as good as on a Coiler. I was hoping to hear otherwise. I have a bunch of Land Rovers, but they're all Range Rover Classics, D1's and D2's with different vintages of Rover V8 so the Series is a new adventure and learning experience for sure. Mind me asking whose Parabolics you're running? For brakes I was going to go with the Forbyne kit. They're in the same time zone as me, down in California . Expensive, yes, but it looks like a well engineered solution. Regarding regearing your LT230, what ratio do you have in your diffs if you're running 1.0003:1? I'm hoping that I'll be able to find someone with a 200tdi , r380 and lt230 on here that can comment on which ratio they run in the transfer case and in their diffs. Thanks for the confirmation about retaining my axles. The promise of 4 wheel disk brakes and a wider track is quite alluring but I'd written it off once I started looking into it. I've already resigned myself to a lot of soundproofing work in the truck once I've addressed the driveability issues.

Heh all, As a long time Land Rover owner , it's finally time for me to build my 109 into the vehicle I imagine. I've owned my 1983 County Station Wagon for 3 years and promised myself I wouldn't start hacking at it until I'd had some time to figure out what works for me and what I need to change. My vision is to replace my 2004 NAS D2 V8 as my primary Overland rig with the 109. One of the Members of this Forum recommended I join LR4X4 after I messaged him on his own private website regarding some drivability modifications made to his own 109. And so here I am My 109 is an original 12 seater Station Wagon in pretty decent shape. It does have a 200TDI fitted, (looks like a Steve Parker conversion) mated to the Series Transmission with a Fairey Overdrive. It has the Rover axle up front and a rear Salsbury. I bought it in the UK (Birmingham) and imported it here to Seattle, where I've been trundling around in it and generally using it as a Tractor. Problems to address (and some questions) Driveability - Driving the 109 in Seattle traffic is a hair raising experience. The Series box is very slow to shift smoothly, with the most frustrating element being the need to constantly be in an out of Overdrive. I don't mind the RHD so much but avoiding being run over is becoming tiresome. What do you guys think about switching out the gearbox to the "short bellhousing" R380 and connecting it to a 1.2 ratio LT230 converted to part time 4wd ? Currently I have the stock 4.7 ratio diffs, I'm not sure if i'd need to go to 4.11's or whether I could just run a larger tire size avoid revving the guts out of the motor at highway speeds? stability - I'd like to broaden the track but keep the original axles. Thoughts on a negative offset, and wider wheel ? I'm planning on upgrading to disc brakes and power steering so i'm hoping that will address some of the issues associated with running a wider tire. Suspension - Currently, the suspension is stock, which is wonderful because the bump stops are actually above the height of the crank pulley. Hit a big bump and take out the pulley! My thought was to fit the military shackles and bump stops to reclaim suspension travel. If i'm running the wider wheels, would you guys recommend i still go with Parabolics? Is there a better way to arrive at the 2" type lift that I've done on my coil sprung rovers and still get the best on road ride? My goal is to try and achieve a driving experience comparable to my very tired 97 Discovery 1 SD with a manual transmission. I can drive that beast for thousands of miles without getting unduly tired. I'm going to run an Alucab Icarus poptop roof and transfer most of the overlanding gear from my D2 into the 109 once it's finished so I anticipate it being heavier than a regular 109CSW. I do have a full parts truck D1 lying around, which has led to a lot of my questions as it's somewhat tempting to lift the 4.0 GEMS engine, transmission, axles and transfer case from it and graft it into my 109 (no restrictions here on how original the truck needs to be). The idea behind the V8 is that it's easy to source parts for it here in the USA and that my 200tdi vibrates like crazy. I ordered the softer Bearmach mounts thinking that would solve my issue but can't see any way to easily replace the mounts that I currently have as the new ones are significantly bigger (and different shape entirely) Thats a lot for my first post so thanks very much to folks who've read through the whole rambling missive. I'll post some pics of "Clare" once I get home from work. Cheers!