Tetsu0san

Does it crank OK or is it slow? If it's slow then that could be loads of different things but the most likely are a poor battery or a dodgy earth strap. On a 200Tdi you shouldn't need the glow plugs unless it is really cold, but I suppose some engines are better than others. You can just take the glow plugs out and put 12v across them. If they glow red then they are OK. Mine is a little lumpy when it first starts but that soon clears so I wouldn't worry about that too much. But if you have to keep cranking it over to get it started then I suspect it might be a lack of fuel. This could be air getting into the fuel system somewhere, fuel filter blocked or just old, dodgy lift pump or even issues with the injector pump and/or injectors. Once it gets going is it all OK? Is it down on power? When it's running, lift off the oil filler cap and see if there is any smoke and pressure in there. These could indicate a valve or headgasket problem (or other things) which could also cause it to be a bugger to start.

A tracker is good from the point of view of recovery, but how many times dose a tracker actually do the job? I mean how many cars with trackers fitted are actually recover and/or lead to a conviction of the thieves? I am just getting paranoid right now because there was a theft only about 5 miles from where I live. And as weasel_110 said it's not just a car, it's almost a way of life. Although there might be a possibility of getting it back it just wouldn't be the same as some little tossbag would have been messing about with it. Prevention is the key here and finding out what preventative measures failed would be a good thing.

What I am trying to get at is if any of these anti theft devices actually work. Or more to the point how much effort a prospective thief will take to steel your car. Do they generally try to start and drive it, do they just drag it, lift it, tow it etc.

Hi all Please excuse me if this has been covered a thousand times, but I have been thinking about the rising theft rates of Defender's and how to prevent it. There are plenty of anti-theft devices out there ranging from the foot pedal securing kits, battery cut out switches etc, but I don't think I have actually heard from anyone who has fitted any of these and had theirs stolen and then recovered. I have various things already in place on mine (as well as a large and aggressive dog) and I have a lot of ideas running around inside my head about more things to fit, but I was wondering about what actually works. Prevention is obviously the best option, but even with the best items fitted if someone wants your car, they are going to take your car. So I was wondering if anyone out there who has had their Defender taken and managed to get it back would like to share their experience and possibly share what the little scrotes had to do in order to steel it. I mean, do the little godshi*es drive them away, tow them away, lift them onto a flat bed. If they hi-ab them there there is little or nothing you can do, but driving them away gives you a lot of options. Equally it would be good to know what preventative measures actually worked and they didn't manage to take it. Cheers

Back again. I actually managed to fettle all of my pipework into place without having to buy anything after all. However, I did pick up some hose at Newbury on Sunday anyway. I was just worried about temperature but I think my fears were unfounded.

Thanks for the kind words, I am very pleased with how it all looks. The old setup had a lot of cable ties holding stuff away from bits rotating bits, or holding stuff closer to other bits, which I hated. I haven't had to use a cable tie anywhere (so far). But you are right, it was more about what I have available but I had bought a 200Tdi Discovery because of the nighmares I had with my 300Tdi Discovery. I suppose that if I hadn't had so many problems with 300Tdi's over the years then I would probably have had a 300Tdi engine ready to fit instead. Plenty of people I have met say the 300 is a perfectly good engine, and I am sure it is, but I feel that the 200 is, as you said, a more robust unit. I have to say however that I prefer the serp belt setup on the 300 and I am very tempted to convert mine to have a 300 front. Whether or not I do that is a different matter altogether. And on a side note I have recently acquired a 300Tdi engine which needs a rebuild, so who knows what the future may bring!

I already had a 200Tdi Discovery that I had just done a cam belt and head gasket on, and I knew the engine very well. And as the Discovery was complete I had all the pipework, radiator, intercooler etc. I thought about getting another engine from somewhere but then you have to be sure it's a good one, probably fit a cam belt, then you have to source all the ancillaries, pipework, radiator etc. This lot was already at my disposal. And to be honest I find the 200Tdi a better engine than the 300Tdi. I know people say that the 300Tdi is a more refined engine and is better, and I must say that I prefer to work on a 300Tdi, but I have had better overall experiences with a 200Tdi. Maybe I have just had a few bad experiences with the 300Tdi, not sure. But in theory as I have put the gearbox into the Defender 300Tdi position, if I did ever need to put in a 300Tdi engine it should fit with the minimum of fuss. Just cut off the engine mounts, weld on some new ones, swap the radiator and intercooler, fettle some pipework and it should be good to go!

Geabox in place Cut the seatbox Engine offered up for the first time

Handbrake attached Old engine mounts off New gearbox in with welded clutch fork Nice long bellhousing!

The whole was too close to the edge so I added extra metal In place! Modifying the transfer box for the Defender transmission brake

More old engine pics Old gearbox in situ Engine out! Modifying the Discovery gearbox crossmember to fit the Defender chassis

Just an update. Now the engine is further away from me in the engine bay and isn't a noisy old Transit engine, the whole ride has been totally transformed into what I would almost call civilised. I think the Discovery engine mounts certainly help with the vibration as there is virtually none whatsoever. With the old transit engine in and running at about 50mph you couldn't see anything in the rear view mirror as the vibration made it all too blurry, and the noise from that old lump was almost deafening. Bleeding eardrums was an excepted outcome of any journey! But now the rear view mirror is viewable, the noise levels allow you to hear your passenger talking, you can even hear the relay on the winkers! If I fit a radio then I think I might actually be able to hear it! And if I fit more sound proofing in the cab and in the engine bay, it might even sound like a real car! Another thing I like is the power of the engine. The transit engine wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding, but the 200Tdi actually (sort of) pins you in your seat if you really gun it. And the nice thing is that you don't have to have your foot to the floor all the time either. You can actually accelerate using the pedal rather than always pushing the pedal to the floor. However, on a negative side you can hear all the groans and grumbles from a car that had done nearly 300,000 miles. These grumbles must have been there before the conversion but were masked by the overwhelming noise from that engine. Oh, and I found some more pictures that I took while I was doing it: Old engine

But yes, RTV may help to seal the, er, seal. It shouldn't need it but in your case it is worth a try. And again, out of interest, is the hole where the seal is being sat OK? There is no damage to the surface where the seal touches the sides?

When you say under pressure, is your engine breathing at all? If you run the engine is there smoke and pressure coming out of the dipstick and oil cap? My old 300Tdi was breathing heavily and that tends to try and push oil out of every place it can. I had a leaky rear crank seal, leaky breather, in fact leaky everywhere. if you engine is breathing badly then there may not be a lot you can do about it without trying to find out why it is breathing. That can be just a blocked breather or knackered bores, piston rings, head gasket etc etc. mine was bores, rings and just generally knackered. How many miles has it done (not that it means much, but it might be a good indicator)?

And if you only see the oil at the bottom then it has to be that crank seal that is leaking. You could always seal it in with some RTV I suppose, just in case?

Just a thought, did you put that rear seal in the right way round?

if you take the timing chest cover off, can you see any oil in there? It could be coming from the cam or possibly even from between the chest and the block which in turn is leaking down inside the chest. I see you have replaced this chest, so when you did it did you replace the little rubber seal between the block and the chest? But if you take off the cover you should see where it is coming from.

I used the term as this is the term I read in another thread somewhere. Basically on the 200Tdi the turbo output is pointing downwards at roughly 4 o'clock (if you are looking at it from the front) which means that the pipework that comes off it and goes to the intercooler is pointing at the inner wheelarch. It would have rubbed if left so I was either going to have to cut the inner wheelarch to give it clearance or do something else. I read a thread or a webpage where someone took the front off the turbo, rotated it roughly 90 degrees, drilled and tapped a couple of new holes so the actuator would bolt back on and then put it back together. That is basically what I did. I was a little daunted by the notion of doing this but it is actually very easy to do. This should explain it. Linky...

I presume this is a 200Tdi? The oil level in mine is above the end of the metal pipe so when you remove the hose it pushed oil of of the pipe. If you are quick enough with the swap you *should* be able to do it without using much oil. Just connect the new pipe to the breather and route it down to the pipe, unroute (is that a real word?) the old one but leave it connected then just quickly swap them over. Failing that, just drain into a clean bucket, swap it and just pour the oil straight back in the top.

Hi all I have just finished my 200Tdi conversion on a 110 which had a Transit engine in it when I got it. The Transit engine didn't use a glow plug starter system, and I found out that it was a V8 originally so I presume the glow plug relay wiring was never part of the vehicle. I have found the connector for the glow plugs in the loom under the bonnet near the clutch and this has one or two wires connected which I would imagine is where it goes. As I remember on my old factory fitted 200Tdi 90 there was a relay under the bonnet which I presume is the one for the glow plugs. Can you get or does anyone have the wiring bit for this?

That doesn't look too bad to me, I have seen far far worse. Really bad is totally worn through and you have no drive (I have never seen this myself) and very bad is worn to the point that the spline looks like a shark fin. But if you get a new input gear the slack will still be there and will wear the gear prematurely anyway, so the only real solution if you want to eliminate it is to replace that and the output shaft on the gearbox. However, worn bushes, diff play etc will also play a pretty big part in the clonk, especially the bushes that attach the radius and trailing arms to the chassis.

Pictures! Engine bay shot Another engine bay shot As I wanted to use the cowling and the viscous fan from the Discovery I found that getting the radiator the right height was a little tricky. I had to cut down the chassis radiator mounts as most conversion people will tell you, but this still left the radiator too high for the cowling to fit. The Discovery radiator and intercooler is in a metal frame so I put the top plate of the frame on the bottom (with pins welded into it to fit into the slots) and then used the bottom plate on the top. This mounted the radiator just low enough so the cowling fitted. However, I haven't actually put the cowling on... I had to relocate the washer bottle as the airbox in in the place where the bottle was The turbo 'snail' was clocked to allow the output pipe to clear the inner wheelarch. I have actually routed the pipework up and over the alternator as this seemed the best way to do it. I have used the original Discovery metal pipe and I have also fitted another pipe coming up from the bottom pipe on the intercooler A bracket was fabricated for the PAS bottle. This 110 didn't have power steering originally The gearbox is mounted on a Discovery 300Tdi gearbox crossmember which brings the gearbox a little further forward than it was originally. This also allowed the pipework in the engine bay (oil cooler and engine to radiator pipes) to fit as normal Gear levers and in the standard place I had to cut the seatbox to allow for the gearbox being further forward. And I made a little box to cover the hole. The floors also had to be cut and the tunnel has been modified, but I am not happy with the tunnel so I will look at an alternative And to top it all off, it passed its MOT!

Like with most things, I started with the best intentions to do a build thread, but when you get into it you just forget to take pictures. I will however take a load tomorrow of all the stuff that I have to mess about with to get it all to fit, including the obligatory engine bay picture. Unless it fails the MOT, in which case I will be hiding in a pint glass!

Just an update, engine is in, gearbox is in using a Discovery crossmember, Discovery Transfer box has been installed with brand new input gear, seatbox is altered (butchered), pipework is modified, power steering is in, props have been swapped for Discovery and Defender 300Tdi ones, exhaust is modified and it runs and drives. A few extra bits needed doing along the way, footwells, rear chassis was rotten and needed welding and a few other things. Tomorrow is MOT day. Lets just see how that goes...

I have already fitted the engine and the gearbox, the gearbox is on a crossmember which moves it forward about 2" (roughly). I have to adjust the seatbox, but that is a different story... It's only the UJ's that I am questioning at the moment. I am not in front of the props and I wanted to order some so I could just fit them but with the difference in sizes I just wasn't sure what I needed to get.