Spanners Akimbo

Hi I'm not really sure were this question should go so I'll try here......................... We're looking at "improving" the front end of our Bowler, by this I mean Buying a quick ratio heavy duty steering box from Tomcat and having the Axle case modded for some addtional castor angle to give better turn in. The question is this: how much castor angle is ideal? The motor will not be used on the road so some degree of wander is acceptable, but Paul at Tomcat say's that with 12 degrees of castor on their racer things tended to get a little fraught at speed in a straight line, and that bump steer was a bit of a problem. While we want to improve turn in we still want the motor to be drivable IE not too twitchy!! Have any of you guys had this mod done and if so how much castor have you gone for and what's it like to drive. Thanks Greg

Mmmh it's an idea..... The problem I have is with it being a 86" series one I've got an Engine bay which is 2" shorter than a Series 2 or 3 and I've also got the lights in the grill so space is really going to be at a premium mind you I've managed to cram a V8 in there and still shut the bonnet......

Good idea this if your handy with the spanners, not the most straight forward conversion but it's a fantasic engine even the non turbo lump chucks out 140bhp, and the turbo out the 220 will do 300bhp+ with no worries. Plus you can pick up a whole car with one in for around £100-500 There's a couple of leafers running non turbos in our club, they're easily as fast as the V8's, plus they scream all the way to 8000rpm!!!! Marko's the man when it come's to these - check his website out. http://people.pwf.cam.ac.uk/mac65/YVC%20788K/landrover.htm

Cheers that's brillant, My only prob I can see is mounting the intercooler as I want to keep the front end original. I reckon I may be able to lie it down in front of the rad, just above the front crossmember but I'm not sure if I'll be able to use the front mounted electric fan, I guess it's just a case of suck it and see! How's it running? What made you choose a 200Tdi over a 300Tdi?

Well it was knocking a tad when I got it, I just kinda assumed they all sounded like that never owned a diesel landie before. Strange thing was it suddenly got a awful lot louder, and then there was this bang, followed by a REALLY loud knocking noise and rather a lot of smoke. At this point I figured it was not good news, so I drove straight home as fast as I could (55ish mph) which was a twenty mile trip. It didn't even overheat................. The crankshaft has since done around 6000 miles in another motor, It didn't even get a regrind!!!

All the gas does is stop the oil in the damper body from foaming under sustained use meaning the damper remains effective for longer if used hard. A gas damper designed for a coil spring has much different rates of bump and rebound than one designed for a leaf spring. This is because with a traditional leaf spring there is an element of damping provided by the leaves of the spring rubbing together as the spring deflects, when you fit a parabolic spring the leaves don't touch so you lose that damping. A coil spring has no "internal" damping so this must be provided by the damper, that's why I want to fit rangie dampers, so that the dampers provide this extra element, in truth I think that if I fit rangie shocks then I won't need to fit gas versions as the O/E jobbys will be well up to the job for road & green lane use, on account of a rangie weighing about twice what the series one does. Also as there is more articulation with parabolic springs, the rangie shocks will provide a few extra inches of travel over standard leafer shocks. I know that many companies providing parabolic springs also sell gas dampers to suit but I was never really conviced that they were anything more than gas versions of standard leaf sprung dampers. Mind you if procomp will do me a set of rangie damper bodies with series type loop ends then i'll give em a ring, because despite all my ranting, deep deep down inside I'm just really really lazy!!!!!!!!!!!

Err In my defence, I think the gearbox was a little tired before I used it in the V8. I took it out of my series III diesel when the engine developed a slight knocking noise and a bit of an oil leak..........

I've been considering fitting a Tdi lump into a series one for sometime. The original idea was to use the standard gearbox but people kept saying it just wasn't up to the job, I also didn't know were to fit the intercooler, looking at it now I guess I could fit it horizontially below the headlights but infront of the rad if I mod the inlet pipes to suit. Has anyone had any probs running a series box on with a Tdi? I considered fitting a box out of a 90 and just welding up the transfer gears to give perm 4WD, and just use FWH on the front axle when on the road but I'm not sure how long the box is and I've only got 86" to play with! In the end I got a V8 conversion at the right money so I dropped that in, thing is I got a bit carried away with the whole V8 power thing and now it's got 200bhp and it scares me Sh****ess epecially as I'm sitting on the petrol tank! Anyway luckly I blew the box up before I crashed it so I figure now would be a good time to consider a Tdi again. Whats better for a conversion 200 or 300, and do you have to have a defender manifold to clear the chassis with the turbo or can you just drop a disco lump straight in? Cheers, Greg

While the salisbury is tough it's also bleedin heavy. On our comp safari motor we've used standard rangie diff's for years without problems, and that's pushing 230hp through maxi diamond tyres. The main weakness with the rangie diff is the fact that under shock loading the crownwheel flexes away from the pinion which tends to shear the teeth off. You can stop this by pegging the diff. This is easy to do. If you look at a standard diff casing there is a flat face imediately behind the back face of the crownwheel. Drill and tap this to take an couple of M10 bolts. Then take a couple of fully threaded M10 bolts and screw a full nut onto each one all the way up to the head. Apply loctite to the bolt threads and screw them into the diff housing until they only just clear the back of the crown wheel (1-2mm). Run the nuts down the thread and tighten them against the diff casing to stop the bolts from coming undone and it's job done. This will improve the strength of the diff 100%. Of course there still the chance that you'll break the pin in the diff, and it does happen, so for ultimate strength you'll need a 4 pin diff, but these are expensive. If you want bombproof what I would Suggest is source a wolf front axle, they have massively strengthend casings and shafts and a 4 pin diff as standard. Cheap they are not! Alternatively the disco 2 axles are very popular with compers now and have a reputation for being extremely tough, however the mountings will need to be changed to suit, this is really not a five minute job, but you may be able to find a landrover specialist, with a jig who'll do it for you for a price From personal experience apart from pegging the diff, beefing up the A frame ball joint mount on the axle and possibly sleeving the axle case, I would use a standard rangie axle on the rear. Why? well unless you spend an absolute fortune you'll never achieve a completely unburstable drivetrain, if you abuse it enough something will break. If you delibrately make the weakpoint the rear axle, and if possible the halfshafts (or shaft if you beef one side up but not the other). Then odds are when something does break it'll be easy to fix. Beef up the axles then the propshafts will break, beef up the propshafts then the gearbox will break etc,etc. I know what I'd rather change in the middle of a muddy field!! Greg

Hi I removed my cat front pipe and EGR from my disco es tdi auto some months ago, passed it'd mot no problem at all. If you think about it it's only the Autos that had them fitted, so the emissions won't be a problem as long as the lumps not knackered. Can't say it makes much difference to the performance but I never thrash it anyway so I couldn't really be sure. One thing I did notice was that when I removed the EGR valve I found the inlet manifold was caked in crud, I believe this was a mixture of soot from the EGR valve and oil mist from the turbo combining. It was so bad I ended taking the inlet manifold off and cleaning it out in the parts washer, it was 5mm thick in places!! This was on a 100,000 mile engine, so it'd odviously built up over time. I was initially worried that the turbo was dying but was assured by turbo specialist that all turbo lose a tiny amount oil through their bearings, and normally this is nothing to worry about as the engine would just burn it with the intake charge, however if you mix this with the soot from a diesel exhaust, you get this sludge build up. After doing all this work a friend noticed the same thing in his disco, however he just used one of those diesel restore sprays that you squirt into the inlet manifold, after removing you airflow meter. Worked lovely after that. However don't do it in your drive as he did, the smoke produced is amazing!!! Greg

Hi, I recently fitted CPC 2 leaf parabolics to my V8 86" series one. I have to say that while the articulation is huge the trade off has been in the vehicle pitching backwards and forwards terribly under acceleration/braking, so much so that it's quite difficult to keep a steady throttle. I think there are possibly to reasons for this, firstly Chris matched my springs to a motor which at the time a a 2.25 lump in, which is considerably heavier than a V8 and secondly I'm only running standard dampers. I have spoken to other series one drivers who have also fitted parabolics of various different makes, and they are all of the same opinion, in that the vehicle pitching gets worse with parabolics fitted. I suspect this is due to a the fact that because the parabolics have no effective built in damping, they just amplify what is already a noticable handling trait with the shorter wheelbase landies, also because they are more flexible they also allow a lot more axle tramp. What I intent to do on mine is firstly replace all the shocks with gas dampers, but use dampers for a coil sprung motor such as a 90 or Rangie, as they will provide a higher level of internal damping. Odviously this means modding the mounts to suit. If this doesn't improve things then I suppose I'll have to consider fabricating some kind of axle location, such as a radius arm or watts linkage. Don't get me wrong overall, the handling of the vehicle has improved considerably, but when I removed the standard suspension I found that every bush was knackered, some of the spring leaves were broken and the shackles on the front were different lengths!! Just refitting new standard components would have been a vast improvement. I guess it depends on what you want, articulation or good road manners. Greg