Boydie

Due to the exorbitant cost of the 2.8 conversion I purchased a new genuine LR Crank completer with matched main and big end bearings, the only modification was to have the two woodruff keyways milled into one single keyway, woodruffs are a waste of time IMHO and if they can be ditched its best to do so, for example now the timing cog as well as the harmonic balancer crank pulley have a full length key instead of a tiny woodruff. The harmonic balancer now does not rely purely on the crank bolt torque to retain it, The engine went into a mates car and its doing well, it runs a lot smoother than mine - as you would expect - and I'll be looking to do up his old engine as my next winter hobby.

The carbon brushes are reasonably generic, when mine were due to be replaced I went into my local auto electrical workshop with them as samples and he sold me two that were marginally longer than the originals but the same width, it took me about 10 minutes to carefully file them down to fit into the two brass holders. You should have no problems.

I'd use them as paper weights. Spacers place an unacceptable strain on the outer wheel bearings and the bearing can fail dramatically and without warning, here in good old Oz they are illegal for on-road use. If you must go for a wider wheel with the required off-set, this option has the advantage of you being able to have different off-sets front and rear, sure you may have to carry two spares - or simply one of the narrower rims and tyre combo - but you achieve your objective and at least you are spreading the load, the other option is to go to your local wrecker with a tape measure and check out the widths of Toyota and Nissan, Benz, Jeep axles there may be a set to suit your requirements but its a whole load of work modifying them.

I'm still waiting on getting a price from the suppliers they are beyond being slow !!!!! but yes, I've had two scares crossing deepish creeks where the motors have failed until they fully dry out, and on neither occassion was the water up to that height, simply splashing around inside the doors and getting water into the wiring loom seems to be enough to stop the window operation and the thought of not being able to open or close the window is a concern so a manual winder is the way to go.

Were there ever manual winders made for early - 1998 - Series 1 Discoveries and if so where can I obtain two, ---- front doors, left and right.(Driver and front passenger)

Then yes, and as yours is a Defender its fairly easy to get to and remove

What "O" ring are you talking about ? For 99% of all service work, yes, the box has to be removed. I think the only things that can be replaced while the box is in situ are the reverse and diff lock switch, but tell me what "O" ring you're talking about

What Les said

Agreed either flat battery or poor earth, for a start the battery is on the wrong bloody side - furthest point from the alternator and starter motor if you ever have the time switch it to the passenger side, not a hard thing to do and secondly in my experience the single earth strap to the chassis is insufficient as it can corrode and give a poor connection, run a separate earth cable from the chassis earth point back to the battery earth lug, your problems should be over.

This overheating and air locking seems to be a common problem with the 300Tdi engine, try this. Make up a fitting to screw into the thermostat bleed plug, mine is a PVC nipple that goes from the NPT thread to 1/2" PVC pipe, a short length of pipe(1" long) to connect this nipple to a PVC reducer from 1/2" to 2" then a length of 2" PVC pipe about 2' long (500mm) --- this is all glued together with PVC pipe glue, -- screw this assembly into the thermostat housing. This is your coolant filler for this operation. Okay, with the car on LEVEL ground fill the system remove the header tank cap and the plug from the top of the radiator. Fill the system until water/coolant flows out of the radiator plug. Replace the plug and fit the header tank cap. ---- you will have noticed that on level ground the mid point on the filler tank is equal to the height of the top of the radiator ! --- Next fill the tube with coolant until it is 3/4 full, RUN the engine until the thermostat is fully open, the coolant level in the tube will drop as any remaining air is discharged from the system. Remove the filler tube, replace the thermostat plug. You should have removed all the air locks and air from the coolant system.

Bowie, the springs or coils are there to cause the water to spin and so all of the flow comes in contact with the surface of the tube inner surface. Idris, I dont know about the standard radiator, other than taking pressure drop readings through it and air flows as I described above I never bothered to take much notice of its design, all I knew from bitter experience was that it was totally inadequate for Australian weather conditions. What I can say of the current 4 row radiator which is now some 6 years old is that the fins go from front to back, they are in a vertical plane as you would expect for a two-pass cross-flow radiator. The core, fins and matrix was plain untinned bright copper. It was painted semi matt black once the headers were made and fitted, these consisted of brass plates* at both ends of the matrix core and copper header "cans" soldered onto them. The original oil cooler was utilised. The brass separation plate, brazed to the brass end plate was drilled with a 3mm by-pass/air vent hole. * I think these end plates were in the vicinity of about 2.0mm. The header "cans" were handmade out of a flat sheet of 18# copper. The finished radiator was around 13mm wider than the original meaning that the original fan could be retained, this was an essential requirement however the air conditioning condensor had to be relocated to the underside of the roof rack. The original socket for the radiator vent plug was reused. As I recall the total cost of the radiator was about AUD$650.

Bleeding the clutch on a Land Rover is an art, the problem being the vertical height difference between the clutch slave and master cylinders -- and the horrible fact that air has a tendency to want to rise to the top of any fluid. Next time: Disconnect the line at the master cylinder, fluid, if the seals and piston are good in the master cylinder shouldn't bleed out, but if you do get a wee bit of leakage block off the vent hole in the reservoir. Okay, connect the open end of the line to a clean glass or plastic bottle and then with a transmission fluid pump, filled with hydraulic fluid, connect the pump hose to the slave cylinder nipple and undo the nipple, push the pump handle until 90% of the fluid (mine holds a litre) has been bushed through the line to the master cylinder, all the entrapped air will have been ejected from the system. Close the nipple, remove the pump, reconnect the line to the master cylinder, job done. If you still dont have a good peddle then I'd be looking at the clutch push rod

In reply, yes by centrifugal I was referring to the centrifugal action of the silicon inside the AXIAL fan hub that causes it to spin with a variable degree of drive, the greater the temperature playing on the bimetallic spring, the greater the degree of drive. The only downfall of the Land Rover centrifugal hub is that the bimetallic spring is controlled by the temperature of the air flowing over it. On Kenworth and Mack trucks the bimetallic spring is in the water flow a far better and more temperature accurate arrangement. LR simply didn't have the space to do this. Next: Core = Is the assembly of the matrix (these are the flattened tubes the coolant flows through) and the fins joined by the top and bottom headers (or sides in a cross flow radiator). Team Idris; Spot on, although I'd argue about the heat transfer characteristics of copper and aluminum, the former is better, the later is a lot cheaper. Snagger and Bowie, Yes the hub is operated by silicon as a fluid much the same as transmission fluid in a torque converter in an automatic gearbox. Hobbit: I'm way, way older than that, I date back to the days of having young African boys from our farm earn an extra shilling in the evenings when my parents were entertaining by operating sheets of flaxen cloth to swing backwards and forwards to move air to cool the guests in the dining room in my parents farm house in Kenya - and that predates any centrifugal or axial fans

Providing that the rows (matrix) are staggered then yes, a 3 row is far better and more efficient than a single row. The trick is 1.) The Material, copper is by far the best matrix material and for the fins. Alloy is the next best but corrodes faster and is not as heat transfer efficient. Yes, I know the surface of the alloy is treated the the cut edges, facing the incoming airflow are not ! If you have an alloy finned radiator go to your local air conditioning specialist and buy a couple of cans of aerosol condenser cleaner, it cleans crud off the fins as well as covering them with a protective film to allay the eventual corrosion. 2.) Airflow, The fins should be spaced apart sufficiently to allow adequate airflow through the radiator given that it will have a determined designed airflow resistance. 3.) Headers. Ideally these should be copper but these days plastic is becoming more common. They are still called "headers" even on cross flow radiators when they are at the sides instead of top and bottom. If you are going to "play radiators" first acquire, beg, borrow or steal a Vane Anemometer and when the engine is running at idle at NORMAL temperature so that the centrifugal fan is operating, and with the radiator grille off take readings of what air flow there is through the radiator. To take a good average air flow move the anemometer over the face of the radiator so that you get a good average reading given that it will be higher in areas corresponding to the fan blades, lower in the centre of the fan and at the outer edges of the radiator. Next speed the engine up to normal running speed of say 2500 and take a second set of readings at just under 4000 RPM (300 Tdi) or 5000 rpm V8) the centrifugal fan will begin to cavitate, its fan blade design follows those fan curves. Fans. On this subject, when the radiator cooling capacities were designed for the particular engine given the different heat generations and coolant flows the fan manufacturer designed the fan blade curves to cause a given amount of air to flow through a set resistance (the radiator and possible A/C condenser) at a given nominal and maximum engine revolution, around 2500 - 4000 rpm. This fan speed calculation is further complicated as you need to take into consideration the ratio of the crank pulley x the fan pulley diameter. On my series 1 Disco 300Tdi they are almost the same, even so the fan pulley is slightly smaller than the crank pulley so at 2500 rpm the fan was actually spinning closer to 2800 rpm. My point is this, to replace the centrifugal fan with a electric one is, in my opinion, crazy as most times these factors wont have been taken into consideration and with an electric fan unless to first test it you dont know how much air it's moving and if it can in fact overcome the resistance of your radiator, normally they are over engineered to give far too much airflow so they need a thermostatic switch to control them and the fan is constantly being switching on and off. A silicon filled centrifugal fan will by its very design "feather" to give the required airflow at the required temperature at any given road speed, it's a well thought out and proven design. Trust me, if electric fans were better and more efficient, Land Rover would use them, currently they are only used on East-West engines as there isn't a mechanical alternative. The other thing for consideration is that 90% of aftermarket electric fans dont like to be submerged in water when you're crossing a deep creek or river ford. Okay, you have taken your air flow readings on your standard radiator, you can now go to a specialist and with those figures he can select a larger capacity core. I went from the standard 300Tdi cross flow 1/4" 3 row matrix to a 1/2" four row matrix core with larger copper headers,- these had to be hand made due the the additional width of the finished core. The net result is that in 45-50*C ambient temperatures in the Australian desert with the standard centrifugal fan my engine has never run over 90*C. Finally as my system has no leaks I've switched to "Evans waterless coolant" it has a boiling point of over 165*C and at my engine temperature of 90*C the coolant has not expanded so my header tank, radiator and hoses are under no pressure, meaning of course that there is even less possibility of coolant leakage.

I'd look at alloy solder, I know the howls I'll get regarding this product but my mate who is a gun welder demonstrated his abilities by soldering two coke cans together, and thats no mean feat !

Defective spider or your keyless entry is crook

Run the engine and, using a rolled up newspaper stop the fan, If the fluid coupling is locked the paper will shred, if it's okay the fan will stop.

This is one of the many reasons why I replaced my mechanical pump with an electric unit when it was up for replacement, the electric pump is located next to the sedimenter filter and wired to the FIP solenoid, turn on the ignition and hey presto the replaced fuel filter is purged in about 3 seconds.

I think if you're trying to manually operate the lift pump the camshaft operated lever needs to be "disengaged" from the cam on the shaft so that the diaphragm is free to be activated by the hand lever. If the cam operated lever has the diaphragm pressed up the hand lever isn't going to do anything

Any synthetic oil is wasted on a 300Tdi, sure you can use it but its akin to feeding pearls to swine, just go for a good quality Diesel 15w/40 grade mineral oil, Castrol, Mobil etc. use genuine Land Rover or Mahle filters and change it regularly every 10,000 kilometers or 6000 miles.

Farmer, nope totally different heat source, I'd advise you do as Tim advised and disconnect the supply from the relay, secondly the relay is kaput, an expensive little baby from memory so I'd be ;looking for a s/h unit.

If you're removing it thats an easy enough job - well, under the bonnet it is anyway. To remove the evaporator you need to remove the entire dash and then you can get to it and the pipes. switches and thermostat. If the refrigerant has escaped its more than likely to have leaked out through the compressor shaft seal -- due to not being used and its dried out, a clever trick used by a lot of Japanese car makers is a switch that brings on the A/C every time reverse gear is engaged, - just to turn the compressor over and circulate the refrigerant, it saves this from happening.

If it were mine, I'd stick a new or second hand head on it, strip it down to bare bones, put it on a trailer and and take it out and have some competition fun with it

Just a tip here, and this is gained from bitter experience. If the wading plug is fitted and the engine is hot and you go into deepish water, that is above the engine crank depth ( about 600mm deep) the timing cover and bell housings are going to rapidly cool down, the air inside will contract and water WILL be sucked into the timing cover through the front dust seal and into the bellhousing through the bellhousing face joint. If you're going to be doing a lot of wading drill the top of the timing cover and bell housing and run 1/4" breather hoses to a high position. If you go to my photos you can see how I did my front cover. On the bellhousing I rescued an axle banjo fitting from my local wreckers and tapped the top of the bell housing at about 2 o'clock to suit the banjo. I've never had any water egress problems since.

Unless you have PERFECT machined surfaces avoid metal gaskets, -- ALWAYS use composite on old or slightly corroded surfaces.