twodoorgaz

Hi folks. a bit stumped. Dad has a beautifully maintained 1999 P38A 4.6 Vogue and is just stripping the back axle ready for a diff recon @Hybrid_From_Hell Nige - he's spoken with you and it'll be headed your way. The flanged bolts (actually a screw: M10x26mm) that fasten the hub are being a bugger to remove and will need replaced. No great shakes - he'll just order new ones... Except the part number doesn't seem to be listed anywhere. He's checked the bootleg microcat CD, I've since checked all the places I usually use: lrcat .ru and https://parts.jaguarlandroverclassic.com/parts/index/hierarchy/id/9.55819.56286/brand/land-rover/ and Allbrit and it isn't shown in the diagrams. I've found a diagram that shows it in the Bearmach catalogue, but there's no part number listed. He's also been to the local dealer and their parts team couldn't find it. Through a process of elimination we think its LR050515, which looks right and is the right size but with it being a safety critical part you don't want to take a chance on the size being right but the grade being wrong. So does anyone have any other way of checking? I did have access to the LR system last year but my subscription has expired. Screaming ideal scenario here is that someone can find an image from another source and screenshot it - just to give peace of mind. Just to be clear, these are the twelve flanged bolts (six on each side) that pass through the flanges on the axle casing to hold the stub (I'm not familiar with 38As myself, so I assume there's a stub axle there). He takes care to keep all the parts Genuine, so doesn't want to just buy generic 10.9 flanged screws at this stage. If LR050515 is correct then they're cheap enough. Thank you very much.

Thanks all - some really good tips there, if this was a defender I'd have no issues but I'm just not up to speed on Disco/RRC installations. I'll get the two boxes side by side and will have a weight up. @Snagger - yes, I'll be doing it myself. Having it all stripped back to a bare shell on a jig should make it quite straightforward as its mostly flat panels. I have the kit to blast and prime it at home (once the workshop is built) as well as any welders I might need (mig, tig and spot). Being an ex-Portugal car, while there is just a little isolated rust and its otherwise mostly solid. I think I'm familiar with all the repairers that post online, some are artists and others less so - I was going to reply to one of your older threads when you were deciding who to send it to. Likewise: looking forward to seeing yours come back. And ha ha, yep, I am familiar with the work on the channel you mentioned..... he's certainly very entertaining.

Thanks both. no need for the bellhousing, but thank you. I’ll be bringing in complete unit when I get closer to the mechanical work. good shout, I’ll call them - have a couple of gearboxes headed their way.

Hi all. I’m about to commit to a nut and bolt restoration of a 2-door factory 200TDi Range Rover. It’ll take a couple of years and a lot of money. I often read comments about 200TDi parts availability being limited. I remember Terri-Ann Wakeman writing about this on her site some 15 years ago - specifically citing cylinder heads being NLA and suspect a lot of the commentary started there. I never really understood this: if I wanted a cylinder head I’d buy one second hand and have it refurbished. It wouldn’t enter my head to buy one from Land Rover so being NLA ‘new’ seems like an odd thing to be concerned about. Nonetheless, some parts do seem harder to find than the 300TDi. So it seems prudent to build up a bit of a stock throughout this rebuild. obviously we don’t know exactly what the future will look like in terms of fuel availability, but I’d rather stock up and not need them. so, could anyone suggest those items that, if found cheaply, would be sensible to squirrel away? I’ve already put a crack-tested cylinder head on my list along with a cast exhaust manifold. But what else? I'm planning on keeping the RR for life and am assuming that generic spares and those common to the 300TDi will remain available. I’m looking to gather enough bits to cover me for for day-to-day maintenance as well as one engine rebuild.

Hi everyone. I have a 1993 RRC with a factory 200TDi and it’s factory LT77s and I’m just getting ready to start the full bare shell restoration. I already know the gearbox will need to go to ashcrofts for a rebuild, but I’m really struggling with the idea of spending money on the LT77 design when so many ex-Discovery R380s are around. I’ve never been a big fan of the LT77 and I’d rather send Ashcrofts a suffix L R380 donor and fit that instead - there’s virtually no difference in cost and I’d have a slightly nicer, slightly stronger gearbox with the option to include a couple of strength upgrades. I’d then pop the original LT77 into storage. I have plenty of experience with dealing with R380 installations in Series and Defender vehicles, but zero with a Range Rover. I’m working on the assumption that with the right combination of parts that it can be fitted as a straight swap. I’d like to imagine that the R380 RR/Disco TDi bellhousing is 1” shorter than the LT77S TDi bellhousing to compensate for the longer mainbox. If that’s the case then I’m really hoping that the gear selector would pop up in the cab in exactly the same place and that the props/crossmember needed would be a standard LR parts bin component. The engine is being stripped for a refresh so I really don’t mind swapping flywheel housings/sumps onto the original 200TDi if that would make the swap a little more elegant. I’m more than happy to spend 6-months tracking down every part I might need but as this is an otherwise 100% factory vehicle, I don’t want to introduce any installation compromises (like missing bellhousing fasteners) like you often see with non RR installations. im hoping I can assemble a kit of parts as if Land Rover had offered a standalone R380 retrofit kit, like they did with the 200/300TDi kits from the ‘90s. I did note this thread on a clutch issue with a similar arrangement Thank you.

@Bigj66 completely off topic. But aside from a stunning mk3 there, your garage looks superb. Could I ask if you know who supplied the building/the spec? I've been going back and forth with suppliers for ages and my latest has gone dark. Feel free to PM if preferred.

That’s a really nice bit of info, thank you. I’ll add one to the spares pile to trial.

Sorry Fridge, that'll be my fault for groundlessly mentioning reliability - wouldn't want to give the impression I thought that there is anything wrong with that approach. I simply meant that a fixed fan is simpler (to my simple brain) and has fewer failure points than viscous and certainly not that electric is inherently unreliable. The vehicle I'm building is a bit of a passion project to see if I can assemble a SWB V8 with parts choices that are close to those the factory would have considered acceptable in a production vehicle - had they stuck with selectable 4x4 and had access to the same parts bins we have today, and doing so without chassis mods and to try and have the engine bay appear period -at least at a passing glance. Land Rover have always used engine driven fans on their production utility models so I'm hoping to retain that feature as part of the build - even though it would be far, far easier to just use electric fans. Taking on board all the advice above (and the video, which was great) - I think its now a case of dry building the thing up in the chassis with the radiator in situ and trying a combination of factory viscous setups as a starter to see how close to a nice fit I can get. I understand that the fan design is optimised to set distances between the blades and the radiator and that where the cowl sits in relation to the blade tips is also relevant, so I'll pick up a few serpentine fan/viscous hub assemblies, will grab some measurements off the family P38/Disco II and anything else I can find with a Serp front end and try them and work out where I need to lose any dimensions to make it all work well. The cowl will be a nice complex bit of metal shaping, so that'll be a nice project to look forward to. If I can't make it work, I'll revert back to electric fans and call it a day.

duly noted, thanks Bowie. To be fair if I do deviate at all from a standard Viscous unit (matched fan and clutch) then I'd be buying a purpose build fixed fan and would most likely order one from the US that's intended for one of their domestic V8s. For example, Flex-O-Lite stock a large number of fans in various sizes and widths that are intended for American V8s. This one caught my eye, its a reverse-rotation (so should be good for a Serp pump), it comes in a number of sizes (this particular one is 17inch to match the standard Rover size) and the description even mentions it being used to replace a factory clutch-driven fan. If I'm going 'custom', then a route like that seems the safest bet - at least I know the fan is intended to be mounted on the front of the engine and should cope with the correct rotation and RPM. I don't know whether the pump bearings would be happy with having a fixed fan, but I suspect it would make little difference to them when compared with a viscous unit. That particular fan is only 1-3/4" wide. Having started down that path, there are others of course, from companies like Derale who make V8-type fans in reverse rotation at the correct sizes and their width comes down to as low as 1-1/8". So, if I do go for a fixed fan, it looks like the American aftermarket is the best bet (none of them are very expensive and I have a PO box in the US that I use regularly, so shipping is nothing) - I can order a fan of the correct diameter that is intended for an engine of that size and, if I get lucky, I'm sure I could find one of them that could supply a fan on request with the centres drilled with a PCD and pilot hole to suit my needs. A fixed fan does have some additional appeal to me with less chance of failure and, as this engine bay is intended to look like its come straight out of the 1960s (the serp belt and lack of distributor being the only giveaway) then a fixed fan does remind me of the original Buick 215 design. So - it looks like the slimmest reverse rotation viscous unit is going to be that from an intermediate serp 3.9. And that just leaves the question - if I do move to a fixed fan, provided it is mounted correctly on the water pump and spaced correctly/safely from the belt, does anyone see any pitfalls in mounting a fixed fan on a pump hub that was intended to receive a viscous unit? When it comes to mounting a fixed fan on a serp pulley, I suppose there's two options: I could bolt it onto the serpentine pulley using three bolts right through into the pump boss, I might make use of the redundant three holes as an alternative. This would effectively make the fan and pulley a solid unit - I do have concerns that any movement in the fan could affect the alignment of the belt. I could turn up a threaded boss that engages onto the threaded shaft in the centre of the pulley just like the viscous unit did and bolts in turn to the fan. Provided it is properly balanced I would assume that that would be a far better solution from an engineering perspective?

thanks all. I have a lathe and access to a milling machine so making a hub should be no issue. It seems to be a threaded boss onto the serp water pump and I can cut such threads. I think the best course of action may be to buy a series of fans off eBay with their respective hubs and measure them all up to find the closest fitting solution.

Thanks all. The confirmation on the reverse running is very handy. Snagger thanks for the tip re: not simply flipping a fan - I'd need to find a generic fixed fan of the correct size that is designed for that rotation. I did notice that the P38 fan is very very thin (or at least the band around the fan is), but as Snagger points out above, while the fan surround itself is very thin, the blades flare forwards, sitting quite far away from the belts, whereas the 3.9 interim fan has the blades butting right back up against the serpentine belt. Its reminds me of the offset on road wheels - as if the 3.9 has a much higher offset than the 4.0, so it sits tighter to the block. I'm going off photos for this conclusion, it might all be an optical illusion, so I'll just have to find some engines and take a tape measure to them. 3.9 Intermediate Serp: P38A 4.0 V8 (belt not attached): Disco 2 4.0 V8 engine: From those images, I would guess that a P38A distributorless timing cover, coupled with the viscous unit and fan from a 3.9 intermediate serp would be the fractionally tighter option. I'll certainly have a look at the Vitesse fan to see if it can work. On the electric fan, I know it is how V8 conversions have been done for a long time - but I really want to try and exhaust all options for an engine driven fan first. The engine I'm building is all about adding reliability, incorporating all the P38A developments (except the 92mm bore) so an electric fan doesn't quite align with all that, fine and everything, but not aligned with what I'm hoping to achieve.

some great pics of your build there - thanks for sharing, plenty of inspiration.

Ps: I think that the serpentine waterpumps (as I’ll be using) might have run in the opposite rotation to the earlier bee-belt pumps. So if sticking with serpentine then an intermediate serpentine 3.9 V8 fan seems to be a lot tighter to the block than anything from the P38. here’s some good pics of an intermediate 3.9: https://www.simmonites.com/shop/engines/reconditioned/3-9-rover-v8-serpentine-engine-land-rover/ I’ve still got Disco IIs and 50th defenders to check. guess if I go with a fixed fan then I’d need to flip it to run the opposite way.

Been getting some great advice on the planned Rover V8 conversion into my SIIA. I picked up the engine this weekend and am off collecting various bits to reduce the length. it is being converted to a P38 distributorless setup with serpentine belt/pulleys. As far as I’m aware that results in the shortest possible RV8 - much shorter than the traditional mix of SD1 and P6 parts. But, I’d really like to keep a mechanical fan and I think I have space to fit one neatly. does anyone happen to know the slimmest possible engine-driven fan setup that can be fitted? I’m happy to go all the way back to a fixed fan (with a custom boss to fit the 3-bolt serp water pump) or I’d look at any of the viscous fans too. There’s the width of the fan to consider as well as the length of the shaft that it runs on. happy to track down obscure parts (101, LDV, etc) if there is a combination that keeps the fan as close to the block as possible.

I'll have a look into it. Even bypassing the universal ones, it does seem that custom ones from similar companies are coming in at about half the price. I might take a leaf out of the Retropower book and make one out of cardboard and toilet roll tubes complete with flanges so I can physically bolt it in to trial it before sending it off to be made in aluminium. It would be nice to have the upper surface bead rolled to match the pressings in the original brass item, if I find a friendly manufacturer then I could do the rolls or pressings in some blanks and supply them to be included.