Bowie69

Good way to find out just how much bottle you have in a SWB land rover.

Very, no chance in fact. Like I say, you would need high compression pistons at a minimum to make the most of the cam and heads, and any quoted figures for improvements are enormously optimistic and can basically be ignored. Even with stage 1 heads and a cam and hi comp pistons if you broke 165 I would be very, very surprised.

A low comp 3.5 has very little need for more airflow from either a cam or especially heads, you need the bigger capacity engines and/or a compression ratio bump. 3.9s with a dizzy can be found in many a rotting disco second hand on eBay. Your car would bolt on and a tiny tweak to the wiring to the dizzy and you are up and running. Even if you are using a leaky toilet to fuel it, it will be infinitely better than the 3.5 Havw you checked timing BTW? Makes a amssiv difference to performance.

If you are taking out the low comp 3.5, ready a 3.9 (easiest) ,4.0 or 4.6 to plop in. First two will give you an extra ~50-70BHP, and the latter nearly 100. And you could do it for less than the cost of a cam, lifters and a pair of stage 1 heads.

Lack of pressure when cold is good...

Given you have no idea how hot it was getting, I'd wager that was the fuel boiling or something else. Solve one at a time...

I'm no fortune teller, but that amount of steam would suggest a HG. Does it pressurise the cooling system when cold?

To be honest, no more stupid than a 911 in Dakar form, and personally I start slightly salivating when I see one... I'm assuming people have seen this: Safari version of the Ami, pretty similar to the Citroen Mehari.

Also, I wasn't trying to say it is either a hose or the headgaskets, more there's a myriad of things that sit in between those two things that it could be. Have you given all the hoses etc a really good check? It could just be the level dropped enough to get hot. An IR gun for £10 is always useful when diagnosing these things.

Was this from dead cold?

For some reason it looks like you have managed to over heat it, it could be anything from a weeping hose clamp or bad electric fan to a head gasket failure, hard to tell from a distance I'm afraid, but I'd be checking the cheap things first. It seems like your temp gauge is not calibrated properly to the sender, otherwise it would normally run in the middle of the gauge, I would advise getting this sorted.... The running on you experienced can be an overly rich carb, but also I've seen it when an engine has got too hot, I wouldn't worry about that until you get the overheating issue sorted.

Are you not going to check the fuses yourself?

Yes, there should continuity in the pads, not sure what sort of power they use, but they would maybe measure up at ~0.5 Ohm?

?

This is an interesting way of measuring something:

I was very tempted to do the same, given the minimal cost.

This is too high, book is ~600 IIRC.

Totally fixed.

The whole post: I honestly think the LWB version look a lot better... or even the ones with an enclosed back, that helps a lot too.

Ummmm thread revival!

Also be aware, if using Rhoads lifters they will tick especially when warm... As you don't know what is in there by your own admission, making assumptions may cost you a lot of money... Just saying

Yep, they are reasonable value, but are no stronger than the aluminium ones for normal use, and add very significant weight to the valve train that can have unintended consequences elsewhere through the added inertia. As said, they were really designed for high RPM applications, not every day drivers. I had a set once, they had so much clearance to the rocker shaft the oil pressure dropped and the rocker covers filled with oil overcoming the valve stem seals and causing massive oil burning issues. They went in the bin.

Are you 7ft tall?

Fraid not, though you can get them, they are only designed for very high revving engines.

Depending on the engine spec (would need engine number to confirm....), you could be looking only 135bhp, comparing that to a Td5 with oodles more torque is not really fair - the TD5 will run rings round it.