Snagger

The 200 rad doesn't have a baffle plate and two passes through the core, as I understand it, because the outlet is on the opposite end from the inlet. On the 300 rad, they're both on the same side. That also means the oil cooler is sitting in fully cooled water on the side of the rad, rather than semi cooled as per the 300, so that may be a factor too.

Yep, just need a party agreement just in case of future disagreement and for when either property is sold.

That slight slope is a good thing - I would make it that way deliberately as it'll minimise problems if you ever get a leak or some minor flooding. I have a similar sized garage in the UK. The floor was poorly levelled and has a few big cracks from drying too fast. The main problem is the doors - it has two up and over doors which just let the lightweight squeeze under and are just wide enough for the RRC, but with the shelving down one side and workbenches along the other, it makes getting the vehicles in impossible on one side and tight on the other - I have to use wheel trucks (the steel trucks with four castors for each car wheel) to move the car into a workable position. A door like yours would be much better, and I'd like to move the front lintels up to one big lintel level with front ends of the roof trusses to create a tall enough door to get the 109 or a Defender in. So, you have a lot of the things I'd like to do already.

They can fail open or closed - open means the fan still idles through residual friction instead of being locked to the shaft. Failing closed means they're locked even when cold. The penalty there is small. If it fails open, then you can use a couple of cable ties to lock the fan to the hub. It's always worth having a few cable ties in the car for securing wiring, hoses or other items that come loose anyway. I have had two viscous hubs fail, and both failed closed. It's not a big deal - they're far more reliable than electric fans, and easy to check; they should have a bit of resistance when cold, but be easy to turn by hand (or stop with the aid of a tool, not fingers, when running cold), and should be ocked up when the engine is up to temperature.

Back on form then, Nige! Those blades can be bloody dangerous, literally. It'd be worth buying or fabricating a handle for them - better grip, more control, less cramp in your thumb and less time at A&E...

As BSF says, fitting without turbo is a conversion with merit. It limits the car's performance to pretty much what it is with a late 2.25 petrol, but for most SIII owners now that's fine. Most who need more already have a Defender. It certainly makes installation easier and cheaper. I used the same engine as you, but used Defender 200Tdi manifolds and turbo (harder to get hold of now). You can also use 300Tdi parts which are a direct fit. The installation is covered in the engine section of my blog - click my signature below if you want to read it and check the photos.

Diff swaps are the cheap way of reducing rpm, but it makes driving horrible - overgeared at junctions and town driving in mid rpm 3rd gear rather than low revs 4th means it doesn't work in practice, increasing fuel consumption and noise, making junctions unpleasant and eventually killing your gear box. It also bggers off road ability. High ratio transfer box does the same, but without the ruining of low range and without needing to recalibrate the speedo. Overdrive sorts all the problems without any negatives (other than purchase price), and gives an optional rather than fixed gearing increase, giving you eight forward gears and two reverse. Best only used in 3rd and 4th, though, for practicality as well as avoiding gear box stress.

That is not coincidence. Well done.

It's not an aesthetic issue - shaped lenses are thicker and absorb a fair proportion of the light, which is why they get warm, and scatter more. The plain lenses scatter and absorb less of the light and allow clear transmission far better. I haven't tried them, but I understand the design logic and it is not a snakeoil product (I'm quite happy to call BS on vortex exhausts and intake generators, electric fans, free wheeling hubs and such). My Wipac ordinary lenses and Halfords Gucci bulbs are fantastic on my RRC - I never bother with the Hella spots in the spoiler as they don't make any perceptible difference to those headlights. But as I said, you won't get the full brightness without uprating the wiring and using relays, and will probably melt the switches if you don't.

You can do that, and you could also remove the plastic fins from inside the vacuum pump so it's not trying to create a vacuum, just idling. I'd do that and fit a cap over the hose connection rather than make up a blanking plate to replace the top cover - it's just easier.

I'd rather have helper springs than levelling lights - you'd be treating the problem, not just covering one of several symptoms. I haven't used the Crystal units, but I do have Wipac halogen conversion lights on my 109 and RRC, and the make a vast difference over sealed beams. The Halfords 55/60W H4 extra bright bulbs with the blue band are very good too. The important thing is to uprate the wiring with relays and heavier cable.

He's talking about the drive gear and shaft being slack, not the pump gears. The advice is accurate.

You have standard gearing, so unless you have something dragging, like seized brakes, then the engine performance must be down. Just because nobody has pointed it out before doesn't mean that it's performing correctly; it is quite possible to have an engine start easily and run smoke free while being low on power, especially a carb fed engine.

As I read your first paragraphs, I was going to ask if it was a Series vehicle retrofit, but you soon made that clear. Viscous fans are far superior to electric, and most people removing them from a standard vehicle do so because they have fallen for the fraudulent claims by the electric fan companies about improved performance and economy, or the misperception that en electric fan will improve warm up times in cold conditions. It is a different story with modified vehicles. With engine retrofits, there is often insufficient space for the viscous fan, or the water pump (or other fan shaft) is in an unsuitable location for the older engine bay and radiator. As much as I hate electric fans, I had to use one for my 109 Tdi retrofit as the Discovery version of the 200Tdi puts the fan too low and too far forwards, severely overlapping the chassis cross member and nearly in contact with it. It looks to me like you would have similar problems. As long as you have a decent sized fan, a reliable thermostatic switch and a manual override switch to pre-emptively activate the fan (before a long, slow climb, for example) and to act as a back up if the thermostatic switch fails, then you should be fine. Many production vehicles have electric fans because of similar considerations. It is just a matter of realising the viscous fan is preferable where practical, the electric fan merely an acceptable alternative where a viscous fan won't fit.

The amount of friction in a healthy cylinder is negligible compared to the resistance from the pressure plate. If you have a failing second cylinder, and age can be a factor, it makes sense to replace it at the same time, but replacing one cylinder has absolutely no ill-effect on the other; in fact, it'll help the other as you should be replacing the fluid at the end of the job with clean fresh stuff, not contaminated and mildly abrasive old fluid. I have worked that way for twenty yeas with several LRs, and have never had a cylinder fail within several years of replacing the other. Honestly, it is a myth put about by salespeople.

The GKN wouldn't fit with a different ratio transfer box.

I would love to fit one myself, but the prices are high for many f them and I suspect that most professional thieves have jammers. I'm fortunate in having a deterrent - my LR is too old and obsolete to be desirable for most thieves, and is too mucked about with to be desirable to the classic trade. It is also so modified that most of the arts are instantly and uniquely identifiable. It should keep the professionals from taking it.

Open cell foam is more effective than closed cell. The reason that Noise Killer (and some others) use closed cell foam is that open cell is as absorbent to moisture as it is noise. Closed cell is markedly less effective, but it doesn't absorb and hold water. The best sound absorbtion will be in a material with high surface area and soft structure with plenty of mass. Hence my comment about heavy domestic carpet.

The story about needing to replace both clutch cylinders together has a little bit of mechanical basis, but only as far as that if one is worn, then the other probably is too. Other than that, it's myth. There is certainly no difference in pressures from replace a cylinder - the master applies pressure and the slave moves in response. The pressure experienced inside the system is dependent on the spring pressure of the clutch pressure plate resisting the slave movement, given that the diaphragm springs are the item the hydraulic pressure is trying to move. You will only change the hydraulic pressure in the system if you have a stiffer pressure plate or a seized plate or fork. I have often had half pedal issues with LRs, and it has always been trapped air. The one stage missing from the bleeding instructions in all the manuals is to make sure the nose of the car is higher than the tail, so that any air in the slave cylinder rests against the inside of the bleed nipple, not the back of its piston where bleeding will fail to shift it.

While I also prefer the layout of the R380 gate, I agree that frequently selecting reverse by accident on a new LT77 smacks of ham fistedness. Fair enough on a worn out unit with knackered detents or maladjustment, but not a new one fresh from the factory.

The best thing to reduce noise is heavy carpet over the seat base, cab floor and lower bulkhead. If you fasten it with poppers, it'd be easily removable for drying/cleaning. The open nature and high surface area combined with softness will do more to absorb sound than any other individual product on the market. Automotive or marine carpet will do nothing to help. I have Wright Off Road matting in my 109 and it works well and is practical. It doesn't prevent water pooling in the foot wells from small leaks, though, and is less effective than a heavy carpet would be. Its main weakness is the comparative thinness of the bulkhead and seat base sections. Adding closed cell foam like Dynamat under the seat base would help a bit, but I lined the whole of my engine bay with Noise Killer mat and it made no appreciable difference over that the WOR cab matting had already done. Noise Killer or Dynamat is very effective when applied to the sides of the hard top or door panels, though - it's amazing how much low frequency drumming they stop from those points. I used a LaSalle headlining with camping roll mat between it and the roof panels for insulation and noise reduction, and it works very well indeed - lightweight and waterproof, it was easy to apply and doesn't hold condensation.

Remember the brakes discussion. Check that what you have is functioning correctly before you go altering things from standard.

I agree that a V8 should pull that gearing easily. V8s are prone to wearing cam shafts out, so that is one place I'd be looking. Unfortunately, it seems all too common for LR owners to write off poor performance, braking, steering and handling as a characteristic of the vehicle and set about all sorts of alterations when it just needs faults rectifying. Many of these cars are old and hard worked, and seemingly very few are well maintained. The recent discussion about brakes in the Defender section is a good example, and there are countless threads about Series steering. 4.71 ratio diffs would be easily and relatively cheaply sourced from a SIII 109, but they'll be old and you're taking a punt on condition. KAM Differentials do a wide range of ratios for Salisbury and Rover diffs, but they cost a bit more, being new and specialist. As for swapping Salisbury diffs, on paper it is much more complex than swapping a Rover diff, but in practice, it's not much harder. The casing is part oft he axle, unlike the Rover type, so the carrier and pinion come out separately from the casing.. That means a theoretical issue with preloads and mesh. The reality is that LR axle tolerances are good enough that there is very rarely a need to change the shims - you leave the pinion inner bearing outer race and its shims in the casing, and leave the carrier bearings and shims well alone; the cases are all accurate enough and the internals will all fit and mesh correctly, even when swapping pinions and complete carriers from case to case. It is even true if you fit the non-standard ratio KAM pinion and ring gear to the existing carrier - they give instruction on how to set up the mesh and preloads, but go on to say that less than 5% of instances need any alteration. I had no trouble changing from 4.71 to 3.54 and back again. You won't even need the axle spreader to get the carrier out, just a couple of levers and another pair of hands to handle it before it falls out.

Don't buy a new turbo - get a replacement from Turbo Technics in Northampton. It'll cost far less and will be every bit as good as new (they rebuild them for many manufacturers, including JLR). They can also make up VNT turbos for Tdis, if you are willing to spend a bit more (still cheaper than a new unit).

You want a location to be posted online to tell thieves where to look to disable them? Think it out...