secondjeremy

The gasket face of the Rover IoE 4 and 6 cylinder engine is flat - the combustion chamber being in the partial hemisphere over the exhaust (side) valve and the adjacent side of the pointed piston. the Weslake head/manifold gets round Rover's inlet manifold cast in the head. Its a longitudinal tube with branches for each cylinder (bit like the manifold used on the 4 cylinder S1 engines). There's one carb for the 6 cylinders - I don't know if the end ones do much. Its claimed to produce more power than the Rover head. The compression ratio is controlled by the piston shape.

I found a new rocker shaft helped keep my S3 diesel oil tight.

Sand was never a standard colour for S2/2a's. limestone was - and all were high gloss.

If the oil filter is under the carburettor its a 2 litre spreadbore. Very rare vehicle now.

The 2.6 S3 6 cylinder I worked on the other day seemed to have a full set of timing marks including the EP mark on the front pulley/damper. Otherwise you'll have to compare the available marks on the 4 cylinder flywheel with what's required for the 6, assuming it fits in such a position that the marks are true. With regard to the spiggot the issue will be does it prevent the nose of the first motion shaft from goung far enough forward towards the crank when fitted. Some measuring may solve your problem.

Is this a SWB with 10in rears? If so the rear brake is the standard land Rover drum brake which was used from the later 80in vehicles. Originally the thing was self - adjusting with only the bottom spring - but as this caused probelms the post and return spring was fitted to the leading shoe together with an adjuster for the leading shoe. Why all this? The idea is that the leading shoe is drawn to the drum when its applied which gives some servo action. If the drum is dirty or rusty - there's a tendancy for the leading edge to pick up on the rough drum surface and apply itself. In particular this happens in reverse as there's very little restraint for the back shoe - which now becomes the leading shoe. What can you do about it? - the edges of the shoes should be well chamfered (cut back at an angle of 45 degrees or flatter). The sides of the shoes should also be inspected in case they're rubbing on the drum. If it happens when you're reversing out of a parking place - consider parking the other way round. Rust will form in a clean drum surface in a very short time (few hours) in damp conditions and is polished off when the brakes are applied. There were some cylinders around with excessively strong inner springs - which caused problems. I've had to dismantle cylinders and fit springs from old cylinders to solve the problem. Current ones seem OK. its also possible your master cylinder isn't releasing pressure fully - due to restricted pedal travel or something - and whilst you don't notice anything wrong with the discs - the residual pressure is noticeable on the back due to the self-servo effect.

"Look - no steering relay!"

What on earth are you going to use it for to warrant this braking performance? What engine are you fitting?

6 cylinder engines are notorious for suffering from crankshaft vibrations - some are merely annoying, whereas others are rather more spectacular resulting in breakages. I don't know if the 7 bearing Rover 3 litre engine suffers - and if the original flywheel is part of the design. there was a nice article by SH Grylls on the RREC site which explained when it arose on Rover 6 cylinder engines and how they dealt with it. The 4 cylinder diesel and petrol LR engines share the same crank dimensions. petrol have a cast crank, diesels a forging. Spare diesel cranks were supplied for both engines. I know they fit as when my S3 diesel engine made noises and eventually stuck solid I found a petrol crank inside. I think the diesel flywheel is bigger than the petrol one - and the starter is in a different place - so a petrol flywheel may be what you need.

What i do know is that the later 5 bearing engines have a different pitch circle to the 3 bearing ones - sorry to be vague but I can't remember which is bigger. The 3 bearing engine seems to have 8 bolts - I think the 5 is the same on a different circle.

3 litre had a 10in clutch, the largest LR used was a 9.5. I don't know if the clutch presser bolt pattern is the same. 9 and 9.5 is save for the positions of the dowels. I came across this when i fitted a BMC 2.2 litre diesel - which used the BMC 10in presser plate and the Rover 3 litre driven plate. This fitted into the OHV type bellhousing - I mention that as it looks slightly fuller than at least the early ioe bellhousing. Some early forward controls may have had the 3 litre engine - the ones for which no parts books are available - but which justify the mention of SU carburettors in the drivers handbook.

I think some have 2 similar holes for the brake light switch. The second hole was a form of pad wear indicator - it was a second switch which operated when the pedal travel became excessive. It was linked in with the PDWA and the low vacuum warning light. Are you using the correct hole?

Yes transmission stayed with BSF fastenings from 80in to the end. To separate - handbrake backplate must come off - remove drum and drive flange - linkage to handbrake and 4 bolts in the centre of the backplate. Now remove the transfer arm bottom cover, then the intermediate shaft - remove plate and lever out. Gear and thrust washers will now fall out - be careful - its sharp. take off gear at the back of the mainshaft and 3 nuts are revealed - undo them and the external ones and the transfer box should fall off.

4 - 6 cylinder boxes. Leaving aside the 1 tonne box the 6 cylinder has a different gear lever. There are 2 bellhousing bolt patterns - one for ioe engines - 1.6, 2.0, amd 6 cylinder and another for OHV engines. Then there's the larger layshaft bearings of the later S2/2a boxes Then the S3 clutch cylinders - avaiable for both types of bellhousing.

You've got a water trap - its the bottom of the filter housing - that's carefully constructed so you can't assemble it without a filter. There's even a tap to let the water out.