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1997 3.9 V8 EFi Refresh


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Honestly if the cam is on the bench, fit a new one, you're half-way there and a replacement is peanuts, even an aftermarket one is very reasonable boost for no penalty.

Same with lifters, I wouldn't refit something like that as the effort of getting to them vastly outweighs the cost of replacement parts.

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6 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:

if the cam is on the bench, fit a new one

Yup - I'm on it...

14 hours ago, Phill S said:

Haven't yet checked the rocker gear, but my forward plan is to replace:

  1. Camshaft and hydraulic tappets
  2. Timing chain and gears
  3. Valve guides

And put it all back together again - whaddayareckon?

 

I write too much don't I...

 

Slightly drifting off topic, and it's all my fault, but:

11 hours ago, reb78 said:

Also, as you have the vin of your disco donor, it should be fairly easy to see which bits you need if there are vin variations to parts.  

You're quite right about the engine parts frinstance, but time will be coming when I'm fretting over what radiator, top/bottom hoses, power steering pipes, engine oil cooler pipes, r380 oil cooler pipes and just one or two other bits and bobs. I'll keep plugging away at it...

Edited by Phill S
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17 hours ago, Phill S said:
On 3/12/2022 at 6:07 PM, Bowie69 said:

Guides are a machine shop job

How come? All you need is a press and a reamer aint it? And an ounce or two of cunning

Not really I'm afraid, if you want the valves to seat properly afterwards then the seats need machining to match the potential new position of the guides. You could just grind them with paste but if one is off by more than a thou or so you will be there forever. Having the seats cut is a good opportunity to go for a nice 3-angle valve job, to help things along a bit.

You can get away without cutting the seats if you k-line the existing guides -but that process uses a machine anyway!

You already say how a couple of valves/seats are bad, so just get it done :)

 

Any cam with a lifter that looks like that is junk, so replace the lot, either genuine or Rhoads lifters work, the cheap ones do not last.

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I have the workshop to myself this week so taking a break from the engine mechanical side of things so I can spread out and work out what I need from the Disco wiring loom....

20220314_120953.thumb.jpg.317ac27eab9d3a6b9251c6c0692b7aa8.jpg

 

In the meantime I'll get parts on order

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In my quest for good quality parts for reasonable money, what do we think of Delphi hydraulic tappets? Anybody used those - they used to be a decent manufacturer....

Yeah - I know. I'm trying to keep costs under control

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On 3/13/2014 at 12:12 AM, smallfry said:

I would not recommend fitting a Britpart camshaft and followers because "THEY" say that they are no good, although I have, and it still seems to be OK after 15k

A minor squabble about this at the time, here:

But 8 years on how did that Britpart camshaft and followers work out?

I'm probably going Kent H180 but remember I'm planning a major overhaul of my engine 60k miles down the line, at which point I'll be junking what I fit now and starting again, so if Britpart or 'OEM' will carry me that far I might just think again....

See - I'm doing my homework....

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  • 2 weeks later...

Been quiet on this one because I've been gutting the gearbox and transfer box to check them over, and make up my space model so I can get the chassis mounts welded in while the engine is still small:

185020953_20220327_1138291.thumb.jpg.12a4c965066c44789fe3d2bf6d6baeab.jpg

 

More pics on that on my project page:

 

In the meantime I've been pondering on what refresh work I need to do on the air manifold upwards - injectors etc. As a fuel injection newbie I found this a useful intro to how the system on my engine works:

 

Not much to go wrong there then...

 

20220331_155021[1].jpg

Edited by Phill S
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  • 3 months later...

Lots been going on with my truck, but over the past few days I've begun the building up of the main block. Crankshaft shells, big ends, camshaft bearings and rings all replaced. Standard camshaft I'm afraid - I'm now officially on a budget. Camshaft from Turner Engineering, all the rest from EAC:

20220629_101807.thumb.jpg.e5ed2e49a63d514155885d12c39c9f1f.jpg

 

More coming as and when...

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  • 3 weeks later...

Some notes that might be helpful to somebody and a question that somebody will have the answer to! Maybe....

Bearings and rings all in and the main block all ready, attention turns to the front cover. My engine has the later one:

20220719_142207.thumb.jpg.0f0ce2185430cad73e73f8ba7dd9bc01.jpg

 

Which has the crank driven oil pump:

20220719_151513.thumb.jpg.4893a57a332646ca1c71a25249abb6aa.jpg

 

I filled it up with vaseline in the hope that it might be easier to pull the oil through when turning the engine over by hand.

Now - in the first phase of this transplant I'm going without oil cooler. Just one of the short cuts I'm taking to get the truck on the road. I'll return to that over winter, and phase 2.

So, on the underside:

20220720_133823.thumb.jpg.1d1962fc58f5ddc5f2600b2acad16ab1.jpg

 

The brass plug to the left is M20 with a 1.5 thread that takes the place of the hose to the radiator. Set in with Dirko red. My fave high temp sealant. I've also removed the end cap on the casting where the pressurised oil runs up to the pressure switch and feed to the hydraulic tappet galleries and beyond. Tapped and fitted with an M18 plug. Then fitted with 1/8" NPT oil pressure sensor for the dash gauge.

Around the side:

20220720_142611.thumb.jpg.d18dbfe47f4474dafcf8c406dcf7e6d8.jpg

 

Return from the oil cooler also plugged M20 x 1.5. Somebody did a nice job at the design stage to figure out an easy way of configuring the engine with or without oil cooler using suitable ports and clever dick hose connectors. I've removed the end cap from the oil supply gallery to the pump and tapped out to M20 x 1.5 so that I can use a hex head plug tapped out to 1/8" NPT to take the oil temperature sender. This is then measuring the temperature of the oil straight from the sump. Plug and sender perched on the top in the pic, you can see I've also drilled the plug on the inside to get the sender right into the oil flow.

That then leaves me with one stinky little problem, and this is where you come in. In between the sender and the brass hose plug sits the port for the oil pressure relief valve. Here's the guts of that:

20220719_143037.thumb.jpg.49e518620ff6511d56cf64dd6ebca8f5.jpg

 

Pretty standard item. Workshop Manual says to discard the O ring on the end cap and replace - no surprise there.  I cannot find any trace of a part number for that guy! Even Ralph in Requests for Part Numbers can't find it. Spent a lot of time on the phone yesterday and ended up talking to Richard at Turner Eng who told me that Land Rover no longer support those parts. Hmm. Turners can sell me an O ring that is nominally identical and of good quality, they use this one in their recon engines that they sell. Trouble is they charge a minimum of £8 postage. A bit steep for an O ring.

Now, I know the Space Shuttle had trouble with its O rings, but this isn't rocket science. Is it? Am I going where no man has gone before?

Anybody able to come up with a part number?

Edited by Phill S
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  • 9 months later...

Eventually bit the bullet on the O ring and bought from Turner Eng.

 

The rest of the engine build up was pretty straightforward, and I'm now working towards first start. But two puzzles that I know somebody will know the answer to. Sombody has been at the ignition system wiring at the coil end of things:

20230518_143726.thumb.jpg.fab213fde53569dd1b6fe608d259c5c2.jpg

 

Puzzle 1: I have a white wire and a white with black coming from the Ignition control module. Book say they should both be white (which would be even less helpful), so which goes to the positive coil terminal and which to the negative?

Puzzle 2: Both tune resistors have been removed. Why would they have done that?

 

Edited by Phill S
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Those aren't the tune resistors. Tune resistors are in the cab, under the seat on RRC and under the dash on the Disco (near the ECU, in each case anyway).

Those missing resistors are supposed to suppress spikes/EMF etc from feeding back to the ECU. They are called "Multiport Fuel Injection Ignition Resistor" They should be changed back, ideally. They're sometimes removed by muppets who don't understand the system - they don't usually give trouble. 6.8K Ohms. The wires should be White/Blue wires on one side, and White/Black on the other side of your "resistors". I can't quite see, but one of the White/Black terminals, should have 2 wires? One of them goes to the other "resistor" and the other one is on your coil negative.

Are the 2 un-connected ring terminals from the top of the amplifier?
Looking at the connector face, terminal 1 goes to the negative and 3 to the positive. Back of the plug will be number reversed, of course.

image.png.a880666310f10b6932987d9383e987f8.png

So if you determine the orientation of the connector and pull the jacket back (or test with a meter) you should be able to determine which is which. Originally, they had spade terminals and I think one was gendered differently, to fit on a piggy-back spade, so they only fitted one way anyway.

I'd like to GUESS that the White/Black goes onto the negative, with the existing White/Black... but who would know?!?!

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Took a lot of searching, but Mr google finally pointed me at this:

On 3/17/2011 at 2:37 PM, crclifford said:

This is the only image i could see as well...hope it helps

post-24570-0-45394000-1300372613_thumb.png

 

That seems reasonable.

Still puzzling over why the tune resistors have been removed though...

 

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On 5/19/2023 at 12:55 AM, AlWorms said:

Those aren't the tune resistors.

I don't know how come your post didn't show up when I did my last updates, but that's an excellent input, thanks for that. I use the Opera browser and it's doing some odd things elsewhere at the moment. I'm actually transplanting the original Disco 1 wiring loom into my truck, moving from 24v to 12v, so I'll go searching for the tune resistor to make sure that's correct. The wiring on the missing resistors is colour coded exactly as you say, and I've lashed in a 6.8k resistor in white/blue back to the ECU for the time being. But yes, white/black from the amplifier goes to the coil -ve and white to +ve.

Also, thanks guys for the general words of encouragement. A few jobs to do on the silencer, fuel pumps and general wiring, and I'll pull it outside for the 20 minute engine run up and hydraulic lifter bedding-in that seems to be required...

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50 minutes ago, Phill S said:

I don't know how come your post didn't show up when I did my last updates

I'm new and my posts all need moderating 😉. In case I'm a wierdo. Which I am, but not in the dodgy way😁

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22 hours ago, AlWorms said:

In case I'm a wierdo

You seem perfectly normal to me...

 

21 hours ago, Hybrid_From_Hell said:

No 7 is always the lobe that wears 1st and more than all the others

Last one on the oil way?

Thanks for advice on the studs and chain, I'll bear in mind on the next build....

 

Just in case anybody else stumbles over the terminology in the good book, here's the tune resistor:

20230521_120228.thumb.jpg.f2de96ebdae02d523617dce670e2506d.jpg

 

A couple of feet of wire away from the ECU connector. Measures up at 3.9kΩ which is fine for me as I'm running with the cats.

 

Doing the bedding in the lifters engine run up thing today, unless any gotchas wriggle out of the woodwork. I know I've read it somewhere - 20 minutes at 2,000 RPM?

Fingers crossed....

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