henry-john Posted September 13, 2009 Share Posted September 13, 2009 Hi, I'm thinking to convert my '88 RRC 3,5 V8 to a Discovery TD5 engine and auto-box... Can you help me to find information, and what are the biggest problems? Kind regards Henry Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geoffbeaumont Posted September 14, 2009 Share Posted September 14, 2009 I'm not aware of anyone who's done this yet - you might well be trail blazing! Should be a good combination, though Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Attryde Posted September 14, 2009 Share Posted September 14, 2009 I believe Shackleton on here put a TD5 into his RRC. Might be worth searching for his posts. Pete. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
landmannnn Posted September 14, 2009 Share Posted September 14, 2009 How about a jag v8 in a rrc? It must have been done, or perhaps not. More fun than an oil burner and the engines are quite cheap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ally V8 Posted September 14, 2009 Share Posted September 14, 2009 Dont bother,the result after lots of hard work wont be worth the effort.The TD5 engine is not a good prospect long term,it is an expensive engine to repair or rebuild - esp the cyl head. A 300TDI will go just as well with minor tweaking and a bigger intercooler,and be cheap to buy,fit,run and repair.Plus its a bolt in,(almost anyway)conversion.The TDI will be remembered in many years time as the engine,(With the 200TDI)that went well,lasted,was easy to fix,reliable and cheap. I thought they were boring when they were current,running a LR garage - the odd head gasket or P gasket to relieve the boredom of servicing.Now with the TD4,5 and 6 its giving expensive bad news about cracked heads,expensive injectors,fuel pumps.Owners are getting bills for repairing things that should last the life of the car. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henry-john Posted September 15, 2009 Author Share Posted September 15, 2009 How about a jag v8 in a rrc? It must have been done, or perhaps not. More fun than an oil burner and the engines are quite cheap. well, since i'm from belgium, i can only use LR engine's.... and still, i can experience problems, as here we don't have your system of MOT in belgium we can't even lift the vehicle 2"..... Thx annywayz, is it had to be an engine from an other make, i'd go for the merlin engine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iomlt Posted September 15, 2009 Share Posted September 15, 2009 As your from Belgum hopefully you can read all this. Yes its been done with great success! RRC TD5 Build Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mickeyw Posted September 15, 2009 Share Posted September 15, 2009 How about a jag v8 in a rrc? It must have been done, or perhaps not. More fun than an oil burner and the engines are quite cheap. There was a write up recently in one of the comics about a chap who put an AMJV8 into RRC. Now that sounds like a lot a fun Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
v8bobber Posted September 17, 2009 Share Posted September 17, 2009 interesting that you have considered putting a td5 into a RR Classic, I was thinking the same thing today except that I thought that the Td5 might go nicely into my P38. The only real problems that i've had with the P38 (hang on, just got to find some wood to touch) are with the engine. Nothing major, just the vibration that is caused by the duff dual-mass flywheel and the little warning light that comes on now and again but annoying all the same. The various sources that I have looked into, price the flywheel up at about 600 quid, plus the clutch and what not, means that it's not far off the price of a decent Td5 engine with ancillaries. The Disco Td5 engine is the same power as the P38 BMW engine, and is known to mate up with the the R380 box that is already in place. Furthermore, the Td5 engine is easily tuneable should the need take me. I'm pretty sure that I could physically get the engine it but the electronics would be a bit scary! Would make a nice noise though and go quite nicely I would imagine. If I could re-engine the P38 it would be my perfect vehicle! Please feel free to let me know if you have pulled off this minor miracle! Dave Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geoffbeaumont Posted September 18, 2009 Share Posted September 18, 2009 Would make a nice noise though and go quite nicely I would imagine. If I could re-engine the P38 it would be my perfect vehicle! Surely if they're about the same power it will go pretty much the same as with the standard Beemer engine? Would the TD5 be more or less reliable than the BMW (which on the whole seem to be pretty decent engines)? The physical engineering might be straightforward enough, what about the electronics? How hard is it to remove the ECU from the rest of the car systems without upsetting the BECM, etc.? I don't know the answer to this, but you need to do your homework before committing to this route. How dodgy would a second hand flywheel be? I don't know anything about dual mass flywheels, but I'm wondering whether it's time to visit the scrapyard, especially if any BMWs also had suitable flywheels. Maybe one of them had a solid flywheel that would fit? It has to be a lot less work than fitting a TD5! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Posted September 18, 2009 Share Posted September 18, 2009 Thx annywayz, is it had to be an engine from an other make, i'd go for the merlin engine Well, if you can stand it not being supercharged, the meteor was the same basic engine badged as a Rover engine wasn't it??? should fulfill all the rules..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henry-john Posted September 18, 2009 Author Share Posted September 18, 2009 Well, if you can stand it not being supercharged, the meteor was the same basic engine badged as a Rover engine wasn't it??? should fulfill all the rules..... tell me what engine this is, and where i would be able to find this one? thx Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
landroversforever Posted September 18, 2009 Share Posted September 18, 2009 The bright G4 coloured RRC over in Iceland is a TD5 i believe was in one of the Mags a few years ago. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
g&t Posted September 19, 2009 Share Posted September 19, 2009 Meteor was the V8 incarnation of the Merlin, used in the MK1 Thorneycroft 'Mighty Antar' tank transporter. Might be a tad heavy on the front suspension, wasn't that pokey for it's 18 ltr. capacity & not RR's finest creation either. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
g&t Posted September 19, 2009 Share Posted September 19, 2009 Sorry guys, this is what happens when you are an old fart & post after midnight when you should be in bed! The V8 was of course the Meteorite (not Meteor)& had an output of about 260brake, think of the torque though! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haavard Guttormsen Posted September 27, 2009 Share Posted September 27, 2009 Hi, I have done aTD5 conversion on a RRC'76. Pictures can be found here: Haavards TD5 RRC Quick story: I got the RRC with a VW 2,4 litre TDI in it. The car had been on my neigbours yard for several years without even being started. After spending several months welding rust and getting everything ready to drive I took the car up in the mountains. After just 50 km's the engine lost cooling and started smoking black. I managed to drive there and back without the engine breaking down. When I got home I started looking for a better engine for my RRC. I managed to get a complete TD5 engine with auto gearbox with all electrics and driveshafts for a reasonable price here in Norway. I got the engine to my garage and started measuring up everything. After some measuring I found out it should be possible to put it in there without to much cutting. The only cutting in the car was cutting out the old engine mounts and builing new mount for the TD5 engine mounts which are huge compared to the older ones. I had to make 2 tries with the engine in and out before i got the correct height of the engine. Now it sits perfectly startight in the car and the hood will close without problems to. I had to remove the ACE pump from the engine to get enough space on that side. I got a new pulley from ebay and a correct drive belt. I fabricated a new lower crossmember to get clear of the sump from the gearbox and to get my 3 " exhaust. I also made some new radiator mounts to be able to use the Disco TD5 radiator. My intercooler came from some other car which I do not know, possible a ML since I got it from a mercedes garage. It is just a bit bigger then the TD5 one. It will probably be just fine with the D2 one too. The oil cooler for the gearbox is a universal one for US trucks. The electric fan is also just a universal one. The cheapest I could find that would cover the most of the radiator as there wasn't any room for the viscous fan. This was the easy part of the project. After this I started with the engine electrics. I dismantled the electrical system that came with the engine and got the engine and gearbox systems figured out. To be able to even start with this You will need many hours studying the RAVE manual. You MUST have Nanocom box.(thanks to a lot of help from Matti). You would also need an inmolizer disabler from TD5alive to be able to get the engine to work for more than 0,5 seconds at the time. What You need from the original wiring loom: Engine loom with ECU. Wiring loom from gearbox. The eninge ECU... This has brought me a lot of headache as the ECU I got was from a totally different car than the engine was. There are more than one type TD5 engine. Mine was from a 2004 model with only 30K km on it. The ECU i got was from a defender with out auto gearbox of course. I got hands of new ECU from an autobox car and was satisfied with that for amoment. Of course since having an EU3 engine that ECU is really bad for You. It does not have injector codes for the ine green injectors from EU3 engines and that will give You problems, worst case snapping of cam chain so I had to get a new ECU again. I got a new ECU off ebay and installed it. Then I lost all communication with my gearbox. Even after rebuilding my ECU (NNN type) I could not get the CAN bus correct. Then I was trying with my old ECU again. Yes the gearbox would work but it shifts like a maniac since the ratio was very different than on the D2 the transmission controller came from. I have not finished this part yet. I am waiting fro a proggrammable transmission controller atm. If I had knew this when I started I would hav bougt a compushift system before I started with this and reconfigured the engine ECU for manual gearbox at first. The fuel system was also a bit of a challenge. The TD5 requires quite a lot of diesel at correct pressure to be able to run. I used a 2 stage fuel pump system. In the rear I have a high flow fuel pump feeding the filter unit in the front. Before the filter there is a one way valve stopping fuel to go back again and air from getting into the system. After the filter unit I have a high pressure pump normally used when adding more power to US diesels. This could probably be fixed by using a tank from an original based TD5 engined car probably. The TD5 fuel pump is much higher than the the RRC fuel tank is and I did not wanna mess up that under the rear of the car. Even after all the trouble I went through to do this I would still have done it. The engine has really good power and fits nice in the car. The sound from it throught the 3" pipes is sweet, almost to quiet:-) I have worked hard to get all instruments working with this setup. To get the speedo to work I installed a sensor that detects the nuts on the flange out from the transfer case via a Speedohealer v4 box. To get the tacho to work was a bit harder. First I had to get the ECU to detect an instrument connected. When using a LED and resistor as load I finally hade the ECU belive there was a tacho attached. Then I connected yet another Speedohealer with a 500 ohm pullup resitor an the output to get the tacho working. To get the engine temp working I had to install a separate temp sensor on the engine. Just a universal sensor outlet on one of the cooling hoses did the works. If there is anything You wanna ask, just do it ! This is and will be an ongoing project for a while. Haavard Guttormsen Norway Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elbekko Posted September 29, 2009 Share Posted September 29, 2009 Another crazy from Belgium here, but stick with me I'm interested in doing this too, so your write-up will be a great help in the future Haavard. My plan was to get a D2 that had rolled over or something and thus still has a good engine for not too much money. This would solve all the ECU troubles you described above, as I'm really not interested in an auto box, and the ECU would just come with the engine. As far as I can tell, it should be a pretty straight forward bolt on to the R380 + BW, which is currently attached to a 300tdi. A few questions remain though: 1) How about the airco? Will I be able to keep it? 2) Will the gearbox etc need to be moved back to fit the engine? This would be a bit of an issue with the softdash interior I think. 3) What would be a realistic timeframe to do the conversion? Thanks for any and all help, Ben Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henry-john Posted September 30, 2009 Author Share Posted September 30, 2009 A few questions remain though: 1) How about the airco? Will I be able to keep it? Just use the aircopump that is mounted on the TD5engine 2) Will the gearbox etc need to be moved back to fit the engine? This would be a bit of an issue with the softdash interior I think. The R380 fitted on the 300tdi won't fit the TD5 if I'm not mistaken, you have to find an R380 TD5 gearbox, and throw away that BW 3) What would be a realistic timeframe to do the conversion? Depends on your budget.... but for that money, if it has been done as it should..... i'd buy a D2 disco instead, especially in belgium..... Thanks for any and all help, Ben Just My 2cents.... P.S. In my case, it was a study, trying to figure out if i could do it, but apparently in the whole of europe, but not in belgium.... Got the money for the conversion..... Will fit an R380 and a 3,9 V8 instead of the TD5, no problems with the kind of MOT we got here..... TD5 is impossible in belgium when fitted in a RRC Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elbekko Posted September 30, 2009 Share Posted September 30, 2009 TD5 is impossible in belgium when fitted in a RRC Good to know. Going the 300tdi rebuild route then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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