It has got top-hat liners!
Post mortem is throwing up some interesting info:
Torques required to loosen head bolts varied wildly, with a sort of pattern from back to front, back being "omigawd, are these ever going to crack or will my breaker bar break first" tight to front being "could have undone those with a 1/4 drive ratchet" loose. Now I know that a damaged gasket will allow some movement around the damaged area, so would expect those around #5 to be looser, but not the front ones.
Here's the head and gasket:
Gasket was genuine Land Rover- which I'd expect as last billed head work was LR main dealer.
Gasket on #5 was also burning through toward 3 of the studs
which indicates to me an issue with torquing.
Anyway, time for a good cleanup and deployment of straight edge on block...
Surprises me too, the difference in force needed to loosen the headbolts. Howmany miles ago was the last headjob performed by LR? I assume they are strickt in their torquevalues. On the other hand it is alloy and not a cast iron head, there is much more difference in expansion coëfficiënt, were the bolts oiled y/n ?
Doesn't look too bad, the chambers are equally black it seems.
Are you fitting ARP studs to this engine too?
Tony.
57767 miles ago Tony. 2 x head gaskets (and a centre exhaust box). I guess the torquing/ degreeing of the bolts was only as good as the Tech doing the job. Maybe they put the spotty apprentice on it!
Hard to tell if bolts were oiled, but there was no corrosion on the threads/ in block.
I'll definitely be fitting ARP studs. After spending £500 plus on the V8 Devs heads, it'd be a false economy not to give it the best chance of a long and happy future. While I'm in there I'll DTI up the cam to check for wear, and also to see if it has a non-standard cam in it. The current one is marked with an orange paint stripe. I've had an orange stripe cam before on one of the 3.5's and can't remember if that was standard LR or not.
Why you not just getting yours skimmed, seems a lot of money for 2 heads, valves guides are cheap enough and easy to change, seals come in the head set,, decode the valves, saved 350 quid!
I'm not sure yet whether the heads have another skim in them. I'll measure tomorrow. They've had at least one skim/ rework (still have the warranty labels on them), but until I measure how warped the blown one is I won't know how much of a skim it needs. My test so far has been just sticking a steel rule on it and shining a light behind. I could virtually see the torch :)
I need to get my "straight edge" out of it's case and do the job properly.
Rocker shims are 0.8mm already, which isn't much of an indication as the block will have been faced when top-hatted.
Dunno about you but I always find there's something actually satisfying about pulling an engine apart and seeing the cause of whatever caused you to pull it apart in the first place. There's nothing worse than pulling it apart and finding everything looks perfect.
Your VSE is really fighting you every step of the way!!
Hopefully you'll have it fighting fit in no time at all!
David.
That's true Gilbertd. The satisfaction was at a high point as soon as I'd lifted the lower manifold and saw the burn on the valley gasket. Satisfaction quotient now dips while deciding how far to go with the repair (my inner perfectionist would have the block out and back to Turners for evaluation and a smidge milled of the faces, but I really don't want to get into full rebuild territory) and rises again once I jump in and turn the key when it's finished.
David- I hope your impending VSE is less fighty than this one and that your biggest problems are whether to use Meguiars or Dodo Juice products to get the Oslo better than factory! The spend on this one has now taken it to a level where I could have gone up a couple of notches on the original purchase and got one that didn't need all the "love" I've had to give (and still have to give) this one, Of course, that mythical beast doesn't exist in P38 world 'cos there's usually a bag of gremlins whatever you get!
Very true. Although I haven't had to crack the engine open yet (or more likey, have the engine cracked open by someone competent), The Duchess has had a fair number of bits changed in the first year. Most of them have been rolling maintainance but a totally collapsed wheel bearing and the failed front diff were definite show stoppers.
Orangebean wrote:
The spend on this one has now taken it to a level where I could have gone up a couple of notches on the original purchase and got one that didn't need all the "love" I've had to give (and still have to give) this one, Of course, that mythical beast doesn't exist in P38 world 'cos there's usually a bag of gremlins whatever you get!
Or you could have waited and bought mine! A friend of Gilbert's is about to have mine at a stupid price.
I'm sorry, guys, but I've been a traitor o-(. I've not only bought a RRS but it's a diesel too. But it is a V8 o-)
I think I need to go outside and give mine a good hug, some kind words, and apologise for the swearing I've directed at it for what are actually very minor issues in the grand scheme of things!
Some of you chaps really seem to have it rough with your P38s.
I do admire the determination though, and I hope you all get everything sorted.
OldShep56 wrote:
Or you could have waited and bought mine! A friend of Gilbert's is about to have mine at a stupid price.
I'm sorry, guys, but I've been a traitor o-(. I've not only bought a RRS but it's a diesel too. But it is a V8 o-)
No LPG Shep, so would have already been another grand plus on the spendometer :-)
Well done with the RRS though. Hope it gives you what you want- and keeps giving it without opening a bag of gremlins! We'll still talk to you (and probably be secretly jealous!)
RutlandRover wrote:
Some of you chaps really seem to have it rough with your P38s.>
I do admire the determination though, and I hope you all get everything sorted.
It's kind of what you expect when you buy a sub £2k P38 RutlandRover
There will be issues (pick from the usual list). The random bit is which ones you get in the Lucky Dip!
Don't ban me for this lol, I mention it out of interest - Has anyone suffering combined major engine problems and immobiliser / ECU type problems considered fitting a completely different engine altogether? As a kid I regularly saw a super long wheelbase Classic 6x6 Rangerover, it had an all iron small block V8 instead of the Rover V8, probably a Chevy motor..
Simon
Overfinch used to put a Chevy motor into the Classic but that was simple enough as the immobiliser was the simple cut various circuits job and could easily be bypassed (if you knew what you were doing). You can't easily bypass the immobiliser on a P38 as it's an integral part of the BeCM. The BeCM receives the code from the receiver and sends a rolling code to the engine ECU to turn it on. Hence mention of them getting out of sync so the code received by the ECU isn't what it is expecting to see so stays shut down. If you have immobiliser problems, you fix them.....
Overfinch also did the same with the P38 but no idea how they did it although I suspect they used a Chevy engine but retained the GEMS (as they never did it on a Thor) ECU and just used that to control the engine. There's a guy in the States who has fitted a Chevy LSx engine but he's had to use both the Chevy and GEMS ECUs and tied them together to make it all work. Took him over 2 years to get it all working though. I've thought that in theory it would be possible to fit the BMW 4.4 motor from an L322 into a Thor as they both use the Bosch Motronic ECU so I would have thought you could still use the original one on the later engine. But why would you want to? The BMW gives 295 bhp compared with 225 for a 4.6 Thor. With a bit of fairly mild tuning you could get pretty damn close to that anyway.
Overfinch dropped in a 5.7 Chevy V8 back in the 1990s. Allegedly gave 330 HP.
They do occasionally come up for sale:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Overfinch-570-HSE-Range-Rover-P38-/321143337037?
There are a lot of projects started globally to drop various lumps into the P38, most of them seem to fizzle out with poorly matched transmissions, non working peripherals and similar.
There's a guy on another forum in USA who's done a successful transplant of a LS series Chevy motor and 4L60E transmission, into a P38, so it can be done.
You can also buy standalone ECUs that are designed to run the 4.6 in other cars.
The thing is, if you address the weak points of the engine design- cooling and liners, with a top hat conversion, properly assembled engine, good condition water pumps and ancillaries you've taken out the problems with none of the hassle of a conversion.
EDIT- darn- beaten to it by Gilbertd. He types faster than me!
EDIT again- Gilbertd and I think alike though!
I'll check out all your links later when I've a bit more time... fag break during the hailstorm! The 6x6 I saw would have been in the mid 80s.
Can see all your points and not intending a wind-up, just curious. On the immobiliser point was thinking along the lines of just sticking a carb'd V8 in, no engine ECU to need to talk to other ECUs, with a mixer LPG system off you go... or does the immobiliser prevent BCM stuff working too?
Half expected replies to bring up the weight difference, no problem there? How would costs involved with fixing up a Rover engine to prevent cooling / HG issues compare to picking up a small block from a scrappies and putting it in? Thinking the small block doesn't have the same problems and once fitted would open up the full world of tuning goodies available for what is probably the most modded engine ever with more torque / power from the off anyway, and you've got something a bit different / more powerful that might be worth more money when you sell it on..
Would think possible to fit a wide range of engines if the work was put in but to keep it simple use a carb v8 and one where parts to mate to the gearbox are already available. My mate fitted the engine from a Lexus400 into his Capri, expect that will have taken more shoehorning and involved with the electronics.
Simon
I think other elements of the car need information/signals from the engine to keep working too - like the gearbox. If you remove the engine from the equation I think it gives you problems elsewhere.
RutlandRover wrote:
I think other elements of the car need information/signals from the engine to keep working too - like the gearbox. If you remove the engine from the equation I think it gives you problems elsewhere.
You'll know more about that than me, I know the gearbox needs TPS signal but that might easily be addressed, I've made a TPS up for catb'd Fiat Ducato's before just so the LPG mixer system could read it. Unless the gearbox ECU gets TPS from engine ECU over canbus?
Simon
I might not - those are somewhat vague memories of reading some threads on the other forum from people that have done engine swaps.