Lpgc wrote:

If not a collapsed flexi could it be a problem inside the ABS unit?
Yeah that was the only other thing that was on my mind...

I drove it up and down the drive a few times after putting it all back together. brakes feel normal, but the passenger caliper is still loose and not even touching the pads.

I think i'll order a pair of front flexis and go from there.

I'm wondering if its a collapsed flexi? They look pretty old.

Went to the builders yard this morning and when i got there i could smell cooking brakes. Got out for a look and passenger front wheel was smoking hot.

Got it home driving slower and using the brakes as little as possible, and i've pulled the corner apart hoping it was just a stuck slider, except i cant actually see anything wrong.

sliders are free, pads werent even stuck in the carriers. I lifted the pistons boots and the pistons are shiney clean. I then got a G clamp, and if i push one piston in, the other pops out and vice versa, very little force needed, suggesting the pistons themselves are free. Now heres where it gets really odd...

I put a block of wood in the caliper leaving about 10mm of space, jumped in and pressed the brake pedal, in an attempt to push the pistons out some more, so i could check for rust, except nothing happened. The space remained at 10mm. I turned the ignition on and charged up the brake pump and properly heaved on the pedal... same thing.

Got a chunk of metal across both pistons and managed to force them both back 5mm or so with the g clamp. Reinstalled the caliper on the car. Since i pushed the pistons back theres now a 5mm gap between the caliper and pads. Stomped on the pedal as hard as i could inside the car, but the gap didnt close.

So what on earth is going on here!?!

One minute they're stuck on, and now they;re not getting any pressure at all?

4v just isnt needed, as GM discovered with the LS.

Ford went off down the 4v OHC route in the 90's, at the same time GM ran the numbers and realised that a very well designed 2v pushrod engine with all the latest technology could compete favourably at much lower cost and we got the LS, which is now in its third generation and has all the good stuff like cylinder on demand and variable timing, and competes pretty favourably with 4v designs from their competitors.

4v is great when you need to extract every horsepower from a tiny engine, but for a big V8 it tends to matter a lot less, and they can get close enough with a good 2v head.

Yeah its odd, especially given the massive range of heads available for the various other yank V8's

I suspect it comes down to cost and volumes. Massive numbers of chevy/ford/chrysler V8's sold and a thriving tuning/hot-rod scene mean huge aftermarket for them. Heads are available at a massive variety of price points and performance levels.

The Rover in comparison was only ever really fitted to a few niche low volume sports cars back in the 70/80's and spent most of its life powering various 4x4's..

The two heads that do exist (wildcat and TA) are very expensive as a result and both are a bit "weird" requiring many additional parts which drives up the cost further.

the D2 only got the 4.0 IIRC? and the rumors go that they used the better blocks for the 4.6, and the worse ones for the 4.0, so i guess it would make sense that you see a higher instance of issues on the D2 simply due to them always getting the poorer blocks, whereas the P38 will have had a lot more 4.6 engines with the better ones.

I think as with anything, a common fault doesnt mean every single one has issues. The aforementioned N47's are a good example of that. A huge number of them having timing chain issues, but there are still plenty driving around. eBays also full of cars with broken timing chains!

I dont think its fair to say they dont have liner issues though. It was enough of an issue even during manufacture that they were x-raying blocks and sorting them based on cylinder wall thickness. Wether you call it cracking or "porosity" its the same thing in the end, water gets thru the alloy cylinder wall, up the back of the liner and into the chamber. The fact that top hat liners exist tell you its enough of a problem that a fix has been developed. If it was a rare problem the fix would be "just get another block"...

VW/Audi and the other german marques use a sleeve style clamp with large bands:

They come in a variety of sizes. The Audi exhaust systems come from the factory as one single piece, but if you need to replace a muffler for instance they have a prescribed cut line, and then use those clamps to join the two halves back together. They also use them between the downpipe and system, instead of a flange.

They work really well if you can find one the right size. They are often metric and come in 5mm increments.

FWIW the police engine with issues is the N57, the M57 is the previous generation and seems much more robust. The N series diesels are pretty crap, the 4 cylinder being renowned for eating its timing chains. Certainly one to avoid.

The whole police thing is weird, because they stopped making the N57 in 2015/2016, thus at this point they'd naturally be getting cycled out of the fleet anyway. BMW also appear to be the ones to pull the plug, rather than the police refusing to buy them. As with anything theres probably more complexity than portrayed in the media.

Isnt the "porus block" just another name for the cracking-behind-the-liners issue that they all seem to eventually suffer from?

StrangeRover wrote:

You can build a rover v8 to over 300hp with a mountain of torque to go with it..

Maybe i drive like a granny but i've never found the stock 4.6 lacking in punch, unless it has no compression and the proverbial cam that has had the lumps lathed off it..

Mine feels lacking down low, but if you get it in sport mode and right up the rpm's it moves along just fine (though it doesnt sound particularly great up there). And thats an engine thats evidently pretty worn out. I'm sure a fresh 4.6 with a mild cam and say ~240-250hp would be perfectly fine. Its not a sports car after all.

The problem is more that you'll put thousands into a Rover V8 to get it to that state, and its not like its then suddenly reliable. Its still the same engine with many flaws, its just a fresh one. Thats the bit that i'm wary of. Furthermore its been indicated that getting hold of certain parts is difficult. For example finding high quality rockers and shafts seems like a complete minefield. Lifiters are similar though a few companies do seem to make decent ones, you pay the price for that. I've seen folk with freshly built engines wipe a camshaft out in a 100miles just down to bad luck. My own car had a full engine replacement by land rover at 6 years old, so even the factory bits werent great. Its also a fairly inefficient design meaning higher fuel consumption than a modern engine would achieve.

You can pull a 20 year old M57 out of a scrap E39 and pretty much know it'll just work. It might want a new turbo at some point, but the actual engine is solid. And the same goes for most modern engines. Thus the question, do you spend the time/money making a good Rover V8, or do you instead spend it making some other more reliable modern engine fit instead.

I'm wanting to eyeball up a gearbox adaptor as per the chat in the other thread.

Shipping the whole thing will be dear, but if you could remove the rear extension housing and output shaft and chuck em in a box that would be excellent, i could send some beer tokens for your time and ofcourse cover the shipping costs.

Will drop you a message :)

If anyone happens to have a transfer case let me know!

Does anyone happen to have a scrap transfer case or gearbox knocking around they'd be willing to part with?

There is no LPG exemption for ULEZ. Some reports that 4.0 Thor cars have sufficiently low NOx figures to be allowed in anyway.

Scottish ULEZ has a 30 year cutoff though, so my old barge will be allowed in next year regardless.

85L of LPG is 18.7 gallons.

200miles / 18.7 gallons is 10.6 MPG
220miles / 18.7 gallons is 11.7 MPG

Yeah i see what you mean, i think you'd really want to run the original BMW M62 ECU, theres probably enough subtle sensor differences (and likely some larger ones, like ignition timing and cam position sensors) that would mean trying to run an M62 on a Thor ECU wouldnt produce a great result. The BMW V8 also has VVT and electronic throttle, and while its Motronic, its a newer version.

Wether the BMW ECU produces CAN messages that the ZF 4HP is happy with is anyones guess, and its likely it'll want different shift points etc anyway.

I dont know if the bellhousings and torque converters are swappable between 4HP and 5HP. Most of the later ZF boxes have cast-in bellhousings. A quick google search doesnt find much suggesting they probably arent the same.

This is the beauty of what the Defender guys are doing with the M57. You get the engine and box from an X5 (or other 4wd BMW), pop the LT230 on the back with the adaptor kit and the entire engine/box runs with its original factory programming.

Interfacing with a P38 is likely to be fairly easy, the electronics on these old things are actually fairly simple and well understood at this point. The BECM looks complicated, but really its all simple analog signals for the most part.

Yeah, when i said "kseal" i guess i just meant it as a generic term for "headgasket in a bottle".

As for the BMW engine, getting the electronics of the M62 running is something i'd be quite happy dealing with. I do love getting into the nitty gritty of a wiring diagram.

The tricky part for me are the mechanical bits. You either need to adapt the M62 to the existing ZF box or somehow make the original or some other gearbox work. Adapting to the existing box also likely means you end up needing compushift or similar, as the factory program is unlikely to match up well enough, and if its wrong you'll wreck the box in no time, as the box uses throttle inputs to lookup engine torque and set line pressures accordingly. If its wrong the clutches will slip and the box will expire.

I've actually spent a lot of time recently looking into the ZF 8HP series boxes. Some clever folks have worked out excellent aftermarket control over those gearboxes, and theres a huge range of conversion kits available to connect the ZF 8HP to all sorts of engines. The boxes are extremely strong and also pretty cheap in the aftermarket as they basically dont fail.

Theres even parts available to connect the 8HP to an LT230, but ofcourse nothing for the P38 transfer case.

Theres also stuff like sump clearance that you can run into with engine conversions.

Some years back i had an Audi 4.2L V8 sat in the front of a defender, I had drawings to mate the audi engine to the R380 etc but the issue that eventually pushed it over the edge was the sump clearance to the front diff/axle. The Audi motor had a front sump bowl, and the oil pump was hanging down inside that bowl. There was no easy way to move the pump and it was clashing hard with the front diff. I could have probably bodged it by raising the engine or installing bigger bump stops but thats not really the result i was going for.

My tank is labelled 92L in the spare wheel well.

Oddly it routinely takes well in excess of 80 litres at most pumps. I usually stop somewhere around 85L myself. I've had on a few occasions the pump cut out around 65-70L, but the vast majority of the time i have to stop manually.

That much gas gets me around 200-220miles, which seems fairly poor given some of the other folks results, circa 11mpg.

Its not done the weird cranking thing again, there does seem to be a slow loss of coolant though. Used it a few times over the weekend, and other than the residual pressure everything seems "fine".

Geh, been looking at engine swaps but nothing "easy" exists. M57 has been done, but the only option seems to be to use the early iron block with the ZF 4 speed. I really dont want to go diesel, but if i did i'd want to use the later ally engine with the ZF6 speed box. Unfortunately the adaptors for that only work with the LT230.

A 4.8 or 5.3 LS would be nice (though they are ridiculously expensive in the UK), but again we either adapt to the ZF4 which seems marginal behind such an engine, or we go 4L60E but again the only adaptors that exist are for the LT230.

I guess the "obvious" option is going top hat liners etc. My reluctance is spending what amounts to be a few grand and ending up with something that still is a somewhat flawed engine that doesnt make that much power.

I guess short term, chuck some KSeal in it and see what happens, if it works, great, if it doesnt then i'll just continue driving it and hope it stays in one piece.

Overall its a bit conflicted.

My hope was fix the Range so i can do some more extensive work on the wifes A4 that i've been putting off for some years, but currently i dont trust it enough to assume it'll be safe for her to use full time while i get the A4 sorted out. Murphys law will ensure that if i go ahead with the A4 work the Range will expire immediately. 🤣

Hmm yeah, maybe i need to try something like that, unfortunately i use(d) long life coolant in the engine as i have a large drum of it and it would appear that the SteelSeal stuff is incompatible with long life coolants. If i go that route i'm gonna have to flush everything out and refill with standard coolant.Probably in excess of £100 by the time i've bought the coolant and the steel seal stuff.

Another additional anecdote from this morning. It was last driven yesterday for a short trip down the shops. Jumped in and went to start it. The engine cranked over once slowly, then paused, then reluctantly cranked over again and then fired up. It then proceeded to produce james bond spec smokescreen all the way to the top of the street. A good 300meters of smoke/steam that completely filled the road behind. Once out on the main road it cleared and drove fine.

Its evidently not happy!

I'm guessing the reluctance to crank was due to water in the cylinder(s)...?

yeah exactly my thoughts... I would expect pressure when its running, but it should go away when its cooled down.

So pressure when cold suggests compression is getting in.

Fairly sure its not airlocked, it took over 10L of coolant and runs nicely upto operating temp and sits there.

I'm going to T in a pressure gauge and see if i can see whats going on.