Nah- the spare wheel can be fitted unobtrusively to the tailgate...
If I paid £7.3k for that engine, I'd at least expect the old gasket goo to be scraped off the manifold faces and the cr@p to be removed from the exhaust ports :)
Perils of throwing bits together for a photo shoot I think .....
My thoughts still stand though. Time you've spent the cash on the rest of the bits to make it into a complete installed motor and labour costs you've done your £10k, will have to beef up driveline, the list will go on. Alternately, buy a RRS :)
Another reason for considering dropping in a bigger V8 or whatever is power/ torque. Venerable lump that the old Rover/ Buick V8 is, it's not easy to get a lot more power from it. 300 BHP is about the limit without going stupid full race spec and spend and even 300 BHP will cost big and give a very cammy motor with the power all in the wrong place for a theoretical off road 2 tonne daily driver vehicle.
Shoehorn in a big yank V8 and the skies the limit, except of course the transmission/ driveline will then break!
Supercharging has been done- Callaway in USA, turbocharging has been tried, I'm sure people out there have even dropped in a nitrous kit or two.
As an engineering challenge it would be interesting, but cost in the base lump and time and effort and you'll have spent the £10k that would buy a RR Sport with 390 PS where everything is designed to work together!
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!
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!
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!)
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!
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.
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.
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...
Here's the TSB relating to the rockers. Gives VIN range:
Gilbertd wrote:
(this is where he pulls the head to find the invoice from Turner was for a different car and there aren't any top hat liners in there.......)
Turner documentation that came with the engine has the engine number in it so I'm not going to stress about that- yet :)
Had enough for one day. Doing battle with the exhaust tins and got to the point where the disc cutter was going to come out. Thought it best to walk away!
I'm just hoping the block face isn't damaged. Really don't want to have to pull the engine, dismantle it and have the block faced.
I'm considering dumping the piggyback LPG connectors and cutting in to the loom instead. It's a nasty messy arrangement.
Depends whether I can work myself up into enough of a throwing tools paddy about it.
I think you're close :)
Here it is. If you zoom in you can see it...
Now, before I even lift the intake gasket, shall we play "guess where the head gasket is blowing"?
Nah- too easy....
Thanks Chris. Now I've got them off turns out they're the piggyback loom connectors rather than the original loom ones (which ARE the press in to release type).
So I've got Mr or Mrs Zavoli to thank for that stupid design. Managed to get them all off without pinging any clips to a part of the workshop where I'd never find them again as well!
OK- I've found a way to do it- probably not the designed way, but i can get a small pick inside the spring and pull it out sideways enough to get the connector off.
Not very elegant though...
I'm obviously having a senior moment, but can't work out how to (easily) remove the injector multiplugs. The wire spring clip seems to be on the wrong way so you can't push it in to spring the arms of the clip out.
The lugs on the body of the injector don't look like they were designed to be pushed in.
Trying to get to the open ends of the spring clip to bend outwards is beyond my eyesight!
Ideas please? Feel free to tell me I'm being dumb if you like!!
That's one of the avenues I'm thinking along Marty. Many short trips and a bit of sitting around. I've never seen oil that bad from condensation on any of the cars/ bikes I've ever worked on though.
What's also strange is that there's no settling out in the sample pot I drained. It's still a beige emulsion as per the pic on the previous page.
Coincidence that coolant level dropped as well? I don't usually believe in that kind of coincidence.
Ah well, as the black one's now just about to be wheeled into the workshop where the blue one stood after I've had a tidy and sweep up, the blue one's going to be pressed back into service with daily health checks on the oil/ water.