kws

Great threads, I have really enjoyed reading both of them. Im really feeling some similarities between how you and I work, much ADHD scope creep

The whole car will visually be dodgy thanks to the previous owners attempt at painting it, but mechanically and structurally it'll be sound. I guess i'll give a WOF a punt and see what happens. Its easy to read, but i guess if they fail it for being painted I need to drop into VTNZ and get a new tag made?

Does it matter if a previous owner has painted over my VIN plate? Doesnt look tampered with, and has been there since about 1995, but was painted at some point along with various other bits under the bonnet. Plates are on hold, so it's just for a WOF.

Congrats the wof, must be a great feeling after being off the road!

"functional" welds or not, those headers are a work of art. Well done

Drove the car to work again today. Dont even care about economy, its great to drive. Smiles per mile and all that.

I'd be far happier with those sort of figures. The advantage the disco has is that it's running the hotwire injection, while the old analogue flapper injection I'm running is obviously like throwing a fuel can on a bonfire for fuelling.

They're all weekend cars, so get used fairly spiritedly. This one does appear to be running rich though and im not sure why. Checked a plug on each bank and both look the same; white/pale brown strap but jet black ring. Unfortunately i set the goal of the Marina being on the road before Speeduino gets installed, so thats a while off yet, so may have to actually work out whats going wrong with the Flapper EFI.

Its pretty bad, but not that much different in economy from all my other SD1s, so one must presume its my driving thats causing most of it. Speeduino should help, as the Lucas/Bosch system is quite primitive and has zero learning ability. It doesnt smell particularly rich, but ill pull a plug out and see what it says.

The time had come to take Lucas on his longest voyage in years (and the longest drive in my ownership, basically doubling the mileage I had done on the old engine), it was time to go to work. As I have previously said, the goal was to drive the 60 odd KM round trip to and from work today, as it was our work Christmas party and there was a "bring your weird car to work" sort of small car show planned. After all the work that had been done, I wasn't 100% confident in the car, as I haven't had any real time to shake it down, but it was doing it anyway. I always have this imposter syndrome that makes it hard to trust any work I have done, even if I know I've done it properly. The day before, I gave the car a good wash, and finally got around to replacing the old faded center caps on the wheels. I'm not sure how or why, but in the space of a couple of years (I have photos of the car from various years) the center caps had gone from being nice right red, to this horrible faded yellow The plastic domes on the caps had badly yellowed, but the red decal behind the dome had also faded to silver. I pulled all the plastic domes off a while ago, as the silver centers looked slightly better But it was always missing that pop of red. I bought some replacement caps from Rimmers a while ago, at great cost, and finally sorted it last night. The old caps were in good condition other than that... To remove them, without taking the wheel off, I first tapped them in the downward direction with a soft face hammer, and then gently tapped a small thin flatblade into the junction between the cap and wheel. This popped them off easily and without damage. The new caps press into the center of the wheel. Of course, I aligned the cap with the tyre valve, for that extra fanciness. Much better So, that takes us today, and the drive to work. I left slightly early to try and beat the worst of the traffic (failed). Lucas fired up nicely and we were off. I'll tell you what, I shouldn't have been worried. Lucas performed flawlessly. Temperatures were rock solid, and I could hear the viscous fan cut in and out as needed. Oil pressure was solid, 30psi at cruise and 15psi idling in traffic, I can live with that. Even the wipers, which are best described as lethargic at best, worked perfectly on the wet screen and did a good job of clearing without too much juddering. Interestingly the "intermittent" setting was just a constant wipe in the morning, but intermittent on the drive home. Typical Lucas. There was a slight whiff of coolant each time I would take a sharp corner. Not 100% sure about the cause of that, but as it was in the interior I suspect there might be a weep from the heater core. Otherwise, the drive to work was great. The car was planted, cornered well and the suspension felt good. The trans shifted smoothly, albeit a little eager to get into top gear. So, the engine. It's a beast. From a stop, the car isn't what you would call fast. It accelerates well enough, but it feels like the auto trans is sapping some of the power; where it really shines is in gear acceleration and pulling up hills. In gear, even top (3rd), if you give it a poke of the throttle the speedo goes up, without changing gear, or having to rev high. It gains speed without much fuss. If you drop it into second, it gives you a good increase in velocity. Climbing hills was a surprise. There is one fairly long and steep hill on the way to work, which it more or less idled up and would happily accelerate if I wanted it to. I recall the same hill requiring quite a few more RPM in Effie, which had the high comp 3.5 EFI engine. This engine loves to work at lower RPM, but isn't afraid of some revs if needed. It works quite nicely with the auto for that lazy, effortless, wafting-along feeling; Exactly what an SD1 should be to me. I had some positive reactions to the car on my drive, which is always fun. Kids seem to get a kick out of seeing it, which I guess isn't a surprise when all they are used to seeing on the road are wheeled whiteware in various shades of boring. Lucas got me to work in perfect 80s comfort, window down, blasting some Kiss from the cassette player (albeit via adaptor to my phone). It was a good way to commute. The car show was a bit of a bust, some people wussed out because it was raining that morning, and others just didn't bother. That left three of us bringing in our unusual cars. There was Lucas; a 1992 Mercedes E320, which made Lucas look quite small in comparison And one of my team brought his 1986 Mitsubishi Mirage Geneva. Great little car this one and a real time capsule. This one even has a sweet digital dash. So that was that. I had some good feedback from others at work (and the usual "geez I'm surprised you made it" and "do you get tired of crossing your fingers as you drive?" jokes). I would've liked to see a proper little display, with more cars, but it is what it is. Not only did Lucas get me to work, but he even got me home again. Once again, perfect drive, even in crawling traffic. The only real surprise was at the gas station on the way home. I wanted to fill up straight away so I could gauge how (un)economical the trip to work was. 22.9L/100KM. 10.3MPG It's not great Maybe I should stop gunning it everywhere just to hear the exhaust. Nah.

Woah what a week it's been! I have spent almost every night (Thursday was rest day) in the garage until well past my bedtime working on Lucas, trying to make sure I was on track. Right, so we left off with the basic 3.9 in the car, but nothing attached to it. My first goal this week was to get the crank pulley on, but before I could do that I needed to strip it down and fit the trigger wheel for the Speeduino crank sensor (just some "futureproofing"). This is the original SD1/EFI pulley. Since I converted to the original V-Belt front end I couldn't use the 3.9 Serpentine pulley. This is what a bad crank seal can do to the pulley. The hardened, almost plastic, seal can wear into the metal. I will keep an eye on the seal and if it leaks I will either need to source another pulley, or fit a Speedi-Sleeve, which is a thin tube of steel that goes over the damaged surface to give the seal something to seal against. A quick zip with the rattlegun removed the three bolts Because it worked, I am replicating the same install that Effie had, with the trigger wheel (the same 6 bolt 36-1 2.5mm thick trigger wheel from Lloyd Specialist Developments) mounted between the balancer and the PS pulley, so I slipped the rear section of the pulley off This allows the trigger wheel to slip on. I have marked the same spot I aligned Effies pulley to A+ reference material Before it can be fitted, you need to hammer down the roll pin that locates the pulley The trigger wheel should now fit flush And the rear pulley can now be bolted back on Compared to the Serp pulley, it's quite different. They're the same basic length in terms of pulley alignment, but the snout on the Serp one is much shorter to account for the crank driven oil pump. The crank pulley bolt is 15/16", if anyone was wondering Now, this is where it's interesting. I had done a lot of research and asked around, and as best I could tell I needed a crank spacer, so I paid a hefty amount to get one from Rimmers. The spacer goes on after the pulley, and allows the crank bolt to secure the pulley if the crank end is too long (otherwise if you did the bolt up without it, it would only touch the end of the crank and not the pulley). This example image shows the spacer. It's just a thick ring of steel. Long story short, I didn't need it. My pulley fit perfectly, and the bolt secured the pulley against the end of the crank. Oh well, I love paying lots for surplus parts. So, yes, the pulley was then slipped into place Where it promptly fouled on the timing pointer. I remember this from Effie, and the fix is to file the mounting area down to about where the orange line is, to clear the now slightly offset rear pulley. I refit the modified pointer and did the main crank bolt up to about 6 ugga duggas. Next I thought, "oh, let's install the power steering pump bracket". Nope. Should've done that BEFORE fitting the pulley. So I undid the pulley bolt again, slid the pulley forward enough to get the bolt in and secured the bracket. The lower bolt on the front needs to be spaced away as it's used to having the TDC sensor bracket mounted on it. I tried to do this with washers, but in the end just smashed out the old sensor and mounted the bracket. I think this time I might end up modifying this bracket to work with the Speeduino crank sensor as it's quite a neat little mount, instead of making. my own bracket again With that little segue done, it was time to get messy, swap out the valley gasket and install the intake manifold. First I had to split the manifold from the trumpet base, so I could clean it all up. This proved to be harder than expected, and I had to use a chisel to carefully separate them. With the trumpet base off my plan was to just replace the main feed and return hoses, and the injector seals I removed the rail and injectors The old hoses weren't looking too hot. They weren't leaking though. The return to the regulator had a somewhat clever attachment, as in it almost wasn't attached It had deformed the hose too Regulator with new hoses. I tested the regulator and it held vacuum, so that's a win. I removed the injector clamps, taking care to only poke my finger with a pick once. Use said finger poker to carefully lever the big rubber upper seals out of the housing as it'll be corroded in there. I replaced the two hoses that link the pair of rails The old seals look pretty gross I used a sharp knife to carefully cut them off. The lower seals were stuck in the manifold, and hard as plastic. A few of them were quite deformed too. I hadn't originally planned to replace the hoses on the injectors as they weren't leaking and didn't appear cracked (not like the ones on Effie), but upon closer inspection, there were fine cracks in the rubber As it turns out, the inner layer of the hose had basically turned to plastic and crumbled when cut. Don't presume the hoses are OK just from a quick glance. Thankfully I bought a kit from Mr Injector in the UK that came with new seals, hoses and the retaining ferrules (the metal cup at the base of the hose). I set about cutting off the old hoses and ferrule. The instructions are very strict that you must not use a knife to cut the hose off, so in the end I used a combo of "aviation" snips and side cutters. I got it down to a fine art, and took only a matter of seconds to strip the hoses off. I would use the snips held upright to cut vertically through the ferrule, which would usually take two snips do, then use the side cutters to twist the cut ferrule out. I would then use the side cutters to munch horizontally at the bottom 1/4 of the hose, until it was damaged enough that I could push sideways on the top of the hose where it would rip through the cut section and come off. The new hose and ferrule are straightforward to fit. Slip the ferrule on, dip the end of the new hose in fresh engine oil, and push it onto the injector, using a hard surface to push against and force the hose into the cup of the ferrule. That locks the hose into place. Injectors with fresh new hoses Now the new upper seals can be fitted. Don't be like me, and for the second time, forget to put the upper retaining plate over the injectors first. Thankfully I remembered before the first seal dropped into its groove. You cannot fit this plate with the seal in place. Lube the seals with some rubber grease and slip them into the groove I cleaned the corrosion off the bases with a wire brush in the drill, and loosely fitted them, along with new lower injector seals. Next, it was time to clean the manifold up. I removed all the old sealant and wire-brushed the under intake coolant pipe. Speaking of, I had bought a nice new, remade, stainless pipe in anticipation of this job, only to find it's not needed. I think someone has been here before as the pipe fitted is in good shape, and made of a thick-walled steel pipe. With the intake cleaned up, I moved to the valley gasket. There aren't many photos of this because when refitting I was against the clock to get the manifold back on before the sealant went off. I removed the old one and promptly directed it to the nearest bin. Like the heads, the valley is coated in a layer of burnt-on oil. No sludge though, and the cam appeared visually ok (some wear but had lobes and the discolouration wasn't abnormal, it'll do for now). The new gasket and inlet manifold went on easily enough Starting to look like an engine again, with the injector rail fitted too The intake was promptly covered in a rag to stop anything falling down the holes, and then I used my engine brace to lift the engine for the sump gasket replacement. I recall commenting when I did the sump gasket on the Tess, how much easier it would be with an engine brace, and I can confirm, it's much easier. Yes, I had replaced the sump gasket when the engine was out. I purchased a new nice cork gasket from Rimmers, and when fitted, it split in one corner almost straight away (with the bolts gently nipped up by hand), and overnight had split in a further 3 or 4 places. I ordered a replacement gasket locally, which was supplied as a Permaseal gasket. This was slightly thicker than the unbranded Rimmers one, and had a better shape. With the sump off you could see how the seal was spat out. Most of the seal was destroyed removing it from the sealant though, and by golly that was not a fun job, scraping sealant off the bottom of the engine, under the car. I did check the bolt holes in the sump when it was off last time, but didn't really check the flange for straightness, which I should have. Whether this contributed to the seal failure, or it was just a rubbish seal, we will never know. Using a straightedge, you can see how the flange dips down. It was like this the whole way around. Using the tried and true rag and grips method (rag to protect flange surface, grips to pull flange up), I gradually tweaked the flange as straight as I could. There is still a dip in places, but it's only about a mm. I then used Hylomar to stick the new gasket on Which then made its way to the underside of the engine. The bolts were all nipped up by hand, with no splits in the gasket. While under there, I reinstalled the torque converter bolts, and cover plate. I also removed, cleaned and installed the oil lever sensor with a new washer and some thread sealer. With the sump on again, I could put oil in it, which meant only one thing; priming the oil pump. I reinstalled the SD1 distributor (the 3.9 one doesn't have the oil pump drive; I might look into if I can fit an oil pump drive to it as the ignition curve might be more suited to the engine) and connected the ground temporarily. I turned the key, and nothing happened. Ah, I forgot to plug in the main loom. I tried again, and had the sweet sounds of the engine turning over on the starter. After a few turns the oil light went out, and I could see fresh oil coming from the rocker gear Great success! I did have a fail though... even after doing the same thing with Effie, I forgot how much transmission fluid the trans can pump out of disconnected cooling hoses. Knowing the oil pump worked was great. All it took was packing the pump with Vaseline so it wouldn't suck up air. Before I could drop the car down to the ground again I needed to sort the exhaust. I dug the original EFI exhaust manifolds out of storage, only to find they were the same as the ones already on the car. Regardless, the studs were in better shape, so after running a die down the threads on the studs and cleaning the flanges, they are the ones I used. The downpipes weren't looking as good. One of them had a leak that I knew about. It was in a crack in a weld, and since I have a welder, I quickly ground it back and hit it with the welder. That area to the left wasn't looking happy either, so I quickly made up a plate, and hid it from sight. It's not pretty, but it'll work. These downpipes are a bit of a mess really, and would benefit from being replaced with some nice long tube headers. There is also a hole in the bottom of the Y joint in the main mid section, which sounded like a tractor last time the car was running, but with it installed in the car I would only blow a bunch of holes in it with the welder, so that will be fixed when the exhaust comes out to fit the wideband O2 sensor bung. In the meantime, I wrapped it in exhaust tape and put a clamp around it. The manifolds were installed with new gaskets and sealant The downpipes could then be wiggled into place. For the first time in a few days, the car was lowered back onto its wheels. Sweet positive camber yo. This brings us to today. Now it was a case of putting the top of the engine back together. First was to install the new valve covers, since everything goes on top of them. These are the original EFI covers, painted in black wrinkle. New stainless hardware to fit them Much better than the gross old ones The power steering pump went on next. As I had been advised, it was a lot easier to install without the pulley on the front. Just like Effie, I spaced the pump back from the bracket with one washer on each bolt; this brings the pulley into alignment with the crank again (which was pushed back due to the trigger wheel) On the other side, the alternator bracket was next to be fitted. This was almost straight forward, except one of the bolt holes in the head was bigger than the old heads. I had a spare bolt that fit (new on the top, old under it) As the new bolt had a larger diameter it no longer fit through the hole in the bracket. A 10mm drill made short work of that problem. And bracket in place, with new coolant hose beneath it Getting there. The power steering pump was finished off, with the pulley and belt fitted. It was refilled with ATF. Moving up top again, the trumpet base was cleaned thoroughly, and refitted with a smear of Hylomar on the flange. This allowed me to run the wiring that lives under the intake, and tidy everything up under there. The plenum top could be fitted I don't know why, but it really triggers me when people run the wiring harness under the throttle mech, instead of over it, on the platform designed for it. I think all my SD1s except my first one, have had the wiring run like that. I fixed it on Lucas, so now its how it should be Finally, the rest of the engine bay could be assembled. I removed the transmission oil cooler, and re-routed the cooling lines into the radiator as they should be. So, what does that mean? IT'S STARTING TIME. I checked everything was connected, made sure the oil level was good, and that the power steering had oil. Then I connected the battery and turned the key. It didn't start. I noticed it backfired into the intake a couple of times, so suspected the distributor was 180 degrees out. I removed it, spun it around and refitted it. And turned the key. It's alive! I only ran it for a short time as there was no coolant in the system, but it ran well and ran quietly. I filled the cooling system up, and then ran the car to bleed the system. When the engine was at operating temp, I checked and topped the transmission up, set the idle speed, and set the timing to approx 10 degrees on the timing light. The engine runs really well, it idles nicely, and really shows how loud the old engine was at idle, this one is just so quiet. The oil pressure isn't amazing, I didn't expect it to be, but it's within the "good" range when warm, of 15psi at idle and 30psi driving. It was slow to come up when cold, but I'll see how it is tomorrow, since maybe it was only due to the first start. As long as it has pressure, and is quiet, that's enough for me. After it burnt off a bunch of stuff and filled the garage with smoke (from the engine bay, not the exhaust; the exhaust is perfectly clear, with no signs of smoke) I took it out in the rain for a quick test. It's hard to judge because of the rain, but acceleration seemed quite rapid, when it wasn't fighting for traction. The engine is turbine smooth, and revs well. I'm looking forward to the weather clearing and seeing what Lucas can do now. Job done. One week from engine out, to driving. Now to shake it down and see if it makes it to work on Wednesday (60km round trip in traffic) for the Christmas party.

Ditto, except with a label maker. I still haven't quite worked out how to make a weld "hotter",if it's speed or voltage.

The holly is a pretty common swap in the UK for heathens that don't want to tinker with the EFI system. I'm the opposite, EFI makes way more sense to me. It does seem common that the holly just pours fuel in for fun.

What a weekend it's been. So much coolant on the floor... and so much progress. It was time. Lucas was getting the 3.9 engine fitted. The first job was Friday night after work; I pulled Lucas into the garage and began stripping the 3.5 engine down. This was the last time Lucas would be driven with the 3.5 engine, and the last time this particular engine would ever be started again. Due to the length of the car, and my garage, the only way this job was going to work was to have his arse hanging out of the garage. I started by draining the coolant and pulling out the radiator assembly. With the fan and hoses removed, this comes out as one big assembly by removing the two bolts that secure the upper "slam" panel. This uncovered the additional transmission cooler a previous owner had fitted. It's probably an ok cooler, but it's been bodged into place and wasn't really that good. It was out of the main airflow, and the aux electric fan sandwiched between the cooler and radiator was wired to run at key on (disconnected when I first got the car). It turns out the lower hose had also been trapped between the radiator and the sharp edge of the plastic undertray, which had caused it to slowly weep fluid, coating everything in a coating of trans fluid and mud. See damp spot on the plastics. I'm going to remove the cooler and run the hoses straight into the cooler built into the radiator, as it should be (this loop was still fitted, so it went from trans, to radiator, to cooler and back to trans). I'm not going to be using this as a heavy-hauling tow car, so I'm sure it will be fine. It wouldn't be my car if it didn't look like this at some point Little did I know it was going to be so much worse. Next, it was a case of removing everything else from the engine. *snaps fingers* The inlet manifold came off, to reveal a suspiciously clean pair of heads. Clean like, brand new, not even any muck in the ports. This also confirms they are carb heads, as they don't have the small cutouts in the top of the ports for the injectors vs the heads on Effie Under the valve covers was spotless too, with only some baked on oil on the rocker gear giving away its true history Interestingly though I did notice this on one head; the center head bolt has been removed and replaced with a stud, some washers and what appears to be a (used) wheel nut. It'll be very interesting to pull this engine down and see what's going on. Nothing was immediately obvious. It's no wonder the valve cover gaskets were bucketing oil everywhere. On the one side I removed, the gasket had shrunk or got pinched and pulled away at the back of the cover. It wasn't even trying to seal. Speaking of the inlet, it came off in one lump, and appears to be in decent shape. I did a bunch of new hoses on it recently, so they will be reused. The injector hoses appear ok for now, so they will be left, but I will fit new injector seals and feed/return hoses on the rail. This whole assembly is being fitted to the 3.9 basically as is. Once all the ancillaries were removed, I pushed Lucas back into the garage and called it a night. Tomorrow was the big day. I managed to rope in a friend to help with the big part of the job, which was a huge help, I'd hate to have tried it solo. He also brought another friends engine crane with him, which was kinda handy. There aren't too many photos of the actual work as we just smashed on through, and it was a hard and dirty job, so we only stopped at certain points. We started the day by doing the under-car stuff that I had left the previous day (and wish I had done, as now I was rolling in coolant...). I disconnected the downpipes, unbolted the lower bellhousing and sump plate, disconnected the starter wiring and removed the torque converter bolts. Up top, while I did this, the exhaust manifolds were being removed, and the lifting eyes were fitted. With the under car work done, we lowered the car down again and removed the bonnet. My lovely wife jumped in to help here too, as it took two people to hold the bonnet and one to undo the bolts. With the bonnet now carefully placed on some underlay on the roof, we slid the crane under the car and took up the weight of the engine. The remaining bellhousing bolts were then removed, as were the engine mount bolts. Using a jack under the trans pan, I gently took the weight of the trans, and then we used a pry bar to carefully separate the engine and trans. This came apart easy enough, and then suddenly the engine was up in the air and out of the car. Almost too easy. We had it out by lunch time. It's been asked a couple of times, "can you remove the engine without the trans?". Well yes, you can, and it's quite easy. Just make sure the torque converter doesn't slip forward, otherwise it's just like any other engine to remove. We didn't even need the leveller on the crane for removal, just refitting. The engine happily cleared the crossmember. We had a break for lunch, and then got stuck into converting the two engines. The sump, windage tray and oil pickup were removed from the 3.5 (including the long stud still fitted on the rear bearing cap, you need that too). into the drain pan it went And with the 3.9 conveniently upside down on the engine stand, the old sump was removed (and fitted to the 3.5) and the 3.5 parts were fitted Before the sump could be fitted, the front cover had to be swapped over. I started by removing the 3.9 cover. This was easy enough, it's just a series of bolts hidden under years of oil and muck and then it comes off. This then revealed the timing chain, which after much inspection, was one tooth out on the timing. The red and orange lines should perfectly line up. The pointer on the lower (really the upper; the engine is upside down) should line up with the tooth that has the square cutout on it. The hole in the big gear is a casting mark, not a timing mark. There was also some slack in the chain. Thankfully I had a new chain and a pair of genuine gears to fit. I removed the old ones, carefully rotated the crank so the teeth were in line, and fit the chain and gears. The orange line shows that the pointer and square line up nicely The new chain is taught, with no slack in it. Due to the length of the chain, there is no tensioner. This also reinforces the misconception about timing chains never needing service. The old gasket was scraped off, and then we set upon the old 3.5 to remove the cover. One "Pro-Tip" I will say now, is to open the block drains and drain the block. I didn't, and I swear there must have been a thousand litres of coolant in the block, either that, or it was generating it, as it never stopped pouring out. With the front cover removed from the 3.5 we had access to the timing gear on that and by golly was it bad! The chain was so slack it was barely on the crank gear Wiggly wiggly wiggly Interestingly, it had a solid steel cam gear, instead of the nylon gear it should have fitted. There were big wear marks on the teeth, so it was trash anyway. My worst fears were confirmed too. The oil pump housing was damaged. There was clear scoring on the walls. Most of it was so fine you couldn't feel it, but there were a couple of scores that could catch a nail, and some embedded chunks in the wall. In this photo I had carefully taken some super fine 5000 grit sandpaper and wet-sanded (with oil) on the LH side, which made a huge difference. It took very little to clean it up, but you can still see a couple of the deeper marks. A close up. of the other side before I gave it a quick tickle up. Both sides ended up looking ok in the end, but far from ideal. From the state of the gears, which were in decent shape, I can only presume the damage was done when the old engine failed and no one thought to clean the housing up. The base has some wear, but nothing I'm too worried about. Despite its appearance, it's quite smooth. I removed the pressure relief valve, which moved nice and freely. Cleaned it, oiled it up and refitted it with a new copper washer. I have no doubt that if I have low oil pressure on the new engine it's probably due to the housing. I tried to get a replacement front cover but really struggled, so I'm stuck with what I have for now. The oil system is meant to be low pressure high flow, so I can live with a slightly lower pressure as long as it's otherwise happy. The front cover had a new front crank seal fitted, as the old one was like plastic that had been set in the sun for a million years, and fitted to the 3.9. A pair of new gears were fitted, along with half a tub of Vasoline, to help the pump prime. A new gasket was fitted, dry, as I had heard there is such a fine tolerance here that even sealant can affect the operation of the pump, and the base refitted. Now it was time to fit the sump. Whilst I was messing around with the front cover this was given a good clean to get the old sealant and gasket off it. Unlike Tess, the sealing surface appeared to be in reasonable shape, with minimal warp (but in hindsight I should have checked with a straightedge at the time). The block was given a thin coating of sealant, the gasket set in place and the sump fitted and tightened to hand tight. It should be 14nm but the gasket was reacting badly at just hand tight and starting to squish out (and in the end actually split anyway, so now I'm going to replace the gasket again this week). With the 3.9 almost ready to go, the 3.5 was dropped off the crane onto the floor, where it proceeded to dump yet another couple of litres of coolant on the floor, soaking the cardboard it was meant to be on, before we kicked it off to the naughty corner to think about what it's done. Remember kids, block drains are great. And that's about where we wrapped up for the day. We lowered the trans onto a creeper with a couple of quickjack blocks on it, and rolled Lucas back into the garage. He had some mad reverse rake going on My friend departed for the night, and I was left to clean up the coolant and remove the intake manifold from the 3.9, ready for fitting the next day. The old 3.5 got an upgrade The next morning, we were back into it again. I started by realising there was a pilot bushing in the end of the crank, which was missing on the 3.9, so had to pop out and buy a puller to get this out as I didn't have a spare. The puller was obviously designed for bushes that are flat in the crank, not protruding, as I quickly ran out of thread to pull the bushing once it started to come free. It was suggested that I use a wrench as a spacer, which worked a treat I had tried the thing where you fill it with grease and hammer an extension into it to hydraulic the bush out, but all that did was make a mess. I then replaced the rear crank seal on the 3.9. This was in really bad shape, with clear signs of leaking, and it was hard as a rock. We started by drilling it and screwing screws into it, but could not get them to bite hard into the seal, so they pulled out. In the end, I used one of the holes I drilled to jam the seal removal tool into and levered it out that way. Fitting the new one was fun. The inner lip of the seal is smaller than the outside of the crank, so you couldn't just push it in place. There is a special tool, which I lacked, so out came the water bottle and knife, to make a sleeve to get the seal into place. You wrap the bottle around the end of the crank, and slide the seal onto the bottle which slides it over the end of the crank. This worked a treat, allowing me to use the old seal as a driver to hammer the new seal in. The pilot bush was hammered into the crank too. With those jobs done it was time to fit the flex plate. This was torqued to the required torque, on the crane, using a prybar on the ring gear to keep it from turning. Now it was time to get the engine off the stand and swing it ominously over the car Which suddenly, after much wiggling about, ended up with it being in the engine bay, bolted in place, and being at one with the car. That was cause for some celebration. Almost 24 hours since the engine came out, the replacement was in the hole; we were done by lunch time. The old 3.5 was hoisted up onto the engine stand and pushed out of the way, and then the bonnet refitted and the car pushed back into the garage. I'll be honest, I could be a lot further forward in the project if I had kept going for the rest of the day, but I was tired. Everything hurt, and I just wanted a rest. Thankfully all the heavy and hard bits were done, so my friend went on his way with the crane in tow, and now I'm left to do the rest of the reassembly over the next week. To make it to the work day on the 21st, the car NEEDS to be running next weekend. Stay tuned for the next exciting instalment of "man takes broken engine out, and puts the unknown engine in its place - will it start?"

Its happening. Prepped the engine tonight, and it'll be coming out tomorrow.

Is Gull 98 still an ethanol blend? Might explain it if the exhaust is a bit "cleaner" but not sure i'd be keen on running it.

Check trademe for a cheap usb disc drive?

Man i'd be CGA on that shit. You paid a premium for top of the line, it should be expected to last longer than 3 years.

Isn't it a requirement of a cert that you take it for a WOF to make sure the rest of the car is up to standard other than the cert?

Because it's their one and only job?

Sounds like she needs a K11

i wont lie, im absolutely fizzing. Not so much at the 3.9, but at the prospect of doing another Speeduino install.

I've had a few CDs suffer from disc rot over the years too, with no obvious way to stop it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disc_rot

Well heck, it's been a real rollercoaster recently, and things have been moving quickly... So, lots has happened since my last update. First, Lucas is hanging around long-term. Secondly, Lucas is getting an engine upgrade Yup, most will know already, but it's happening; Lucas is getting a 3.9L upgrade. How did we get to this point? Well, even before the last update went live, Lucas for advertised for sale. The engine is trash, I had had enough, and just wanted to move on. I had a couple of people contact me regarding the car, but they wanted guarantees such as that the current engine wasn't terminal (it is) and that the original engine is savable (who knows). In the end one got back to me and declined to proceed further, and the other just never replied again. In the meantime, the overwhelming support online from various forums and social media has made me think twice, and start looking at my options. I quickly discounted fixing the current engine, as it's just not worth spending money on; it's the wrong engine, it's low compression, has low oil pressure, and an unknown mileage and history. So that left me with two options. Upgrade, or rebuild the original. I put out on a couple of places that I was looking for a 3.9 engine but didn't have a huge amount of luck, so I proceeded with pricing up parts to rebuild the original engine. What I concluded was that parts aren't too badly priced, but shipping was going to absolutely cripple me. Most parts had to come from the UK and we are talking things like $200 freight for just a gasket set alone. That's super hard to justify. I then remembered I was a member of a local Land Rover buy/sell Facebook group, so I jumped on there and asked if anyone had a good 3.9 engine for sale locally. Within minutes, I had a response that yes, there was one available and it was local to me. The next day, the engine was in my garage. It's a high compression 9.35:1 3.9L from a Discovery. Other than the manifolds and cut loom, it was complete. The seller claimed it was out of a truck that had 160,000km on the clock, ran and drove well, and made no unusual noises. Good enough for me. It was the right price too. The high compression 3.9 should make the SD1 move quite nicely. Vitesse 9.75:1 Carb 9.35:1 (fitted) Disco 3.9 9.35:1 Power (HP@rpm) 190@5280 155@5250 182@4750 Torque (NM@rpm) 258@4000 268@2500 312@3100 The engine is, as the British say, minging. Clearly keeping on top of maintenance wasn't exactly top of their spending list, as both valve cover gaskets had been haemorrhaging oil for a very long time. It was down all sides of the block, top to bottom As you can see above, I started by removing all the ancillaries from the front of the engine. The engine is the desired "intermediate" serpentine 3.9, which runs the crank-driven oil pump (vs the earlier distributor-driven pump) and has the correct shape to mate with the SD1 sump (later engines have a different shape to the front of the sump, and front cover). Unlike the SD1 which runs a pair of V belts to drive the ancillaries, this engine runs a single big multi-V serpentine belt. I looked into using the newer parts and keeping the crank drive pump and serpentine drive, but in the end, it is easier to swap the SD1 front cover, sump, alternator and power steering pump onto this engine. It's more or less a bolt-on affair. To use the serpentine front I would have had to look into whether the cooling fan height matches (apparently it's higher on the 4X4 engines and the water pump is very different), and I would have to find a way to make the power steering pump work as it has completely different fittings. I will keep the components anyway, just in case I want to look further into converting to serp again. Removing all the components off the front really reduces the length of the engine Over the past couple of days I have set about trying to clean the engine up a bit, as it was filthy. I have spent hours now, with a brush, degreaser, and brake clean, scrubbing the heck out of it. It was very thick, and stuck well. It's not perfect, but after today's effort it's about as good as I am going to bother with. I haven't cleaned the front cover, valve covers or sump, as I won't be reusing them. I removed one of the valve covers, just to see how it was inside. The screws for the cover were all finger-tight, and the gasket wasn't even trying to seal. It's pretty dark in there, so obviously it's been on long interval servicing, but it's burnt on and not sludgy, which is a bonus. Hopefully a few oil changes in quick succession will help this. I did find this tucked up in the head though. No signs of it being bashed about, so I suspect it hasn't moved much. It was so "weathered" from being in there, it must have been in there for thousands of Ks. Old mate who serviced it at some point (probably the one that did the valve cover gaskets and didn't tighten them up) just dropped it in there, closed it up and didn't give two thoughts as to where his missing clamp went. I also pulled the original SD1 EFI valve covers out of storage and gave them a degrease and clean ready for paint. You can tell the LH cover is the proper EFI one because it has the large round flat raised platform on the end for the breather filter, which the current carb covers (and 3.9) don't have. I've been trying to source another SD1 sump and front cover to make the swap easier, but it's proving more difficult than expected, so I may have to just swap the ones from the current engine over. In the meantime, I have ordered a bunch of parts; mainly gaskets and seals, to refresh a few things on the engine, and make the swap possible. They should be here within a week, and then I'll start planning the actual swap. The goal is to have the car up and running again for a work Xmas "car day" on the 21st Dec.... Time is ticking! To help meet this goal I am going to initially run the engine on the "flapper" Lucas injection system from the 3.5. It does work, but isn't ideal as it will be running at the upper limits of what the factory tuning can handle for the extra capacity. Once the engine has been shaken down a bit, I will then start working towards another Speeduino install. I have 95% of what I need already, and know where to get the other 5% I don't have, it just takes money. I'm also looking at using the new 3.9 fuel rail with the Speeduino, which would eliminate both the old injectors with the hose tails, and the resistor pack, so I could drive the injectors straight from the ECU in semi-sequential instead of batch firing like I did last time. All things to look into when the time comes. So there we have it, Lucas is hanging around, and I'm finally getting the 3.9L auto SD1 I have wanted. Stay tuned for more updates.

Your comment on injector size fascinates me. Bigger injector wastes less fuel because its open a shorter time for the same amount of fuel. Makes sense but wouldn't have thought of it.