kws

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.

Speaking of ordering things, if anyone needs bolts and hasnt come across these guys before, I highly recommend checking them out. They have heaps of oddball (imperial lol) stuff, and REALLY good prices. Im talking less than $1 ea for stainless bolts that Rimmers wanted $5 a piece for zinc plated. I got a kit of machine screws from them for the Marina too. https://www.theboltholder.co.nz/

Not much other than about 160k on the clock, out of a late Disco, and ran well with no knocking or ticking. Came in a truck the seller was wrecking for parts for his and his dads Landys. The disco failed a WOF on various things, so got scrapped. Just spent almost the cost of the engine on parts for the conversion (seals, gaskets, oil pump gears etc). Yayyyy.

I feel I should make it clear I haven't engineered the drama for the clicks; it all happened very fast and it's all real. The car is/was currently listed for sale (at great cost), I had a couple of people contact me but nothing came from that, I guess an SD1 with a broken engine just isn't that desirable. The comments I have had on various forums made me realise I would be better off at least giving it a try and seeing what I could do with the engine, whether it was rebuilding the original or fixing the current one. I wrote the current engine off quickly as it's not worth spending the cash on (low compression engine, with bad oil pressure), so started to look at rebuilding the original one. I was quickly put off this by the horrific cost of shipping some of the parts from the UK (hundreds in just freight), so chucked a couple of WTB ads out on a couple of places to see if there were any 3.9L Discovery engines about. I didn't have many hits on this either, and then remembered I'm a member of a local Range/Land Rover Parts Facebook group. So last night I asked on there if anyone had a good 3.9 for sale, and as luck would have it, someone local had one they weren't using from a Disco they bought for parts. Today they dropped it into my garage, and took away some cash for their trouble. Apparently it's done 160,000km, ran well, ran quiet and other than the external oil leaks (mainly from valve covers it seems) it looks good enough. I'll take the valley gasket off when I do the inlet manifold and see what state the cam is in, hopefully it's good.

Bah, the next owner can worry about matching numbers and being an anorak, I've always wanted a 3.9 SD1 haha.

Well here it is, the plot twist; The car won't be sold. My arm has been sufficiently twisted by all the lovely people online who actually care about the car, and this will go in instead. What is it? It's the good high compression one too It needs a damn good clean, and some refreshing (new seals and gaskets) before it can go in the car, but I have a deadline of about 3 weeks to have the car going—Lets goooooo.

Plot twist, looks like I might have a 3.9 in my garage this weekend.

Id have to swap some bits from the current engine anyway, like the front cover, sump and injection system, as they were taken from the original engine to make this one work. Nothing else is worth taking from this engine as either the original engine parts are better (pistons, heads etc) or the ones in the car are junk. The only real unknown about the original engine is that the crank has a lot of surface rust on it, and whether that is saveable or not. The rest would be saved with some light machining.

I havent seen that done before, but i know 1UZ, LS1 and 2JZ have ended up in SD1s before.

If I could find a reasonable priced 3.9 (around a grand), and a way to get it to me, it'd be a no brainer too.

I really appreciate everyones comments, especially the awesome offer of somewhere to store Lucas while I sort the engine. I'd like to keep the project going too, but it has been really hard with the car fighting me every single day since it was delivered. Most of it is just undoing years of previous owner bodges and neglect. I never even managed to get started on the Speeduino conversion that was planned, and I've driven a grand total of 82 Miles since the car arrived on the back of the truck. Because i've paid the $100 (yes, thats what tardme costs these days...) i'll leave it up there for a bit, and see what happens, but maybe I don't drop the arse out of the price and if i end up keeping it... well, we'll see.

I did consider getting a storage unit or the likes, back when I first got the car (since the engine has been a problem since day one) but decided that I would only be delaying the inevitable and unless I moved the Marina into storage, I would never have the space to replace the engine. I've been looking for a 3.9 on and off since I got the car, but its better to just cut my losses and let someone else do the big job and then enjoy the car.

The Marina I've spent so much time and effort on the Rover that the Marina is way behind where I need it to be.