109 body on to 200Tdi chassis

Has any one put a 109 body onto a de bodied 200Tdi, brought discovery for engine etc. Or use the discovery axles and engine in the 109 what are your thoughts ?

Here we go again.....
Do you want the book or the film?
It's essentially what they did in a 4x4 is borne, except they used a Range Rover as thier 'Donor' and cut down a 109 tub to fit it.
It's called a 'Hybrid', and is a neat way of wasting a lot of time, money and effort, turning a clapped out old Disco or Range Rover into a just as clapped out, 'not quite' a Defender......... and getting yourself in to a whole host of hassles over vehicle idents (strictly you need to register as donor Disco), and SVA or Radically Altered Vehicle regs, infact, pretty sure you need RVA cert on it, as you'd have to hack off part of the rear over-hang like a bob-tail.....
As for transplanting bits of Discovery into a Series, yeah [chuckle... got anuva one 'ere folks!].... even MORE of a minefield, and even more complications over vehcile ident and certification, and almost garanteed it would need re-registering on a 'Q' as a vehicle construicted from numerouse 'donors'.
And, I'm afraid, the 'legend' that Land Rovers are big mechano kits and EVERYTHING from 1948 onwards is 'interchangeable' is an utter myth.
Some bits ARE, hand brake I was fixing on a 93 Defender the other day was identical to the one on my old 78 SIII, but MOST bits of series vehicles, and most DEFINITELY the big 'chunks' you'd like to rob off a dead Dizzy are most certainly NOT interchangeable with bits n leafers. They will ALL nbeed some degree of adaptation and modification to make them even notionally compatible with the older vehicles.
TDi's WILL bolt onto a series gearbox, and EVEN drop onto the standard series chassis mounts, but a Discoi Turbo manifold will have the blower clanging on the chassis rails of a 109, and the way it spikes the power delivery will have it hammering the shafts in the knackered old box to bits in tripple time.
Disco box, CAN be 'made' to fit the Series chassis, but then you have the problem of the LT230 transfer box having the wrong ratios in it to suit the series axles, IF you used it, and after you'd had custom props made to attach them, and it having permenant four wheel drive, again, not compatible with the series axles...... so you think.... fit disco axles!
OK, good plan, except they dont fit; series steering arrangement is totally different, and one has leaf spring mounts, the other leaf mounts.... so, OK, adapt the chassis to take the disco's coil springs and steering...... doiable, but you now have the hassle that the gear linkage is in the wrong place, the floor is the wrong shape and has holes in the wrong place, and similar problems with the steering column and bulkhead.... So you need an AWFUL lot of bits from a genuine defender, which co-incidentally EVERY other swinging dick and his dog ALSO want, having had the same idea to get a knackered old disco and a 'cheap' Series and build them selves a 'low rent' Deffy out of the two!
Whichever way you go, its a whole HEAP of hassle, and you are very unlikely to achieve veruy much by way of saving over buying a genuine 110 or 90, welding up its bad bits and dropping the disco motor into that.
Its the unfortunate problem of the Dubliner asked for directions, replying, "Well I wouldn't be wantin to be startin' frum ear, noo!"
But your car(s), time, money, patience, blood, sweat and tears..... so your call....
But before you go much further, have a look at these:-
You can do ANYTHING to a Landy!
Taking on a Project
http://webspace.mypostoffice.co.uk/~micheal1970/Teflons/0_Lo_073_Workshop_D_004_EngChoice.htm
V8 Conversion
And do a BIT of digging round the forum, becouse bits, if not ALL of what you are asking is already here, and some of it even on the front page of this board, and litterally LITTERING the Series boards of this and every other forum.........

May thanks for the frank and full reply, yes I have been in this position before with a LR90 with a 3.9 Efi and a gas kit. The Links make interesting reading .... so leave the 109 as is just change the engine to the 200di and rebuild the gearbox.

Or do you have a suggestion, only looking for more mpg and a little better motorway speed.

toothman109 said:

May thanks for the frank and full reply, yes I have been in this position before with a LR90 with a 3.9 Efi and a gas kit. The Links make interesting reading .... so leave the 109 as is just change the engine to the 200di and rebuild the gearbox.

Or do you have a suggestion, only looking for more mpg and a little better motorway speed.

Click to expand...

How much more MPG and MPH are you hoping for?
A dnag good service, and a little TLC on a stock motor goes a LONG way; you wont turn a slug into a ferret, but a little can go a long way towards, and be a better allround 'package' as far as reliability and livability.

I do NOT in any way shape of form, 'like' TDi conversions in series motors; 'yeah' I've offered the suggestion IF you make sure the gearbox and drive line and stuff are all as good as you can get them, AND you drive it with a 'little' bit of care, you can drasticakky increase your chances of not having major mechanical maledies, but, its still not a 'nice' worry free match.

If I was forced to stick a TDi into a Series, I'd go for an LT77 box, from the disco, but an ascroft coinverter to mate it to the series X-fer to keep the gearing there or there-abouts, as well as the series 'feel'; but doing it neatly, would demand defender bell-housing and change linkage remote to put things in roughly the right place, and it would need a fair bit of tin-bashing to get the mounts in the right place and adapt the floor and transmission tunnel, And of course, you'd still have the blower possition problem, which again, I'd want to do properly with a defender manifold, rather than trying to 'tilt' the engine on the mounts or other 'botch'.

Other ideas..... did you have a paruse of the other alternative engine conversions..... its old hat, but the Perkie Prima is still a tidy little conversion, offering best MPG any-one seems to have ever got from a series, and a pretty useful power-boost?

For the effort though...... throwing cautiion to the wind, V8 and gas.... hard to beat; you dont get MPG, but you do get half price fuel, that challenges TDi's for miles per quid, AND 'real' torque and real power, which still transmission threatening, isn't applied quite so harshly to the sticks so not 'quite' so eager to break stuff.....

Ot there's the De Turbo'd Di solution, that's err...... 'better' than the standard engine, doesn't bring so many hassles, and offers some modicum of ecconomy and performance without so much threat to the transmission... conveniently gets rid iof that pesky expensive blower that has a habbit of eating its own bearings on old disco's and then sucking the sump oil into the manifold..... but in the pro's and cons, probably doesn't fair as well as a Prima, for overall 'gains' though does score for not needing 'as' much effort to fit.

You will have trouble fitting a Discovery 200Tdi into a LWB Series. The turbo is lower and the Series LWB chassis is deeper (top to bottom) this means that the turbo 'clashes' with the chassis.

You can notch and reinforce the chassis to get over this or alternatively get the Defender manifolds.....altho that can prove to me nearly as much as getting a Defender Tdi in the first place.

I've been through a load of blurb on this, and I am currently installing a 300tdi to my 109, andy is right the 200 tdi's turbo does not fit, nowhere near, its right in the way of the chassis, dont bash the chassis, you'll have all kinds of trouble and strictly it'll be subject to the SVA a whole new nightmare in itself, as bashing the chassis makes you subject to the SVA (popular opinion and a couple of vehicles I've seen points out that welding brackets onto the chassis like engine mounts is ok and doesnt need SVA'ing, but removing bits of it especially the susp brings you right in line with it).
The 300 tdi in my opinion is a better convert if you want to keep the turbo, it and its exhaust downpipe are no problem, it comes with its own price however, you have to grind off the original mounts and make your own, which is tricky, and move the battery and get/make a custom exhaust.
200tdi with no turbo is good, forget some of the negative remarks you hear about losing the turbo, the 109 is lighter and totally diffo than the disco, it drives well with the 200di, i believe its a lot better than the land rover diesel.
I also went through the motions with teffy on fitting a disco axles, the rear is fairly easy, you can buy brackets for a fiver that weld to the axle tube and fit the 109, but the front is very tricky, in fact the only practical way is to mod the susp to coil springs instead of leaf's, which is hard, and brings you to the SVA again as you have to bash the chassis, and if you only fit the disco rear axle then the track is diffo front to rear. The 109 usually has the 'salisbury' axle anyways which is a lot tuffer than the rover one, so theres no real need to replace it, only thing with the salisbury theres only a couple of diffo ratio's diff's available.
A v8 is a safer choice than the 300tdi for the gearbox failiure issue, the v8 makes its power at higher revs therefore less torque, and the 300tdi at much lower revs and higher torque, and its the torque that'll rip you 'box to bits.
Theres another view for you.

Thanks for the endorsement Pepper; about TDi & V8 'power' though, it's not tha that the V8 makes its power from revs rather than torque that saves so mush strain on the motor, most V8's have more torque at tick-over than TDi's do at peak, so the V8's put more torque on the box every-where.
Readon TDi's stress series boxes so much more easily is that their torque is delivered as a big 'wack' very quickly, as the turbo spools up.
At tiockober, TDI's have not vert much torque, but they 'ramp' incredibly quickly to a very low torque 'peak' at around 1800rpm.
I forget the actual numbers, but its something like 140Nm for a TDi at peak, and about 220ish for a V8, but the TDi has barely 20Nm at tickover, where V8 is making something like 160!
So, over the entire 5000rpm rev-range of the V8, torque only varies by 30-40% at most, or to put numbers on it, between tick-over and peak, increase in torque is no more than 60Nm over, maybe 3,500rpm, or 'rate of change of torque' is only about 15Nm per 1000rpm.
On a TDi, ramping from tickover to peak, you crank up the torque by around 100Nm over just 1,500 rom, or see a rate of chance of torque in the order of 66Nm per 1000rpm, more than four times the rate of change.
It's an acceleration 'thing'...... if you follow me...
Way the V8 delivers its motive force, is like using a screw type ball-joint splitter; screw applies an AWFUL lot of pressure, but in a very controlled and slowly incremented way, that normally makes ball-joints 'pop' pretty easily, without damaging anything......
Way a TDi applies its force is like trying to hammer the ball-joint out of its socket with a lump hammer...... technically less 'pressure' in each strike, but the rate of change of pressure as its applied, means your asikely to mash the threads or bend the ball-joint shaft than shift it very far.....

Yep understood, obviously didnt fully understand that.
What you explain sonds pretty much why diesel con rods and cranks are meatier than petrols, the rate of pressure increase is substantially quicker, a 'spike' as they say for diesel, driving a tdi shows this up, mondeo diesels are worse, nothing at low revs, sudden acceleration, then nothing, then sudden exceleration, flatspots are something we try to iron out when rally prepping cars, never done a v8, theres enough balls in 4 pots these days.