110 defender rebuild project and v8 conversion

mikeh501 said:

i think im going to go for the NAS spec allisport rad. twin oil coolers, twin fans. thoughts?

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I was advised that the OEM viscous fan will provide better and more reliable cooling - and that electric fans just make you paranoid


Oh, and allisport are off my xmas card list.... they just can't deliver, and are crap at comms. A classic case of a company getting too busy, and not knowing how to deal with it. I wasted weeks and weeks chasing down an order with them, and cancelled it in the end. It was a farce.

I ran 3.9i in my 110 csw in Australia with HD V8 rad (oe ) and just put a 13 row mocal in front of rad far forward so just behind grill . It handled 45C+ in soft sand climbing dunes without any problem . Aircon rads in front of rad is biggest o/heat cause in those sort of conditions , thats why mine is on roof . HTSH

Yes stick with standard viscous fan , reliablility and more powerful when needed.

farmershort said:

I was advised that the OEM viscous fan will provide better and more reliable cooling - and that electric fans just make you paranoid


Oh, and allisport are off my xmas card list.... they just can't deliver, and are crap at comms. A classic case of a company getting too busy, and not knowing how to deal with it. I wasted weeks and weeks chasing down an order with them, and cancelled it in the end. It was a farce.

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Yeah, ive found they dont answer the phone either. But I did manage to get through to the chap and ordered one they had in stock. It should be here tomorrow!

Well, I think I may have just made a rather expensive error.

impending house move & life on the new smallholding seemed to warrant a decent tow vehicle pretty quickly. Clearly the defender isn't going to be finished in the drop of a hat, so I bought a lovely unmolested 3.9v8 manual disco 1. Same base engine and gearbox as the defender project - so pretty sensible I thought. It's only done 72k miles too!

well, it viewed & test-drove fine, but the 200 miles at 70mph to get it back home seem to have taken their toll. Took it to the supermarket on sunday morning only to find that it now has a gearbox whine which drowns out the engine sound in 2nd & 3rd.

I guess it's some/all of the bearings in the r380 box. I'm not about to sacrifice the lovely ashcroft R380 in the defender project, so I guess I need to take this to someone who knows. This was supposed to be a reasonably "no fuss" tow vehicle for the next few months, and I certainly don't have the time to work on this and the defender. What do we reckon? £1000 for parts and labour to have an indy take it out and overhaul it (or just fit a recon)? My poor bank balance....

I thought that expensive errors were exclusively my problem.

I assume that the car wasn't from a dealer, so no chance of redress? I think that I'd go for a recon box if you want to keep it on the road as much and as quickly as possible. Avoids the wait for someone to 'fit you in' and their subsequent problems getting parts etc.. On the bright side, it will add a little value.

boguing said:

I thought that expensive errors were exclusively my problem.

I assume that the car wasn't from a dealer, so no chance of redress? I think that I'd go for a recon box if you want to keep it on the road as much and as quickly as possible. Avoids the wait for someone to 'fit you in' and their subsequent problems getting parts etc.. On the bright side, it will add a little value.

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Sadly I'm a bit soft... the seller was a nice bloke, and I've no real doubt about how genuine he was... he bought it back from a mate after selling it to that mate a couple of years ago. it's spent most of it's life sitting still, and the last few years it's done very few miles indeed. I imagine this if the 1st time in quite a while that it's done such a motorway blast. I suspect I could take it back for a refund, but I don't think I'd want to get into money off and all that business. Like I said... a bit soft.

If he's a nice bloke - like me - he might meet you half way on the cost of a recon box? If he's not as upright as he seemed he might still regard it as a fair deal.

Is it worth doing an oil change to see what happens. I bought a Freelander a couple of months ago and only noticed on the way home a crunch in third gear. Advice from here was to try ATF in it for a couple of hundred miles to see if it cleans it out before replacing the oil. Haven't driven it yet since putting the ATF in but still hopeful it might not need a new gearbox.
Sorry for sharing my woes but thought it might be relevant.

@jamesmartin will be able to give you some pointers

well it looks like this is my inexperience coming in to play again. In my defense, it's a very similar noise to when gearbox bearings went on my saab 9k, and on a rover 216 many years ago...

What I had neglected to factor in is that when you push the clutch pedal in, you also naturally drop the revs. A quick run around the block to warm the gearbox oil up (ready to change it), revealed that the noise is actually rev related, and coming from the engine bay, not the gbox. It sounds to me like it might be ther alternator. I tried the rev + squirty oil trick last night, but it didn't remove the noise at all. I think I have the A127-10 alternator from the disco 3.9 which donated itself to the JE engine. It's currently mounted on the JE engine, but I'll give that a go as a first effort.

Alibro said:

Is it worth doing an oil change to see what happens. I bought a Freelander a couple of months ago and only noticed on the way home a crunch in third gear. Advice from here was to try ATF in it for a couple of hundred miles to see if it cleans it out before replacing the oil. Haven't driven it yet since putting the ATF in but still hopeful it might not need a new gearbox.
Sorry for sharing my woes but thought it might be relevant.

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This ^^^^ is the first thing to do - cheapo ATF as a flush, and then the best MTF94 you can get. The consensus seems to be that the carlube stuff is the best, and its about £8 per litre off the bay.....

I have just done this to SWMBO's D1, and its transformed it ( as expected ).

If you need a box, don't Ashcroft have a fitting centre ? might they be heplful on price - given its the second one you'd be having ??

I've got some miller oils MTF94 in the garage ready to go into the ashcroft box on the defender.... yep, that'll be going in the disco now! I'd best do the tbox whilst I'm there (yes, different oil, I know).

I just had an email back from Dave Ashcroft stating that they can't offer removal/refitting at the moment.... not sure what that's about. Fingers crossed it wont be required anyway.

farmershort said:

I've got some miller oils MTF94 in the garage ready to go into the ashcroft box on the defender.... yep, that'll be going in the disco now! I'd best do the tbox whilst I'm there (yes, different oil, I know).

I just had an email back from Dave Ashcroft stating that they can't offer removal/refitting at the moment.... not sure what that's about. Fingers crossed it wont be required anyway.

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IMHO, don't put new oil in the Disco box without flushing it first - its not worth it. flush it with the cheapest ATF you can find.

Disco1BFG said:

IMHO, don't put new oil in the Disco box without flushing it first - its not worth it. flush it with the cheapest ATF you can find.

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wouldn't you then need 2 lots of MTF to flush out the ATF?

what's the difference between MTF and ATF?

farmershort said:

wouldn't you then need 2 lots of MTF to flush out the ATF?

what's the difference between MTF and ATF?

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Depends how much bother you want to go to really, IME, no, I wouldn't flush it twice - just let it drain overnight. if it's anything like SWMBO's ( and the others I have done ), the ATF will destroyed by the "experience", turn black, be like water in a very short space of time - and probably glad to get out

You could drain the extension housing too, if you really wanted to.

main obvious difference is the viscosity ... but the additives, will be worlds apart - very different friction modifiers IIRC

farmershort said:

wouldn't you then need 2 lots of MTF to flush out the ATF?

what's the difference between MTF and ATF?

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I hadn't thought of that but will probably put in half a litre or so of MTF with the drain plug off to let it flush out any ATF still in it, then fill it properly.

farmershort said:

wouldn't you then need 2 lots of MTF to flush out the ATF?

what's the difference between MTF and ATF?

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they mix well, if you change oil regularly as you should flushing isnt needed,atf is a fine gear box oil in its own right lr used it for long enough

jamesmartin said:

they mix well, if you change oil regularly as you should flushing isnt needed,atf is a fine gear box oil in its own right lr used it for long enough

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Agreed. I suspect the reason ATF is no longer used is that, as the power of LR's has increased, the gearbox temps increase - and "normal" ATF doesn't like heat - IIRC much above 80/90C and it starts to degrade rapidly - hence my comment on MTF and friction modifiers above.

Also, IIRC, the ROW spec R380's have a cooler as standard, which will help tremendously. If I were building a vehicle from scratch, I would be fitting a cooler for this reason.

yeah the defender proj will be getting a gbox oil cooler.... I thought the v8 disco's had one as well - but just the crappy pipe and short section of ally tubing.... I haven't looked yet.

Disco1BFG said:

Agreed. I suspect the reason ATF is no longer used is that, as the power of LR's has increased, the gearbox temps increase - and "normal" ATF doesn't like heat - IIRC much above 80/90C and it starts to degrade rapidly - hence my comment on MTF and friction modifiers above.

Also, IIRC, the ROW spec R380's have a cooler as standard, which will help tremendously. If I were building a vehicle from scratch, I would be fitting a cooler for this reason.

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i would fit a cooler too