Can I use a 2wd rolling road?

Defender 90, with 4.6 v8, standard 4hp22 and lt230



Can I use a 2wd rolling road, if I take off the front propshaft and run with the centre difflock in? ( taking it easy in the lower gears.)

Is this sensible?


I have a 2wd rolling road around the corner from my house, so it would be much easier to do this than traipse around to the nearest 4x4 dyno.

Not really no. Taking parts off will mess with any reading you get. if you have a 4wd use a 4wd dyno. Wouldn't take my car to a dyno if they would use a 2wd one to work on a 4wd. Work will be a **** as their pride in their job!

I understand, and normally I would agree.

I'm not really interested in taking the total drag of the 4wd into account - I'm not interested in "how much", I just want to set up the initial fuelling etc.

I'll be starting from scratch, running MS3 and switchable maps for LPG, so I have a lot of fiddling to do before I can run it on the road.

The local rolling road guy is very competent, reasonably priced, very happy to work with me, and just around the corner, saving me a 80 mile round trip and having to find a trailer and borrowing a towcar to tow a trailer with a 90 on it.

I might decide to do a final run on a 4x4 rolling road, but it's far easier and less hassle to do the initial setup locally on a 2wd roller.

My question is - would this be a problem mechanically? Is the transfer box up to the job?

It can be done. And if its for MS set up I dont see a problem.

It could be but it sounds like you may be pulling more ponies than stock. It may work well enough but if you have spent that much time building a beautiful truck isn't she worth the extra effort to set her up 100%?. Just my opinion mind,

I see no issue, the transfer box has no idea where the power is going in lock

Ok, that's cool.

I am not looking for a full RR setup, I am looking for an initial setup.
I reckon that I'll get it running well enough to drive the one mile to the rolling road, and then set about the job of creating the fuelling and ignition maps.

If I can do it on a 2wd rolling road, then it makes life a lot simpler ( and cheaper ) because I won't want to drive it too far on an initial map.

I will probably want to finish it off on a 4WD RR later, but this should take a lot less time and money.

No problem at all, back in 1998 I fitted a 502 Chev rat into a 110CSW. It ran a TH400 against a bog standard 230 ransfer box,standard props and RRC axles/diffs. It was only used on the road,but it all lasted well with no breakages.
But is using a rolling road the answer ? I would say not,far better to use a pair of wide band oxy sensors running twin AFR gauges.That way you can tune at will any time you like and also monitor all the time.OK, it wont give any BHP/torque figures,but for the most part they are meaningless anyway.Once the engine is properly mapped you can then keep an eye on how its going,even a duff plug lead will show up as the fuel trims go to pot.....

It's going to be running on a GEMS setup and will have to have cats ( it's a 1998 model) so I won't have wide band afr's, only standard lambda sensors.

It would be nice ( and quite cheap) to rolling road it for the initial setup, and would give me a lot more confidence. And there is a very reasonably priced 2wd rolling road very near me.

I will doubtless be tinkering all the time, but it will speed things up greatly to have a rolling road to get to a safe base tune that won't overheat the cats.

Sorry,didnt realise you intend using Gems.If that's what you are using there isn't much you can do,unless you get someone like Mark Adams to do some chips for you.From your original question I thought you were using Megasquirt or an Emerald setup.
The Gems will just use its own fuel and ignition maps,running off its 5-0v Titania sensors and its knock sensors.Beyond checking for good sensor readings - esp the Maf,there isn't much point in dynoing.An adaptive reset of the ecu with Testbook or similar might be a good idea.
Gems is a good system,reliable too.
The wideband sensors and AFR gauges are for monitoring only,have a look at the Innovate Motorsports website for more info,its good kit.

Sorry, meant to say, it's a GEMS engine that I am thinking of running MS3, as I want dual maps for the optimum LPG fuelling and timing.

Although, thanks for the contacts - I'll have a chat with them..

Yeah, wide band afr's are good, but not cheap.

This is still in the planning stage, so all options are open - but if 4wd rolling road time is a must with MS setup, perhaps it is not so cheap! ( hence my query).

Appreciate the replys.

cant see why 2wd or 4wd rolling road makes a difference for engine set up the same loads are applied

jamesmartin said:

cant see why 2wd or 4wd rolling road makes a difference for engine set up the same loads are applied

Click to expand...

I heard (and this is about a high tuned R34 skyline) that the drag and "weight" the engine has to turn is a fair slap more in AWD as 2WD. I was just a junior instructor so he may have been chatting out his arse!