Freelander 2004 project car - ideas and advice

rob_bell said:

Ali is a serial Hippo owner! I think he secretly likes them! Lol

I'm rather liking mine: a surprisingly capable off road. You'll love it

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A serial Freelander owner and world class numpty!

Hoping to take Bertie to an off road event this Sunday. I'll tell you better how good they are after competing against other cars.

Chuckle

Enjoy the off roading: look forward to hearing how you do!

Soon as it's up and running I think a spot of off roading will be needed! Been waiting years for a chance to own a landy.

While I'm on here anyone have advice on getting more ground clearance? Thinking of larger wheels and that sort of thing, but unsure what sizes it can take.

Ali is your man: he's fitted a 50mm lift kit and decent sized tyres! I've kept mine very standard (for now)

Go to https://www.muddymods.com/ for your lift kit if you want to go that way. Here is my experience of fitting a 50mm kit
How to fit a 50mm Lift Kit
You can go over sized on the tyres too which will give you up to 30mm depending on how extreme you go.
This is my car beside a standard car but with bigger tyres than mine beside a standard car on normal tyres.

Struggling to find IRD oil. Halfords don't stock and the local land rover garage could only offer a 200ltr barrel for £250!! Need it by the morning, any suggestions on what kind of shops to try?

Halfords should have the correct grade oil (Coma) - got mine from there...

Sadly halfords didn't but found a local independent that did! This is the stage i was at this morning, since then the fuel pipes, propshaft and more wiring has been undone. All that's left in the morning is the gear link (couldn't figure it out on my own) and drive shafts and the engine should lift out

Well sadly after getting the engine out and preparing the new one to go in we have discovered the engines don't match! So after this many days spent on it we are taking the plunge and spending money on getting a reconditioned one fitted for us!

What was the problem? I said in my first post on this thread it would need to be from the same year of Freelander to avoid issues but I'd have thought there would be a way around your issues unless the doner is very much older.

@Alibro sadly we the chap told me it would be the right one! Spent a while on the phone with them about what year it was and all that. Assued me it would fit!

Any K series Freelander engine will physically fit but if not the same or equivalent year there will be differences in the ignition and ECU.
Anyway good luck with the recon engine.

All K-series will fit - they're all the same block. What's the problem?

The wiring loom doesn't match the different ports in various places. Things like the alternator won't connect to the wiring loom I have. So even if I could get replacement parts it's going to take too long! Already had the car on the road out the front of the house for over a week, can't leave it there for another 3 while I try and fix it! Hence gong to have to bite the bullet and get it done professionally shame as I was enjoying learning so much!

More recent cars had two coil packs plugging directly into two plugs with a lead going to one other plug. Older ones had a single coil pack with a distributor and rotor arm. There were other minor changes but I think that was the big one.
Maybe Rob could confirm, he knows a lot about them.

That's the big difference between the earlier MEMS1.9 and the later MEMS3 equipped cars, you're right Ali. Then there are differences to a variety of parts and sensors depending on which car the engine was originally fitted to.

The basic block and head castings are all the same* (*actually, there are detail differences, but none that will prevent you fitting a K16 engine from one car to another). It's the ancillaries, sensors and HT system that will differ.

In my opinion, now you have the "good" replacement engine, is to strip the original down, and swap all the ancillaries (alternator etc), sensors and the cam cover (if it is different) to the "new" engine.

One hurdle to be aware of is that the older MEMS1.9 engine use a different exhaust cam, which does not have the reluctor ring fitted for the cam position sensor. If this is the case, you'll need to swap the cams over too (a minimum of the exhaust cam if going MEM1.9 to MEMS3, or the inlet cam with the distributor drive spigot if going from MEMS3 to MEMS1.9).

@rob_bell thanks, indeed it looks to be a mostly ancillaries and wiring problem. However it will take me several more days to get it all sorted, even just changing over the alternator to one that should fit didn't work out too well! Considering this has now added quite so many days to getting it finished I just don't have the time originally I set 3 days to go this, on day 4/5 now and still not close to getting the engine into the car, and another two days to reconnect everything once it is and I am looking at three times longer to do it than I thought, just too much more time needed! Will get someone to do it, rest in the knowledge they will do it right first time, and now that I have learnt a bit from this I can be confident to tackle a smaller scale project on the car afterwards!

I can understand the time pressure

Genuinely though, if you were to take this on, it is generally the case of bolt-off, bolt-on. For the alternator, you may need to take the mounts from your original, donor engine too (particularly if the new engine is from another car, or was fitted/not fitted with airconditioning and different to your Freelander).

Hope you find someone good and reliable to take this on for you!

Shame to hear you didnt get far with this! I was looking forward to seeing another FL on these fora.

I took an engine from a 5 door and put it in an empty engine bay of a 3 door. That took me three days and I'm an engineer by trade (not cars though). I'm on the slippery slope to putting a turbo'ed 1.8 in mine!

It will take time but it will be worth it.

Thanks for the comments! It actually went off to a garage who did a great job restoring the engine and putting it back in working order.

Sadly on my first trip out the alternator blew! (Nothing like bad timing) but managed to source a new one and me and GF fitted it yesterday, hopeful it will now run smoothly and I can start thinking of my self as a landrover owner!! Which obviously means I still have a long list of things I'd like to fix still, but she is now road worthy.