Firstly I’d like to say my grammar is awful so excuse the onslaught of errors. If I’ve made a factual error let me know and I’ll update my guide.
Brought a Freelander a year ago and fixed all the issues with it, then I went off-roading. Grip was excellent even with just road tyres, I did scrape a lot but it wasn’t too bad, didn’t overheat ever, and easily followed an off-road L200. My ONLY issue was that the 1.8 engine just didn’t have the grunt to pull up a hill, the car would just get slower and slower until it would stall. The only way up the hill would be either lots of speed or slip the ever living crap out of the clutch. This inspired me to do a turbo conversion. Here are my steps to how I did the conversion.
Engine
After trawling through eBay and marketplace I realised the k series turbo’d engines are quite rare, not impossible though. I found one come up for £350 an hour away. I traveled to pick it up the next day.
My engine is designed for revving off-road, so it’s going to get very hot as it won’t be moving fast but will be working hard. So I decided that I would rebuild the entire engine in my shoddy little garage. We replaced all major consumables, all bearings, piston rings, all gaskets, uprated n series mods, new exhaust valves, skim and more. The engine was basically new.
Install/ un-install
There’s many ways to remove the engine, ideally I believe you would use a hoist remove the subframe and drop the engine out the bottom, this would really be a lot easier. However, I do not have a hoist all I had was an outdoor parking space.
So Instead I removed the IRD and sat it on the subframe and then took the engine out the top, this could not have been done without a load leveller. Also I didn’t but would definitely suggest removing the bumper and radiator first, this gives tons more room and needs to come off anyway for the intercooler to be fitted.
After a pig of a job of removing the engine and gearbox together I decided to install them separately, this an appropriate time to note that the two engines had completely different engine mounts and needed to be swapped between the two. I put the new engine in, then the gearbox fully bolting them together, finally I added the IRD.
Right so now the engines in, I still had to mount the intercooler, modify all the intake piping and coolant hoses along with discovering any more problems.
Cooling system
Obviously different engines from different vehicles will have slightly different setups. On my engine the hardline running from the water pump didn’t have a T of point to the reservoir, so we need to add this in. Note you shouldn’t take a line of the 10mm barb on the intake manifold as it’s effectively a one way valve.
I ended up buying a rad filler neck that I fitted into the top hose, this circumvented two issues, it gave me a point above the rad making it easier to bleed and it gave me a point to take round to the reservoir.
To accommodate the turbo you can apparently move the radiator top mount forward an inch, however this means you have to remove the AC condenser. I removed the left fan from the fan pack instead as I wanted to keep the condenser. The rad in the Freelander is the same one in the 2.5v6, so should have more then enough cooling capacity.
Feed line for the turbo should ideally be before the PRT just after the hardline, but I put it after the radiator bottom hose, I can’t see a problem with this but will update this if I have issues. I brought a weird T fitting that comes off the rover 75’s, part name was
“Genuine MG Rover Coolant Hose Connector T Piece For 1.8 PRT 75 & ZT PFK000050”
For the return line I replaced the existing T that’s between the PRT, rad top hose and block return. I used the part names below, again from a rover 75
“Rover 75 / MG ZT 1.8T Turbo Aluminium Alloy Coolant T Piece PFK000040 UK STOCK”
Important notes:
Coolant sensor/block outlet is different between the Turbo and NA engine and needed swapping, sensor was the same in my case.
Turbo feed size is 15mm
Turbo return size is 10mm
Intercooler
I brought an intercooler kit of eBay for £150 that came with loads of piping, bends and the intercooler. I mounted mine between the crash bar and the bottom plate that holds the rad. I mounted it using 90 degree L brackets that were bent slightly to a better angle. My intercooler kit is 2.25inch and I’d probably say that’s about the max size, you might just be able to squeeze 2.5 but it would be very tight.
Where I’ve mounted my intercooler it gets amazing airflow from the bottom bumper grill and still allows for the condenser to be in. There’s a million ways to pipe the intake system so there’s no point in going into detail on how I did it, unless people ask.
Other mods
For engine management I used a Kmaps turned ecu at £350 it’s expensive but literally plug and play with this engine. They were also very very good at dealing with my 1million questions before I even brought it.
Exhaust I brought a 3-2.5 inch reducer and welded it to the downpipe, I cut slits in the smaller end and just slide the exhaust in and used a clamp. The fit was so good that this worked more then good enough.
In general a cost for this conversion not including the engine rebuild was around £1200. If I include the engine rebuild it’s around £1800 and if I include all the additional mods that I done that weren’t required to make the conversion work then I’d have spent around 2.5k.
My car specs are now:
1.8T 200BHP (yet to be dyno’d)
225/75/16 toyo M/T tyre
2inch lift kit
Sheddist clutch kit
SumpGuard
Soon I’ll update this to include my opinions on the engine swap, but so far it now pulls up steep hills in 4th.
Here’s an update. Will also Edit the original.
My opinion on the engine change is that I doubt I’m hitting the 200bhp mark but it sure does have a large amount more torque. I manage most hills easily in 3rd and it maintains speed in 4th, originally I was revving the nuts off it in 2nd or slowing down more and more till I had to change down.
With the exception of the turbo whine and recirc being open (effectively being a small blow off valve.) the engines sound almost identical to none turbo, this is including the lack of Cat in the downpipe and the fact my back box crapped itself and I took everything out of it.
I do have a lot of jolting from the car when going slow basically with the throttle at 10% in 1 and 2. I assume this is due to poor mapping at low end. It completely goes above 10% throttle.
I have since been off-roading and it’s 100 times better, it now doesn’t stall when going up hill and has enough torque to do everything I need it to. The clutch seems happy but only time will tell.
Brought a Freelander a year ago and fixed all the issues with it, then I went off-roading. Grip was excellent even with just road tyres, I did scrape a lot but it wasn’t too bad, didn’t overheat ever, and easily followed an off-road L200. My ONLY issue was that the 1.8 engine just didn’t have the grunt to pull up a hill, the car would just get slower and slower until it would stall. The only way up the hill would be either lots of speed or slip the ever living crap out of the clutch. This inspired me to do a turbo conversion. Here are my steps to how I did the conversion.
Engine
After trawling through eBay and marketplace I realised the k series turbo’d engines are quite rare, not impossible though. I found one come up for £350 an hour away. I traveled to pick it up the next day.
My engine is designed for revving off-road, so it’s going to get very hot as it won’t be moving fast but will be working hard. So I decided that I would rebuild the entire engine in my shoddy little garage. We replaced all major consumables, all bearings, piston rings, all gaskets, uprated n series mods, new exhaust valves, skim and more. The engine was basically new.
Install/ un-install
There’s many ways to remove the engine, ideally I believe you would use a hoist remove the subframe and drop the engine out the bottom, this would really be a lot easier. However, I do not have a hoist all I had was an outdoor parking space.
So Instead I removed the IRD and sat it on the subframe and then took the engine out the top, this could not have been done without a load leveller. Also I didn’t but would definitely suggest removing the bumper and radiator first, this gives tons more room and needs to come off anyway for the intercooler to be fitted.
After a pig of a job of removing the engine and gearbox together I decided to install them separately, this an appropriate time to note that the two engines had completely different engine mounts and needed to be swapped between the two. I put the new engine in, then the gearbox fully bolting them together, finally I added the IRD.
Right so now the engines in, I still had to mount the intercooler, modify all the intake piping and coolant hoses along with discovering any more problems.
Cooling system
Obviously different engines from different vehicles will have slightly different setups. On my engine the hardline running from the water pump didn’t have a T of point to the reservoir, so we need to add this in. Note you shouldn’t take a line of the 10mm barb on the intake manifold as it’s effectively a one way valve.
I ended up buying a rad filler neck that I fitted into the top hose, this circumvented two issues, it gave me a point above the rad making it easier to bleed and it gave me a point to take round to the reservoir.
To accommodate the turbo you can apparently move the radiator top mount forward an inch, however this means you have to remove the AC condenser. I removed the left fan from the fan pack instead as I wanted to keep the condenser. The rad in the Freelander is the same one in the 2.5v6, so should have more then enough cooling capacity.
Feed line for the turbo should ideally be before the PRT just after the hardline, but I put it after the radiator bottom hose, I can’t see a problem with this but will update this if I have issues. I brought a weird T fitting that comes off the rover 75’s, part name was
“Genuine MG Rover Coolant Hose Connector T Piece For 1.8 PRT 75 & ZT PFK000050”
For the return line I replaced the existing T that’s between the PRT, rad top hose and block return. I used the part names below, again from a rover 75
“Rover 75 / MG ZT 1.8T Turbo Aluminium Alloy Coolant T Piece PFK000040 UK STOCK”
Important notes:
Coolant sensor/block outlet is different between the Turbo and NA engine and needed swapping, sensor was the same in my case.
Turbo feed size is 15mm
Turbo return size is 10mm
Intercooler
I brought an intercooler kit of eBay for £150 that came with loads of piping, bends and the intercooler. I mounted mine between the crash bar and the bottom plate that holds the rad. I mounted it using 90 degree L brackets that were bent slightly to a better angle. My intercooler kit is 2.25inch and I’d probably say that’s about the max size, you might just be able to squeeze 2.5 but it would be very tight.
Where I’ve mounted my intercooler it gets amazing airflow from the bottom bumper grill and still allows for the condenser to be in. There’s a million ways to pipe the intake system so there’s no point in going into detail on how I did it, unless people ask.
Other mods
For engine management I used a Kmaps turned ecu at £350 it’s expensive but literally plug and play with this engine. They were also very very good at dealing with my 1million questions before I even brought it.
Exhaust I brought a 3-2.5 inch reducer and welded it to the downpipe, I cut slits in the smaller end and just slide the exhaust in and used a clamp. The fit was so good that this worked more then good enough.
In general a cost for this conversion not including the engine rebuild was around £1200. If I include the engine rebuild it’s around £1800 and if I include all the additional mods that I done that weren’t required to make the conversion work then I’d have spent around 2.5k.
My car specs are now:
1.8T 200BHP (yet to be dyno’d)
225/75/16 toyo M/T tyre
2inch lift kit
Sheddist clutch kit
SumpGuard
Soon I’ll update this to include my opinions on the engine swap, but so far it now pulls up steep hills in 4th.
Here’s an update. Will also Edit the original.
My opinion on the engine change is that I doubt I’m hitting the 200bhp mark but it sure does have a large amount more torque. I manage most hills easily in 3rd and it maintains speed in 4th, originally I was revving the nuts off it in 2nd or slowing down more and more till I had to change down.
With the exception of the turbo whine and recirc being open (effectively being a small blow off valve.) the engines sound almost identical to none turbo, this is including the lack of Cat in the downpipe and the fact my back box crapped itself and I took everything out of it.
I do have a lot of jolting from the car when going slow basically with the throttle at 10% in 1 and 2. I assume this is due to poor mapping at low end. It completely goes above 10% throttle.
I have since been off-roading and it’s 100 times better, it now doesn’t stall when going up hill and has enough torque to do everything I need it to. The clutch seems happy but only time will tell.
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