At Last The Big TD5 job

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Just checked the piston that broke on mine and it is marked up one for cylinder 1 ( assuming cylinder 1 is at the front ).
It's looking like the markings must be part of the assembly process, so maybe my bearings have done 120k miles after all, they look pretty good if so.
 
The bearings are stamped Rover on the underside if original.
I don’t think anything is marked for a particular cylinder but you may see a green stripe down the side of the conrod to show which halves match exactly.
If a piston is marked for no. 1 then I think that’s not factory.

I have 4 used pistons for sale with their original rings or brand new OEM Kolben Schmidt rings which I didn’t need. I replaced all of my pistons with KS, which came with rings.
 
The bearings are stamped Rover on the underside if original.
I don’t think anything is marked for a particular cylinder but you may see a green stripe down the side of the conrod to show which halves match exactly.
If a piston is marked for no. 1 then I think that’s not factory.

I have 4 used pistons for sale with their original rings or brand new OEM Kolben Schmidt rings which I didn’t need. I replaced all of my pistons with KS, which came with rings.
The piston with 1 on it was definitely piston one and definitely factory fitted. It looks like they put a number on each side so that the fracture joints match up.
 
Those bearing shells look very good. The fact that you can still see the manufacturing marks running vertically in your picture suggests minimal wear - just a bit of polish from the movement of the crankshaft. That gives me hope that mine are lasting just as well!

Years ago I was on holiday in a converted Bedford bus with a 6 cylinder engine. Somewhere around Holy Island we lost power on no. 6 cylinder as a result of a pushrod failure so drove home to Oxfordshire on 5 cylinders. That wore all the (nearly new) bearing shells down to the copper in just a few hundred miles. So we did two engine rebuilds in about 6 months.
 
Back into the fray.
Took out the pistons and con rods, then cleaned up the garage a bit
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I set up to check the bores, first set up the micrometer using a distance piece, then set the gap to bore dia 84.460, then put in the bore gauge and set clock toZero.

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Manual says check the bores 70mm from the top so I took the piston down to <> 75 mm ant put the bore gauge in the little wheels on it hit the top of the piston and allow you to rock it gently to establish a reading. checked them along the crank axis and at 90 degrees to the crank to check for any ovality (picture below was not as checked just did it for the photo) .

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I was astonished to see the readings and checked them again but all were at zero or a fraction below smallest was on cylinder 5 at 90m to the crank axis which I recon was -0.005.
Pretty amazing at 120K miles

Then checked crank shaft journals, again had to do it twice to be sure but cylinder 1 and 4 were both 0.005 down on the most loaded axis i.e. measured verticaly with the crank position at TDC.

Main journals were all on the mark
Fantastic
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Also checked the "new" cam shaft as sugested to me and it has a faint number on it

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The more observant among you may guess what else I did today

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Looking good. I'm very impressed by how little wear there seems to be on everything. The bearing surfaces on the crankshaft look pretty clean - just a little polished. I bet they're all still inside factory tolerance. Not at all bad given that somebody was thrashing it with a clip-on boost box through much of its earlier life. That bodes well for the life expectancy of mine.

I've always thought that the TD5 was a nicely designed engine. Somebody's put a lot of work in to distribute the stress and manage the heat so as to create a long lived unit.
 
Looking good. I'm very impressed by how little wear there seems to be on everything. The bearing surfaces on the crankshaft look pretty clean - just a little polished. I bet they're all still inside factory tolerance. Not at all bad given that somebody was thrashing it with a clip-on boost box through much of its earlier life. That bodes well for the life expectancy of mine.

I've always thought that the TD5 was a nicely designed engine. Somebody's put a lot of work in to distribute the stress and manage the heat so as to create a long lived unit.

I must admit I was doubtful about my own measuring but I double checked and it came out the same. I think this is an engine which was designed by engineers rather than accountants , I also believe that modern synthetic oils play a part.
 
It’s amazing how the same chap who designed the 300 also designed the td5, i wonder if the old geezer is still about
 
Well I have been plodding quietly along doing the tedious stuff ready for the rebuild

Took out all of the valves and started to lap them in.

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My God does anyone remember how tedious this is, took the best part of a day, good job the cricket was on the radio, I aslo felt that the valves were not lapped in when they were installed first time,
Number 1 and number 5 cylinders were quite a bit more sooty than the others and the inlet valves were both quite mucky

I decided to look inside the oil pump and check that it is OK, then I cleand it and put some snotty re build oil in it before re assembling it with a tiny amount of locktite flange seal arround the outer edge ( applied with a cocktail stick ) and put some light thread lock on the bolts.

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Checked the "new" camshaft in the head and put plastigauge on the main bearings which gave clearance between 0.002 " and 0.004" which seems fine, it turns nicely when its oiled, Sorry no picture here.

Cleaned up the sump and the timing cover, inside the sump was not bad at al, the timing cover was prety scabby and still looks bad after washing in solvent, jet washing, then wire brushing, so I decidedd to paint it black, inside is not bad
I am not going to go mad cleaning it will get scruffy again all too soon.

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Fitted a new water pump, gave it a good clean up first, the old pump has the word "STORM" on it could it be original?

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I saw a thread some time ago recommending a Bosch fuel pressure regulator for the TD5, I bought one to fit when I did this job.

The Bosch one has a pipe on the outside of it unlike the original, but the original has a hole in the end and the Bosch one does not.

I wonder if the pipe is just the atmosphere vent? anyone fitted a Bosch regulator to the TD5?


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Well after all that I put in an order for gaskets and head bolts and power steering pipe, feeling a bit poorer now and may take a break tomorrow.
 
So I fitted the new fuel pressure regulator I hope the Bosch one is as reliable as their other stuff.
Fitted a new Vacuum pump to the alternator, this is another bit I had laying in the garage waiting for this day

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still waiting for the bits to arrive and doing some tidying up,
One question for all Defender TD5 people, the coolant pipe which runs behind the engine mine was loose, does anyone have a picture of how it should be correctly mounted? I think the wire harness should be tied to it also
Here's the one

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Also be interested to hear thoughts on how do you position the piston ring gaps?
Manual says gaps should be 120 degrees apart but away from the thrust side of the piston i.e. left side of piston viewed from the front to achieve this do you put the top ring and the oil control ring gaps in line with the second ring 120 degrees out to both ?

If you put each ring progressively at 120 degrees then one gap will be on the left side.

To me it seems to make most sense to put the rings at 180 degrees to make the most difficult path for any gasses passing through the ring gaps, but the people who designed this engine seem to know their stuff and I don’t want to argue.
 
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Yes, the two tabs with holes in on that pipe go on the top two bellhousing bolts on mine too, so it's common to the Defender as well. There are two bits of wiring loom in corrugated tubing which were tucked between this and the back of the engine. The disadvantage if this is that it is very easy to pinch them as you're tightening the bellhousing onto the engine block, so the last time I had the engine and gearbox apart I re-routed them around the outside of the pipe and them secured them with a couple of cable ties to stop them flapping around too much.
 
Yes, the two tabs with holes in on that pipe go on the top two bellhousing bolts on mine too, so it's common to the Defender as well. There are two bits of wiring loom in corrugated tubing which were tucked between this and the back of the engine. The disadvantage if this is that it is very easy to pinch them as you're tightening the bellhousing onto the engine block, so the last time I had the engine and gearbox apart I re-routed them around the outside of the pipe and them secured them with a couple of cable ties to stop them flapping around too much.

I have been looking at pictures on the internet and looking at my pipe and it is obvious that the brackets have been bent probably by someone pulling the pipe upwards, that was throwing me out. I put it in the vice and re aligned them and now it makes sense, hope to mount it correctly and tie wrap the loom onto it when it goes back will make things much neater.
By the way what does the single loose bracket attach to, it seems to go down close to the inlet manifold.
 
I have been looking at pictures on the internet and looking at my pipe and it is obvious that the brackets have been bent probably by someone pulling the pipe upwards, that was throwing me out. I put it in the vice and re aligned them and now it makes sense, hope to mount it correctly and tie wrap the loom onto it when it goes back will make things much neater.
By the way what does the single loose bracket attach to, it seems to go down close to the inlet manifold.

I've found that unless you dismantle the cooling system, to get the gearbox off the engine you need to bend the tabs upwards, and then bend them back again once you've got the gearbox back on. I don't have the moveable P clip on mine, so I'm not sure what it does. Of course it may play a role with something I don't have, like ACE.
 
I've found that unless you dismantle the cooling system, to get the gearbox off the engine you need to bend the tabs upwards, and then bend them back again once you've got the gearbox back on. I don't have the moveable P clip on mine, so I'm not sure what it does. Of course it may play a role with something I don't have, like ACE.
I recon that's it someone bent it up and then just left it floating about, it's been on my hit list for a while now.
I am still waiting for all my parts to come, and hope to start rebuilding very soon and wrap things up by the end of next week, would be nice to give it a run over to your project when I am happy its OK.
 
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