Thread: V8 Bruce Davis chip upgrade

Originally Posted by Tombie

What tyre size are you running Dan?

235/70/16
Cooper at3's

Originally Posted by ozscott

The scantool is inaccurate. Mine has shown crazy kw after some head and cam work.

Cheers

What kind of head work did you get? And what cam work?

I was thinking about doing similar and wondering what kind of results you got and if you would do anything different?

Hi Dan - port matching of intake and exhaust with a Crow Cam (2 up from stock) and new followers and timing gear. I have a fairly freeflowing muffler (its not loud cause of the stock resonator) and it came up well. Its very punch mid range and when revved through to injection cut off is still pulling hard. Its a 4.0 manual with 208,000k on the clock but the bottom end was still very nice so no touchy. I had Sequential LPG (BRC Impco) installed with very short runners using a wedge plate under the plenum and the result is significant grunt on LPG - probably better than petrol and certainly more torque than on petrol (98).

Cheers mate

PS. I am running 245/75/16's in General Grabber AT2, so its high geared for a manual but still tows my nearly 2 tonn Vagabond well off the line - albeit I wouldnt want bigger tyres with the 5 speed.

Hi guys, I'm generally a lurker rather than a poster but I've been researching ECU upgrade chips for my 1995 P38 and came upon this thread.

Here's some info on my car:

Car was delivered as a 4.0SE and I purchased the car at 160k kms. Car had been converted to dual fuel running LPG prior to my purchase. Exhaust had been replaced with a larger diameter pipe system and cats had been removed.

Engine split a liner and did head gaskets at around 230k kms, and was replaced with a 4.0 engine from a Discovery Series II. Two years later this engine also did a head gasket, and again, liner was split. Had a new engine built using a factory high comp 4.6 block from the UK which was built using my heads and 4.0 top end gear. BCEM was told that the car now had a 4.6 litre and it went like a cut snake. I had step sleeve liners fitted and the whole 9 yards, Cost $8000 AUD but it’s a good car and I figured that if I spend the money it should end up bullet proof.

One year later it did a head gasket and again, the heads were skimmed and checked.

Another year passes and it did a head gasket again! Heads were removed and it was found that one of the step sleeve liners was cracked, maybe from bad installation, no real idea.

Engine was pulled down completely and the main bearings had hammered themselves to pieces. The engine was about to fail, at 12 000 kms! CC’ing of the chambers showed comp ratio in excess of 13:1. Seems that nobody had considered that my heads had been skimmed at least four times and then when fitted to a high comp engine, I ended up with super high comps which just smashed the main bearings.

The engine has now been fully rebuilt, using my heads but with standard 4.6 pistons, stepped sleeve liners and a new camshaft grind designed with LPG running and towing in mind. When it came home I was very disappointed in the performance. The car felt sluggish and was using massive amounts of fuel to the tune of 30+ liters per 100 kms! After continuously harassing the mechanics shop they decided to pull it down and found that it was 5 degrees retarded on cam timing, yet the markers on the brand new factory timing gears was point to point perfect. There was 15 thou of lift stretch in the chain, after just 3000 kms.

They set about getting a local engineering shop to create an adjustable cam gear to suit a rollmaster double row timing chain that allowed the correct slots for the cam angle sensor to read and fitted this unit to the car. They actually found that they had to advance by 2 degrees to get the cam specs correct as per the grind sheet details but now it runs properly and has dropped to 15 liters per 100 kms fuel consumption on petrol. So now finally we have the ability to purchase a quality double row adjustable timing chain set for a GEMS engine.

Now that we seem to have one the round, my thoughts went to removing the factory dead spots and getting some livelihood out of the engine with a performance chip.

In short here’s what we have:

• 1995 Range Rover P38
• 4.6 liter high comp engine
• Mild cam to suit LPG and towing applications. I can supply cam spec sheet to you if helpful.
• 2.5” free flowing exhaust with no CAT converters.
• No O2 sensors fitted to my model.
• Knock sensors fitted.
• Standard size wheels and tires.
• LPG fitted.

I will soon be changing the LPG system to a direct injected style which will open up the air intake tube as the air won’t have to suck the gas in through a mixer. At that time the entire air intake system will revert back to stock.

I've written to Bruce Davis and also to Mark Adams and am awaiting a reply back to see what is available. I'll keep you informed.

My primary reason for the long winded post above was to let you guys know about the fitting of the camshaft recently.

We sent my old cam out to Wade and had it reground to a mild spec suitable for towing and LPG. A little more lift across the board and more exhaust duration to get rid of the gasses.

The camshaft came back and the engine builder chose to fit brand new genuine Land Rover chain and gears. The camshaft was not dialed in as no adjustment was possible anyway, but was set up 'dot to dot' as per factory specification.

When the adjustable timing gear set was manufactured it was found that to set up a dial gauge and get the camshaft to the ground measurements of lift, the car needed to be advanced 2 degrees from TDC and a full 7 degrees from where the factory gear set was installed.

You can only imagine the difference what 7 degrees of advance made to the car and to drop from high 20's to a best cruise fuel consumption of 11.8 is amazing.

Another point worthy of note was how much the factory single row chain stretched over just 3000kms. 15 thou of camshaft lift!!

I searched the World for weeks and wrote dozens of emails, but nobody had an adjustable timing set for a GEMS engine, and now here we are with a product developed locally to give us the quality of a rollmaster double row timing chain, -6, -4, -2, 0, +2, +4, +6 degrees of adjustment and is made to work perfectly with the GEMS cam angle sensor system.

The gear/chain set is available in Ringwood, Melbourne by a respected Range Rover / Land Rover repair facility. A world first product, developed in our own back yard.

Disco2_Dan
How's the disco going since the chip install
Any more fuel figures.....
cheers smally

Originally Posted by uzz32soarer

BCEM was told that the car now had a 4.6 litre .

I'm sorry?
you did what to who??