Thread: Isuzu Engine Swops for Dummies

Cool

well then Mike,


Does it run???

H

Save the defender one, get a second compressor for the AC and use the defender one in front of the disco one (and its fans if you fit them) as the oil seperator and air cooler for onboard air.

It'll also save the dead bugs guts from eating away the proper AC condensor and give it a little armour for a front end tap.

Originally Posted by HPLP

well then Mike,


Does it run???

H

Nah, he's reinventing the wheel

Doing some rewiring at the moment, and making brackets. Trying t get everything made properly before firing it up.

Originally Posted by Vern

Nah, he's reinventing the wheel

Doing some rewiring at the moment, and making brackets. Trying t get everything made properly before firing it up.

Sounds like he either needs to up the beer intake so he slaps it together
or stop the beer intake so he hurries up

Bloody hell, talk about working under pressure?! You realise that if you read all the other Isuzu swap threads here, they go along the lines of "it was a cold winters day when I pulled the County into the shed to strip her down...." <cut to years later> "...well we've since had two children, and the recession has come and gone, but finally the County is running again..." I think I'm doing alright, though admittedly I'd like to have made more progress the past few days than I have.

Engine is in, SteveG's old 2½" exhaust has been transplanted and welded up, unfortunately the electrical upgrades of a couple of years ago sat right where the air cleaner now wants to reside, and I had no other choice than to rip it all out. Windscreen washer bottle was sitting right where the turbo wanted to be, so that's now gone, have to find me a TD5 one that sits under the passenger side wing (anyone got one for sale???). Because I'm running WVO as well as diesel, I'm finding it hard to shoehorn both filters and heat exchanger into the engine bay. Waiting on Damien's pipe bender to make an appearance tomorrow so I can bend up the intercooler and heater pipes and the engine bay will look a bit more complete. Have a couple of fittings (power steering and turbo) to braze up too.

And of course, there's the dogs (ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball throw the ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball maybe if I lie on top of the tools he'll throw the ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball ball) and the kids (What does this do? Are you welding? Are you done yet? How do I make explosives?)

Beer intake is almost nil these days - that'll change after she cranks over though

Originally Posted by Vern

Nah, he's reinventing the wheel

Should I take a few photos of the 4BD1 Range Rover gathering dust in the other end of the shed?

Well the work is progressing slowly but surely out here in Damien's shed...



continuing from last time, the air cleaner housing needed to be converted from its factory state to something more suitable to under the defender bonnet.



Old inlet was cut out and a patch welded in its place....



dust ejection aperture was drilled out to its full 3" diameter...



My one concession to vanity so far - I filled and sanded the imperfections left by the welded in patch, and resprayed the filter housing. If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well and all that....



Only thing left to do is to unclup the plastic swirl vanes from one end of the main filter element and clip them on teh other end, and job done.



Was it worth adapting the Fleetguard housing over just buying the Donaldson/Land Rover one off the shelf? Up to you, but in my opinion yes. $200 of a difference for a glorified tin can is nothing to be sniffed at, and money aside, Donaldson not allowing the public to buy directly from them, and instead letting Land Rover inflate the price to over double... that doesn't sit right with me. But to each their own.

My plan was to mount the filter housing behind the engine, just over the bellhousing, as most others have done. There isn't a whole lot of room to play arouns with - too close to the engine, and it's a pain in the ass trying to change the filters, too far away, and you'll have the housing bouncing off the bulkhead 2000 times a minute, and a nice bukhead shaped dent in the housing.

I had two criteria for the filter housing - I wanted the outlet lined up in the same plane as the inlet for the turbo so that I could connect them with a simple 90° reducer, and I wanted the straps for the housing to sit more or less centred on the housing itself. Considering the vibrations that the 4BD1 puts out, the housing brackets tend to break over time, so keeping it somewhat balanced might help things a bit.

The bracket itself uses the two top bolts for the bellhousing adaptor, plus two more tapped holes about 64mm above for support. One thing I will suggest is that you make up the bracketry for this before you fit the engine, as the holes are offset from each other, and a pain in the arse to measure once the engine is in place. I was lucky enough to have a second engine sitting in the corner of the shed to measure off, others may not be so lucky.

The rest of the bracket will depend on what setup you plan to run, but the following measurements will be common to all. Additionally, the bellhousing adaptor is 26mm thick, to the top bolts will beed to be spaced out the same distance from the block.



The finished bracket - it looks a bit like the starship Enterprise, but it makes sense when its bolted up.





offset towards the drivers side to align the filter housing with the turbo inlet.





Sittign in its new home in teh engine bay. Housing is sitting centred, and is at the correct height and offset to line up with the turbo. Unfortunately for me, this also happens to be exactly where I located relays and aux fuses for a wiring upgrade a couple of years back, so spent the afternoon gutting the wiring to be refitted elsewhere later



SteveG had recently upgraded his exhaust to a 3" system, so I happily grabbed the (not so) old 2½" exhaust to replace my tattered 2" setup.



Seeing as it was already sectioned, I simply welded on some flanges and hangers, and bolted her up. Keep at lest one flange for directly under the starter motor though - any further down the line and the turbo downpipe won't have room to come out. Ask me how I know this...





Slight dogleg to get round the bellhousing. Might have to weld a heatshield to the pipe here at some stage, to stop if from frying the clutch cylinder.





Clutch slave cylinder now sits on the opposite side of the bellhousing, so had to plumb across to suit... should have done this before the engine went in.



My new least favourite job - bending up brake and clutch line. Unfortunately didn't have a pipe bender, so every round object was put to use as a former, but at least I did have a flaring kit to do the ends.



As mentioned earlier, the R380 transmission tunnel didn't fit the LT85 gearbox, so rather than try to source one, I modified the R380 one to fit. A few measurements told me that the layout of the gear and diff lock levers was about the same - gear lever centred, diff lock offset 20mm right of centre, so the only thing I needed to do was relocate the opening 50mm towards the bulkhead and everything should line up, and I should be able to use the same gaiter for the levers.

As it was...



Tunnel marked up and cut...





Lever aperture shifted forward 50mm and temporarily held in place...



first layers of fibreglass underneath to give support.



Subsequent layers of fibreglass, plus a final layer of fibreglass mesh to tidy it all up...







Not the most exciting update so far, but hopefully someone will glean something from it. Next time, bending up and plumbing all the intercooler plumbing...