Thread: Stirlsilver's Disco Ute Project

Hello again everyone. With interstate travel during the week and only being able to spend a few hours on this project on Saturday this is a pretty short update.

With the brake disks arriving I got straight into finishing the hubs.

It was nice to get some more use out of my dial gauge that had been sitting in a box for ages. I was checking the bearing preload which took quite a lot of fiddling to get right.


Here is the whole overhauled hubs. Complete with Ashcroft CVs, High Tuff drive shafts, heavy duty drive flanges, slotted & dimpled discs and the larger defender brake calipers. Hopefully I won't have any issues with stopping on 35s now!




This gives a bit of an idea of the calliper size difference between the discovery and defender.


And that's it! I'm off to Queensland tomorrow so no progress next week!

I have been following this tread for at least half a year and the level of detail (and your patience haha) still amazes me! I check the tread for updates at least a couple a times a week, and I signed up at aulro just for a reply here. Also I am living in The Netherlands so your work is appreciated worldwide!

I especially like the engine/turbo/LPG work! The LPG tanks in the trayback is a very neat solution. My Rangie runs on LPG aswel and I am thinking about fitting MegaSquirt to it. (wen I can afford it)

Originally Posted by LRCounty

- And just because I saw the rocker shaft post. The oil holes are pointing down toward the cam? A long investigation of oil light flickering at idle on my previous 110 V8 was solved by pointing the oil holes in the rocker shaft in the right direction

My 83? Range Rover Classic has a flickering oil light at idle wen hot. I know the last owner had worked on the engine as it had a lot of spare parts in the back and the engine had some lose ends to fix wen I bought it. So I red this post and I am pretty sure my rocker shaft is the wrong way around! Going to fix this asap so thank you for mentioning it! I think this saves me alot of time searching!

Keep up the good work!
Rob

Hello again everyone, I am alive! Looking now it has been over a month since I posted last. In that time I have been doing bits an pieces continuing with the project, but times have been disruptive. The latest disruption being a week long trip to Oman which I got back from last Tuesday, and now I am in Melbourne for less than 24 hours. Anyway, such is life.

Originally Posted by Hulliemam

I have been following this tread for at least half a year and the level of detail (and your patience haha) still amazes me! I check the tread for updates at least a couple a times a week, and I signed up at aulro just for a reply here. Also I am living in The Netherlands so your work is appreciated worldwide!

I especially like the engine/turbo/LPG work! The LPG tanks in the trayback is a very neat solution. My Rangie runs on LPG aswel and I am thinking about fitting MegaSquirt to it. (wen I can afford it)

My 83? Range Rover Classic has a flickering oil light at idle wen hot. I know the last owner had worked on the engine as it had a lot of spare parts in the back and the engine had some lose ends to fix wen I bought it. So I red this post and I am pretty sure my rocker shaft is the wrong way around! Going to fix this asap so thank you for mentioning it! I think this saves me alot of time searching!

Keep up the good work!
Rob

Welkom Rob! Thanks for the message and the feed back. I'm almost at the end and gradually getting there! As for the flickering oil light, it could also be a worn oil pump or a sticking pressure regulator. So you may want to check all 3 areas. If you need any advice on your Megasquirt install feel free to drop me a message, i'm happy to try and help.

Right, so what have I been up to.

I had to spend HEAPS of time troubleshooting a communication fault I was getting from one of the modules I fitted on the ECU. Below is a photo of one of the many nights I had everything apart trying to work out what was going wrong. In the end it ended up being that one of the boards I had purchased had one component that was partially soldered on!! So glad to have gotten to the bottom of that because I was nearly loosing hope.


The rest of the time I was in the workshop doing things that really weren't worth reporting. Fitting hoses, doing some re-wiring and so on. But this weekend, there was some progress, the intake manifold went on, and with plenty of complaining Ana and myself we managed to get those little struts that support the weight of the intercoolers onto the rocker covers. Did I mention that this engine is going to be a NIGHTMARE for maintenance?? Oh well!






You will also see that basically everything is now in the engine bay. I'm very close to firing it up, but I need to bleed brakes, add fluids, fit the new drive shafts, finalise some more of the intake ductwork and I may also mount the winch on the front while I am at it. Then I'll need to find some way to bed in the engine, I'll need to think creatively there.

Here is Ana cutting the 86mm hole into the RH guard to prepare to fit the RH snorkel.




Derrick was also with us in the workshop today. He is in the process of bolting a supercharger onto his Daihatsu Mira, while he was there to took a couple of snaps while we were fitting the coolant bottle. Catching me with my eyes closed.





And that's it! Hopefully i'll get a chance to do some more work next Sunday if all goes well.

Great work, mate

Be careful with those black coolant bottles as they have a habit of splitting along the seam. The white ones are the ones to get, or with your talent you could make a cool Ali bottle to match all the other cool stuff in the engine bay. :-)

Waiting with baited breath for the fire up of this monster :-) :-)


Sent from my WL-101GQC using AULRO mobile app

Stirling, you globe-trotting marvel, lovely work as usual. Just two points and two questions:

The Tefba filter mentioned above is not only very good a catching a surprising amount of unexpected rubbish, but being so high it's a perfect place to fill the cooling system and it also makes it very easy to "burp" out air by squeezing the lower hose. As well, the other day I had a weird problem where the reservoir coolant level, (this is on my Rangie, with the older metal type of reservoir from the '70s and '80s), was too high and the radiator was too low. The Tefba allowed me to find out that the top radiator hose was actually empty, which I wouldn't have been able to check otherwise. (I think the problem was an old cracked o-ring on the radiator filler plug, by the way.) Anyway, I can't recommend the Tefba enough.

The other thing is that I've been doing some "highly sophisticated" air flow tests with the engine running and sticks of smokey incense. I've got a viscous clutch fan and found that air was actually being pushed out under the LH side of the radiator and being sucked back in. (You know how there's that big gap betwixt radiator and front cross member.) I've covered it up, but I also found that there are some other weird things the air does around there and with the monster you've created you might need to tidy up the details up front. Both Rangies and Discos appear to have similar air flow where not as much air goes into the radiator as you'd expect, and the crowded engine bays are a disaster as far as the low-pressure and outward air flow you need in that area is concerned.

Finally, do you have a part number for the radiator core? I actually called Redback about it and they only had measurements, which I thought was strange.

And did you have any trouble mounting the front calipers? There was a thread or two on here a few years ago about it, and apparently the bolt size or spacing was a bit off and the calipers could move slightly.

Originally Posted by Corgie Carrier

Be careful with those black coolant bottles as they have a habit of splitting along the seam. The white ones are the ones to get, or with your talent you could make a cool Ali bottle to match all the other cool stuff in the engine bay. :-)

Thanks for the heads up! I have a white one that I pulled from the discovery I wrecked but it must have sat exposed to the sun for over a year so I wasn't too confident in it. I'll definitely keep an eye out for any splitting.

Originally Posted by Davo

The Tefba filter mentioned above is not only very good a catching a surprising amount of unexpected rubbish, but being so high it's a perfect place to fill the cooling system and it also makes it very easy to "burp" out air by squeezing the lower hose. As well, the other day I had a weird problem where the reservoir coolant level, (this is on my Rangie, with the older metal type of reservoir from the '70s and '80s), was too high and the radiator was too low. The Tefba allowed me to find out that the top radiator hose was actually empty, which I wouldn't have been able to check otherwise. (I think the problem was an old cracked o-ring on the radiator filler plug, by the way.) Anyway, I can't recommend the Tefba enough.

Thanks for the tip! It could be a good option a little later down the track.

Originally Posted by Davo

The other thing is that I've been doing some "highly sophisticated" air flow tests with the engine running and sticks of smokey incense. I've got a viscous clutch fan and found that air was actually being pushed out under the LH side of the radiator and being sucked back in. (You know how there's that big gap betwixt radiator and front cross member.) I've covered it up, but I also found that there are some other weird things the air does around there and with the monster you've created you might need to tidy up the details up front. Both Rangies and Discos appear to have similar air flow where not as much air goes into the radiator as you'd expect, and the crowded engine bays are a disaster as far as the low-pressure and outward air flow you need in that area is concerned.

Interesting observation, it sounds similar to something I found on the intercooler fans where the air was recirculating out the edge of the fan blades and back in. I'm actually using the Ford falcon thermo fans (I think) and I could do a similar test as I did in one of my videos with a cotton thread and see if I find something similar to what you find.

Originally Posted by Davo

Finally, do you have a part number for the radiator core? I actually called Redback about it and they only had measurements, which I thought was strange.

The radiator shop (riverstone radiators) I used bought a length of core from Redback and then welded it onto the discovery tanks. Redback doesn't sell a complete radiator.

Originally Posted by Davo

And did you have any trouble mounting the front calipers? There was a thread or two on here a few years ago about it, and apparently the bolt size or spacing was a bit off and the calipers could move slightly.

No, the 130 defender calipers bolted straight on. The only thing you need to choose is whether to go vented or non vented. I went non vented since they don't plug with mud and are more resistant to warping.

Ok for the update... I was hoping to be able to report that I started the engine... But it didn't happen, here is what I got done.

I finished hooking up the air filters with some decent spiral wound ducting and reinstalled the ducts between the turbos and throttle bodies.











Then I moved onto making up the 2" to 3" transitions that the snorkels will ultimately connect onto.









Yes, I know the flexible ducting is a bit too long, I'll fix it later.






This coming weekend it's Ana's birthday and I bought her a flying lesson (which she is freaking out about!) so no playing in the workshop this weekend. Possibly the week after. I'll try to get some gopro's set up to catch the activities. Because, surely something will go wrong on first firing!!

Oh that reminds me, I tested the electric Cooling pump that supplies coolant to the turbos. It works perfectly and it is very very quiet compared with the Chinese knock off pump I tried before.

Oh and another point, maintenance nightmare. I had a lot of fun getting the number 2 ignition lead on the spark plug... This is looking up from the RH when well.


Till next time!

The funny thing I found was back when I had a good used radiator and EL Falcon thermos. I was running back and forth between here and Fitzroy Crossing every week and as the weather heated up the thermos would run while I was on the highway. I thought there would be plenty of outside air rammed into the radiator at 100kmh, but no, not past about 30C ambient. I also had two huge Lightforce lights and they disrupted the airflow too much, and had to go on the top of the bullbar. When I put the original type of viscous fan and shroud back on, the problem was solved.

I'm still exploring this in my primitive way but it seems to be that the bullbar causes a lot of air disruption, plus the engine bay doesn't have low enough pressure - too much air getting into it from underneath, I think. These days I have a later style Fenix radiator and an ED Falcon viscous clutch and ten-blade fan with a shroud I made. The new radiator went in after I put in a new aircon system and the condensor raised the temperatures quite a bit.

So it would seem that with this sort of front end, and the packed engine bay, sucking the air into the radiator works better than ramming into the front at speed. I'll be interested to see how you go with that.

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