Hi,

My name is Carlo and I'm an unfortunate Land Rover enthusiast. My dad had a few of them when I was younger and I ended up buying a 2016 LR4 as a family SUV. Fast forward a few years later, my pops asked me if I wanted his L320 RRS which has the rare rear locker option and I couldn't resist. That was my first real taste of offroading having brought it to the sand dunes of Pismo to the snow trails of the Morman Emigrant trail with rocks, dirt, and mud thrown in between. Despite what people may say about the little RRS, that thing has surprised me with its capability and reliability (177k miles and counting) and has even made believers out of my Jeep and Toyota friends.

Last summer I got an itch for something with solid axles so I could tackle more difficult terrain that my L320 just wasn't capable of due to ground clearance/articulation restrictions. Watching my buddy with a Rubicon on 37s do some difficult trails from the sidelines wasn't fun.

I've always loved the RRC and the D2, but given how expensive RRC are now I unfortunately set my heart on a D2. I had my wish list of an 04 Bonatti grey D2 (to match my RRS) preferably a S model with no sunroof. I learned my lesson of leaky sunroof woes with my L320 and did not want to repeat the mistake with the D2.

I searched for a few months to no avail. All of the California D2s that fit my wish list were run down with paint completely peeling or riddled with check engine codes.

I widened my search outside of California the day after Christmas and I found the Craigslist ad of my nightmares. There is was, an 04 D2 S model in Bonatti grey with beige interior. The truck only had 100k miles on it on 33s, method wheels, 3in lift, front and rear metal bumpers, winch, and a raised air intake.

I spoke to the owner who seemed like a genuine D2 enthusiast. He knew about all the quirks of D2 ownership, had maintenance records, had all the aforementioned mods installed under his ownership, was friends with the previous owner etc. This seemed like this was the one. My only hangup is the truck was located in Florida and I was in California. There was no way I was going to be able to check the truck out in person given the pandemic.

Luckily, one of my good friends happens to live in Florida and wasn't too far away. He graciously agreed to check out the truck and buy it for me if checked out. My buddy is not a Land Rover expert by any means, but he and I both come from a sports car background and generally know what to look for given the 20-30 cars we've purchased in the past between the both of us.

My buddy said the truck looked great in person and drove fine. The truck had a SEL code which the seller told me was due to the SAI system. My friend confirmed with his OBD2 scanner which was no biggie to me. The truck wasn't overheating and no rust.

Despite my better judgement, I decided to forego a PPI given my buddy gave me the go ahead and the seller was a genuine enthusiast. I've bought a fair number of enthusiast cars in the past and I've always lived by the motto "buy the seller not the car". I've always been fortunate in my purchases in the past, but this would come to haunt me. More on that later.

Before I knew it, I was an unfortunate D2 owner and the truck showed up to my doorstep shortly after the new year. I must have been a bad boy in 2020 as Santa gave me a late Christmas gift and it was a D2.

 

After receiving the truck, I identified some areas that needed to be addressed immediately. First, while the concept of the having metal plates to mount Rotopax instead of windows was a cool idea in theory, the execution wasn't the greatest as you can see in the attached pictures. The previous owner took some sheet metal, cut it to size, and bolted it to the side of the truck.

Luckily, the previous owner supplied me with the OEM rear windows. I had a glass guy come out the next day to promptly remove the metal plates and reinstall the OEM rear windows.

 

My initial inspection found some annoying issues with the truck such as a non-functioning rear window. After identifying the rear switch was getting power and working properly, I concluded the window motor was busted. Spent some time on a Saturday addressing the issue as well as taking care of the SAI SELs which turned out to be a bad control valve. Also did some clean up of the switch panels which were full of grime. I hate a dirty vehicle, so my OCD had me scrubbing this thing top to bottom.

The last annoyance was the grill cutouts. The previous owner made cutouts on the grill to make room for the winch but the cutouts lacked precision. I purchased a used front grill from Mark and Randy at Rover Bones who have been lifesavers and after some precise measurements got the grill sorted.

 

While in the engine bay sorting out the SAI system, I noticed the coolant overflow tank was low. Upon further inspection, the truck was still on the OEM 190 deg Tstat and it appeared there was a leak at the top of the Tstat as I could see coolant weeping from the Tstat.

I ordered an OEM 180 deg Tstat and flushed the system with Peak coolant. Found a few other leaks at other coolant hoses and tightened the clamps until there was no leaks. The truck was running nice and cool with the 180 deg Tstat and Peak coolant. According to my UG, peak temps were around 205 deg F in stop and go traffic with AC running.

I drove the truck for a week putting on a 50 miles or so. I popped the hood to check the overflow tank again to make sure everything looked ok and to my horror the overflow tank was almost to the min line. My heart sank as I knew I could have a HG issue even though the truck was not overheating.

I ended up bringing my D2 to my local LR indy shop who takes care of my LR4 and L320 to pressurize the coolant system and go over the truck. I was hoping the cause of the low coolant level was just a leaky radiator, a cracked overflow bottle or I had missed a coolant hose clamp. After not hearing back from the shop for a couple days, I knew something was wrong.

I get a call from the shop owner with the bad news - the HG was leaking. The shop owner said the leak is an external HG leak that's why the truck wasn't overheating or smoking and showed me pictures of the residue build up on the bottom of the engine from the coolant leak.

The shop owner gave me a quote for the HG repair and it was a whopping $4k which was almost half of what I paid for the truck. With high cost of Bay Area living, the hourly rates are much higher than other parts of the country resulting in an expensive repair bill for the HG.

However, the shop advised against doing the HG repair as the last few D2s he opened up to do HG repairs ended up having slipped sleeves and/or warped blocks. His other customers ended up having to get new engines on top of the cost for labor that was initially performed to install a new HG before realizing the block was shot. The shop advised to just skip trying to repair the HG and go straight to a new engine if I decided I wanted to keep the truck.

I called a few other local D2 indys and spoke to a few of the NorCal Land Rover members with D2s for second opinions. Unfortunately, there was a consensus to just replace the engine.

What a gut check...I was only 3 weeks into my D2 ownership and was in a bad place. Do I just abandon the D2 and sell it for parts or do I keep going?

With the encouragement of my wife, she gave me her blessing to move forward with the engine instead of the HG repair. Her rationale was if her and the kid are going to be in the truck, she wants to know it's as reliable as it can be as she did not want to be stranded in the middle of nowhere in the D2.

With the decision made, I talked to the shop about my engine options - an AB engine, a Turner engine or a used OEM engine. We ruled out the OEM engine as it would always have the inherent problems. The shop has installed both Turner and AB engines in the past and has had great success with both. They acknowledged the enthusiast crowd has a preference for the Turner engines vs AB engines, but they haven't had issues with either.

Despite the slightly higher price for a Turner longblock vs the AB longblock, I gave the shop the ok to purchase the Turner longblock to get the ball rolling. But just my luck, Turner did not have any SAI heads available and could only supply a short block. That would require my shop having to rebuild my factory heads which involves the labor of removing the heads/reinstallation etc which brought up the price quote considerably.

In the end, I switched the order to an AB engine. I was a bit hesitant at first given some of the bad reviews I've read online, but the shop reassured me they've never had issues with one and they've installed dozens of them. The shop also gave me a 1-year 12k mile warranty for labor on top of the AB warranty for added piece of mind in the unfortunate scenario something did go wrong with the engine.

However, just my luck AB did not have any engines in stock and had to build one. It took about 3 weeks for the engine to be built and it was stuck in customs in the UK for a few weeks before it even left the country to be delivered to the shop. All in all, it took about 1.5 months before the engine showed up to the shop for them to install.

Along with the engine, I had a new radiator installed, 8mm spark plug wires, new spark plugs, coil packs, fan clutch, and inline thermostat mod. After getting the truck back, I was pleasantly surprised at how smooth the truck ran and it felt a bit more lively.

The truck seems to run very cool as well. I'm seeing temps from 173 to 183 on my UG under 55 mph and 185-194 at freeway speeds. I did see temps eventually climb to 210 for a brief moment, but that was with the rig fully loaded with camping gear and my entire family and dog and a series of hill climbs that lasted an hour or so.

I'm sure some of you are wondering if I ever brought up the issue with the previous owner. I did. He gave me the lame excuse that he didn't have the coolant issue when he owned the truck. Utter BS imo as the truck was already low on coolant upon delivery and I couldn't drive it more than 50 miles without having to add more coolant. The previous owner claimed to have daily drove the truck and if that's the case he would have known about the coolant issue. Whatever. Serves me right for not doing a PPI.

Furthermore, the shop ended up tearing down my oem engine to prep it to send back to AB for the core fee. Well it turns out the block was shot. The block was warped and had a slipped sleeve. There goes my core fee

 

As I mentioned previously, I bought the D2 to tackle more difficult trails. My ultimate goal with the D2 is to run the Rubicon and some of the harder NorCal trails like Slick Rock and Deer Valley. To do so, I knew I needed the proper suspension, lockers, halfshafts, and drive shafts.

Shortly after receiving the truck and prior to me knowing about my engine woes, Simon at RTE and Bill at GBR gladly emptied my wallet to get the D2 trail ready. Bill recommended ARB lockers front and rear with 4.43 gears due to me wanting to run 35s, diff pegging, and competition bolt kit given what I intended to do with the truck. Bill also supplied Bilstein 7100 shocks.

I was able to score a set of 300M Ashcroft axles from the fine folks at Rover Bones.

RTE supplied the caster corrected front and rear radius arms, adjustable pan hard bar, HD steering rod and drag rod, OME steering stabilizer, watts link, sway bar disconnects, bushings, lower front shock mounts, spring retainers, front and rear dislocation cones, and rear drive shaft with rotoflex delete. The D2 has a Tom Woods front drive shaft, extended brake lines, and abs lines so luckily I'm good on that front.

The ARB diffs were out of stock for a long time, but the diffs finally ship next week.

Some pics of the RTE suspension goodies attached.

 

The suspension has been installed and wow what a difference. I installed all of the arms in a day with the help of friends and tackled the shocks another day. The caster corrected arms completely transformed how the truck drives. Prior to the caster corrected arms, the truck would dart all over the place on the freeway and was frankly a bit scary to drive over 60 mph. With the caster corrected arms, the D2 drives like a normal truck now and isn't darting all over the place.

Some pics of the RTE suspension install. Overall, the installation was not bad. There was just a lot of work to do. Luckily all of the OEM suspension pieces came off easily.

 

My truck came with TF +2 in shocks and I didn't think they rode that bad. The shocks were definitely firm, but not horrible. However, I am used to driving Porsche track cars and modified Porsche street cars with aggressive suspension setups, so my perception may be a bit skewed.

The Bilstein 7100 shocks were the icing on the cake. The ride is much more plush now and soaks up the bumps much better than the TF shocks. The TF shocks seemed to just skip over bumps likely due to the compression settings. The Bilstein shocks soak up road imperfections enough for my wife to comment how much more pleasant the truck is to ride in now. I call that a win. The valving on the Bilsteins are 400/100 front and 420/120 rear which are the middle of the road valving setting for the Bilsteins.

 

Now that the suspension has been taken care of, there are some small fun mods I took care of. Given how prone the rear end of the truck is to smashing on obstacles, I purchased a gas tank skid plate from RTE. This is one beefy unit and is beautify made. Shame it's hidden.

With my truck on 33s, the spare tire is in contact with the rear bumper even with the spare tire carrier flipped upside down. I purchased a Rover Bones rear tire carrier which raises the carrier higher allowing for up to 35 in tires. The install was very straight forward and was a great upgrade to get the tire off the rear bumper as shown in the attached pics.

Another nice upgrade was replacement of my cracked tail lights with a set of new OEM rear tail lights. I didn't realize that it was difficult to find D2 rear tail lights and the outrageous price for them. Luckily, a friend had scored a set from Australia and I was able to pick them up from him. Love the little details like this that freshen up the truck.

 

With the air lockers coming in shortly, I knew I needed to setup onboard air to engage the diffs. Bill at GBR supplied a high performance ARB compressor and with the help of one of the local D2 gurus I got it installed in the truck.

The compressor feeds a 1 gallon air tank with an air chuck located in the engine bay for filling up the front tires and an air chuck behind the gas tank flap for filling up the rear tires. I love how hidden the air compressor setup is.

Short vid below of the air compressor in action and some pics of the install.

 

What's a D2 build without a roof rack! While I do like the expedition racks typically seen on D2s, I have a preference for the slimmer tray style racks. I love my Front Runner rack on my L320 and since all the off accessories are transferable between the L320 and D2, it was a no brainer to go with Front Runner again for my D2.

Luckily, the rack was in stock and I got it after 2 days from placement of the order. The rack installed super easily with the hardest part getting the thing over the truck. After installation, the racked looked good but something was off. The damn thing was not long enough and did not cover the majority of the roof.

I talked to Brandon at Front Runner (who is the best btw) about my issues with the rack. He explained the reason that it is short is to keep the functionality of the sunroof. Apparently in the past Front runner offered a full length rack and D2 owners with sunroofs were unhappy that the sunroof no longer opened as it would hit the underside of the rack.

Lucky for me I don't have a sunroof (S model baby!) so that's not a concern. Brandon shipped the parts I needed to extend the rack immediately and IMO the rack is much better at full length. The last two attached pictures shows the 3/4 length rack vs the full length rack.

If anyone orders a Front Runner rack in the future, their website only lists the 3/4 rack. You will need to call to order the full length rack.