I've been playing this around in my head for a long time and finally decided I'd pitch my dilemma to you fine gentlemen to see what you would do in my shoes.

My 2004 Disco 2 has 150,000 on the odometer, and I bought it at 98,000. It's in great shape, and I've personally put hundreds of hours into working on it, as far as maintenance and repairs. I've also paid a lot to a local indy shop in the last year to work on it after I found myself with way less time and a little more income. But overall it runs great, except that the bearings are very worn, I'm guessing, because it takes 20w50 oil and a stabilizer to bring the oil pressure up to a solid pressure, with no flickering oil light at hot idle. Now it's been holding great since last summer on that combination. Though at low RPMs, if I rev it a little on acceleration (I try and always accelerate slowly like a grandpa), I can feel a little grind somewhere inside, which goes away as I get up to speed. So that concerns me. But it's only momentary, and it's not too intense... oh man. I'm consoling myself.

I don't know how long I have on these bearings. At this point, I am entertaining two options:
A. Run it until my luck runs out, and then ship it to Joe Robison to have his famous $15k engine rebuild completed (I'm saving my pennies). In which case, when should I consider it time to send it off? When the engine seizes completely? As soon as the oil light starts to come on, despite the sumo weight oil?
B. Go ahead and just replace the bearings at my local indy shop, which if I'm not mistaken is like a $3k'ish job. If I do this, could this buy me a few years on the engine as a whole? Or once bearings wear, do a lot of other things wear too, making it likely that other parts will soon fail even if the bearings are replaced?

If you can believe it, there are no leaks and haven't been in a long time; my indy shop does great work, and I've done all the maintenance and upgrades I can get my hands on. It doesn't have any overheating issues (though in the past it has overheated momentarily a couple times due to oil gasket failures and coolant gasket failures). It runs great except for the grinding and the low oil pressure. But I don't know how much longer I have on this, or if it's worth spending the cash to replace the bearings, if I'm going to have to do the entire engine rebuild anyway in just a couple more years. So if replacing the bearings now could potentially buy me 5 or 6 years though, then heck yeah, that seems worth it. But I hesitate to waste $3k now if it's not going to buy me much time.

Oh, and selling it and buying someone else's Rover is not an option for a long list of reasons I won't get into, so let's leave that off the table.

So there's my dilemma. What would you do, if those were your two options? Replace bearings or wait and do a full engine rebuild?

 

If I was buying an engine, it would be the 340hp $6500 Todco 5.0 with top hats and head studs.
If you want new bearings, I'de buy crank and rod bearings for under $70, and an oil pan gasket, oil and filter.
Drop the the pan(engine still in the truck), and there you'll see all the rod and main caps.
Spend a few hours and save $2900.
It's Not a hard job.
Use assembly lube, a new pick-up tube o-ring, and a torque wrench...and you should have no problems.

 

and
I'm rebuilding a 4.6 now
when I'm done, I'll have $3500 ish in parts, zero for labor.

 

Dang, are the rod and main bearings just a few hours of labor and $70 in parts? I knew you could do the mains with only dropping the oil pan, didn’t know the rods could be done too. I’m going to seriously consider that, thanks for the tip!

That Toddco looks pretty nice.

 

Yes sir,
They are only a few hours to do, how many hours a shop will charge, who knows. But even if their rate is $200 an hr...it's not a 15 hr/$3k job.
It's a very straight forward job.
A dead blow hammer and a block of wood can help knock a stubborn main cap loose.
With rod caps off, push the rod and piston up an inch or so in the bore for clearance to install the upper bearing half.
You'll also need a set of Cruciform seals to go in the rear main cap(around $15 shipped).
Lucky8 for the bearings
and
CrossAxleCustoms has the oem cruciform seals(I would Not use the Allmakes brand cruciform seals, as they are a different design).
Download the Rave service manual for torque specs.
Also, to remove the oil pan, jack up the suspension(for axle clearance for pan to come down), turn the pan backwards, and bring it out the rear driver's side.
It can be awkward getting the pan in or out until you figure out how to turn it, but once you do, it moves in and out easily(jack doesn't look safe in picture, but truck is resting on jackstands, and jack is lowered just holding the block in place).
I can't say that you need to do bearings, but since you already work on the truck, and it's not hard, do it yourself and save a fortune.

 

Throw $1000 at @Sixpack577 and see if you can get him to come over to help! :-p

 

lol, and one of these days I'm even going to finish mine!

 

Wasn't there a big scandal with Todd co a while back? Or was that another company that builds rover v8s? It used to be a sticky, but I don't see it now.

I'd do a compression test before I commit to bearings. If your compression is low then it would be a perfect time to run a ball home thru it and put in new rings.

 

That was Canibal V8

 

When my daughter first wanted what has become my Disco, it was at the Dealer Auction being bid on by Recyclers. It had rod knock and was headed for the scrap yard.

I dropped the oil pan and replaced the rod bearings. I'm a novice mechanic. I use hand tools, not power tools. It only took 6 hours of my time from start to finish. That completely fixed the rod knock and she drove this Disco for 3,000 more miles until the oil pump failed.

So I'm here to tell you that dropping the oil pan and replacing the rod bearings is cheap, easy, fast, and works much better than just driving a worn motor until it dies on you.

With the oil pan dropped, I could have also, but did not at that time, replace the main bearings (there are additional side bolts to remove but no big deal).

Likewise, once the oil pan is dropped, you can remove the front cover (behind water pump) and replace the oil pump.

That's what the OP needs to do because he clearly has low oil pressure.

Drop the oil pan.
Replace the rod bearings.
Replace the main bearings.
Inspect the cam to see if any cam bearings walked (you can replace all but the last cam bearing with the motor still in place in your Disco).
Pull the front cover.
Replace the oil pump and timing chain.
Total parts should be less than $300.

You can knock all of the above out in a weekend.