I am a BMW guy but a just bought an 01 Disco. I was planing on replacing the waterpump as preventative maintenance. The job is the same as a BMW. Remove fan clutch and then replace water pump. A lot of BMW people get rid of the fan clutch to eliminate parasitic drag and the possibility of a fan clutch failure. Usually you remove the fan clutch and then install a new temp sensor sendor in the radiator to trip the a/c fan earlier. Has an anyone though of this for these engines? If so, is there a link to a write up? Some people claim this mod frees up nine horses and also improves cooling consistency.

These are nice vehicles but really these are 1960s vintage Buick Special engines with a few modern touches like fuel injection. Are there any other mods for a few more ponies?

How can such a high buck vehicle have such an obsolete and dated power plant? I told my dad whos 85 about the Buick Special (little v/8) and he said they were crappy engines even way back then and Buick got rid of them. How can you use an all aluminum engine that was designed for a cheap economy car as the powerplant for a very expensive vehicle that's supposed to be subjected to extreme abuse like off roading in third world countires?

Ideas for upgrades?

How about a cold air intake with freer flow?

How about headers?

Removing the throttle bottle warming set up?

Performance mass air flow sensor?

Any aftermarket cams and/or manifolds?

Larger throttle body?

How about underdrive pullies?

How about porting and polishing the heads?

Are there any machined rockers? with 1.5 lift?

Are there any free flowing exhausts with less sharp bends?

How about an ex pipe for the exhaust to equalize back pressure?

 

How about doing my entire major service as listed at the top of this section and don't forget the drive shaft.
Then don't try an over engineer your Disco that you know nothing abiut, at leqast for a while.
For get getting rid of the fan, you will over heat the engine making it a boat anchor.
You could dp a cam, along with inlarged valves and headers, won't gain much but it can be done.
Forget changing the intake or t/body, no one makes them.
Forget the cold air intake unless you go with a snorkel.
Leave you pullies alone and don't use spacers to lift the truck, your warn out factory coils and shocks are what would be needed.

 

All those and more, including different injectors, custom mapped ECU chips, etc. are possible. But at the end of the day, your bimwah had a very different horsepower to weight ratio (Disco is about 4500 pounds), and a much lower center of gravity, and aerodynamics that did not closely match a brick. See pix of what a Disco can do in a crash that a BMW might have a different outcome. You'l find lots of things guys did to stuff this engine into TR7s, Morgans, etc. Start here RPi Engineering - V8 Engines . And The Wedge Shop - Fast. British. Reliable

Engine was selected for weight distribution, not raw power.

As for cooling, I have measured the feet per second of air flow by the stock radiator fan, and seen that bump up maybe 25 - 30% when AC fan cuts on (On a D1). So IMHO, the AC fan alone would not be enough CFM at low speeds to get the job done. Certainly at 50 mph the rad fan is not needed. You can drive without it, some do that all winter in the frozen north. There have been a few posts of guys who have converted the main fan to electric. Not much gain in performance or mpg, if it was we would all jump on it. Ford Taurus have a 18 inch electric fan that looks promising.

You can bypass the throttle body heater, which does little to heat the intake air, its job is to keep throttle plate from freezing in open position from ice at 36F or less, depending on humidity.

You can put on a cone air filter, increases dirt on MAF.

Many of the mods would help, until the ECU decided to adapt in another direction to maintain the fuel/air balance.

Your thoughts are quite common among new owners who also have performance vehicles. The Rover is really best at bouncing thru Borneo, not bleach burnouts at the drag strip. It can't be all things to all owners.

Most of us are worried about overheating, brought on by a steady diet of cheap oil, overdue maintenance intervals by previous owners, and Dexcool. Sludged up radiators push temps higher, increase system pressure, blow out thin head gaskets, warp heads, etc. Over the years Rover continued to bore out the block, reducing space between cylinders and the edge of the block as well. I found a little better cooling with a larger fan and chevy/gmc fan clutch. I run a 180F stat, which is the standard for that 63 Buick Skylark. Of course, back then, they had 11:1 compression ratio and you could buy real gasoline, not the mop water we have today.

In my signature are some links to the ECU manuals you might enjoy.

Enough tinkering, and the results could be the last two photos... lol.

 

I love the table.... Thats a classic keeper... You made me laugh this morning....

Chris

 

Love it.
First, the engine was sold to Mercury in the early '70's, GM only used it in the late '60's so the crap engine your dad is talking about is a different engine.
Mercury used it as a inboard engine for ocean going boats, like deep sea fishing etc.
Rover bought the engine from Mercury to use in the very first Range Rover, it was (is) such a good engine they made very few changes to it until its death in '05 when the LR3 came out and they used the Ford Explorer V6 and the Jaguar V8.
The only reason they stopped using it was for emissions, they could not make the engine clean enough to reduce their "pollution" fines.
As for bouncing around in the jungle...they all have diesels.

 

Any write ups on converting to electric fan?

 

if youre going to do the waterpump, do the radiator, hoses and thermostat too... and get rid of the dex and go with conv. green or aftermarket synthetic like amsoil.

dont touch the fan clutch, these are very heat sensitve and run hot from the word go.

you could bypass the throttlebody heater grid, i wouldnt if you are in the northern half of the country or high altitude, i doubt the few degree temp drop would really make that much of a difference.

no one that i know of makes perf headers but you can get new ones, have em port matched and jethot coated... chances are the gaskets all need replacement anyway. they make aftermarket ypipe and exhuast, magnaflow, borla and a few others.

you could do a 4.6 bottom end, and yea heads could be ported, but i doubt youll find someone willing to do it unless you want to give it a whorle yourself.

best bet for performance increase is snorkle, new injectors, o2's and all around tuneup, then go with 4.11 gears. other then that all you can do is lighten the thing up, but you wont get far with that.

DO address the front prop shaft issue ASAP... and expect headgaskets down the line.

welcome to the club, these go downhill real fast, thats about it

 

Do original equipment propellor shafts come with a grease fitting?

 

Not on the end that matters, the double cardon joint, that will break and punch a fist sized hole into the side of your transmission, about $7,000 for a new trans.
Have yours rebuilt, about $200 at a shop if you take it in yourself (off of the truck) make sure they also install a new centering ball.

 

see Propshaft Rebuild - Land Rover Forums - Land Rover Enthusiast Forum for pix of them during the re-work process, which should answer the question. "fitting" in reality needs to be "fittings"