My motor is toast and I have a few options:

Buy a low mileage used motor. no warranty, problems likely

Buy a top hatted reman Long block (from roverguy) 6 mo warranty

Build my own flanged sleeve engine. No warranty, probably not necessary.


The real choice is between buying a used stocker or going with a beefed up bottom end.

Question is what are the experiences with top hat upgraded engines? With proper care, what sort of miles can I expect to get out of one? From the research I have done it appears as though the top hat liner mod can make these motors pretty robust.

I'm interested in knowing what peoples experiences are with these upgraded motors. Good, bad, failures, etc.

Thanks

Mike

 

Another option is a top hatted long block from OKLAHOMA EUROPEAN LLC. This comes with a 3-year warranty.

 

It wil last as long as you maintain it and keep it cool.

 

Does this statement apply to a stocker as well?

I have a line on a low mi motor complete with all accessories that I am finding to be enticing (leaves me with a truck-load of spares, and I NEED a PAS pump off hand anyway).

I'm considering dropping in a used low mi runner, then in my spare time building up a top hat motor from the one I have on hand.

 

Does not pretain to a stock engine.
Let me know if you need a used p/s pump and or call Paul Grant, he should have one.

 

the real deal on top hat liners and poor tooling:
top hat liners. The flange keeps them from moving up and down, and the "slipped sleeve" problem seemed solved. Unfortunately, it wasn’t permanent.

Failures happened when the engine got hot enough that thermal expansion made the liner loose in the block casting. For most people, that meant liner failure followed what we euphemistically called a thermal incident. In other words, the engines failed after the cars were overheated. The initial overheating could be caused by anything – water pump leakage, fan belt failure, or a blown hose.

The out-of-place liner was a visible evidence of failure, but some engines had more serious problems hidden inside. It turned out that the overheating was also causing cracks in the aluminum block castings. Sometimes the cracks allowed oil and coolant to mix, leading to another engine failure. Other times, cracks allowed combustion gases to get into the coolant, which led to another thermal incident.

When the blocks developed cracks we were stuck. Repair of the cracks required removal of every liner from the block, and costs were prohibitive. Replacement blocks were the only answer, or so it seemed.

The problem got so bad that Land Rover began supplying warranty exchange blocks to dealers for about $1,000. By doing that, they in effect subsidized the repair of thousands of engines over a period of several years. The problem was, the new engines weren’t any better. They were all susceptible to failures.

However, they were all we had to work with, so we made the best of the situation. The main thing we learned was: Never drive a Rover with an overheated engine! By following that advice and preventing overheats we kept the problem at a manageable level.

Until this year.

That was when we saw our first Rover that had combustion gases leaking into the coolant with no prior history of overheating. And when the motor was torn down for inspection, all the liners were in place and there was no sign of thermal damage. Yet the block failed a pressure test where we applied compressed air to the cylinder to simulate what happens when pressures build up as the motor runs. The air leaked right into the coolant passages. How could that be?

We removed the leaky liner, and made an alarming discovery. The aluminum casting that should have supported the liner had rotted away. The inside of the block looked like a piece of decomposing cheese. It was an ugly situation, one of the only failures for which we could see no repair option. It was like looking at rusted floor boards . . . at a certain point, there is no solid metal left to fix.

Since that time, we have seen a few more engines failed in the same way. The symptoms can be subtle at first. There may be slow loss of coolant, and the truck may develop a misfire as spark plugs become fouled by white deposits from coolant that leaks in and burns.

We’ve been wondering what would cause this new, severe, failure and I think we’ve got some answers.

The first problem is the tooling. As the tooling aged, production tolerances became sloppier and sloppier. We’ve seen new engine castings with actual holes where the aluminum failed to fill in. Overall production quality on the last pushrod V8 engines was a far cry from what we saw at the beginning.


So how long or what is the life expectancy all depends on how well the block has held up and how thick the aluminum was to begin with. Could go forever could look like deteriorated cheese.

 

The more I learn, the more I lose any warm and fuzzy feelings I may have had about Rover engines!

So if I were to drop in an earlier bosche 4.0, does that increase my chances of having reliability? Or all they all turd wagons..

Anybody have experience with these guys?

www.qande.com

I could do a ground up build while in the short term installing a used runner..

My kingdom for a GM V8...

 

Put in a used engine and be done with it, it will still outlast the rest of your truck.

Asking how long a new engine will last is the same as asking the Dr. how long the newborn baby will live.
It all depends.