I was fortunate to be one the beta testers for the Alternative Conversion Engineering LLC kit. That being said my kit was one of the early kits and there has been numerous improvement to the kits that are out now. I am fairly good on working on cars and doing engine swaps so this was right u my ally. My rover is about 90% done as of right now. Here is something that my help people who are thinking about doing the swap and somethings i did differently from what the ACE suggested.

1. I highly recommend getting an aftermarket harness or have the stock one rewired for the ls if you never messed with a harness before. Most harnesses from trucks/suv will put the ecu at the front driver side of the engine bay. A rewired/aftermarket harness will put it on the rear passenger side of the engine bay. I rewired my harness myself but did not reroute the harness, so the ecu sits in the spot where the rover engine air filter box was. I plan on rerouting it at a later date. Having the harness routed to the passenger rear is where you want it.


2. You can reuses most if not all the coolant hoses from the rover. The only coolant bits i had to buy were for the heater core hoses.

3. Remove the radiator when putting the ls in. having the wiggle room helps a lot.

4. Tranny cooler. Compression Fitting for Steel Tubing x4 and Brass ****** Hose Fitting x4 and some hi pressure power steering tube.













Do the same for the lines coming off the tranny.



4. Break booster. I had 2 ls break booster lines laying around and i made this:








All i have left to do is clean up the wiring, refine the tune and rout the intake piping.

 

Christ!!!

 

I'd be careful, those tranny cooler lines are going to get awful hit that close to the exhaust. I'd make some kind of heat shield, or preferably re-route them.

 

I plan on wraping the lines and the exhaust when everything is final. I didnt feel comfortable straitining out the stock hard lines to make them work.

 

From an electrical or sensor perspective, what did you lose on the dash? Are those many warning lights always on, or is it just a result of the swap?

What about the airbox, do you have any plans for that? Does the LS not need a MAF?

 

The hill decent, traction control, and abs lights are part of the "Three Amigos". It's a fault in the abs module. They were on before the swap. Do a search for three amigos on the forum to know more but basically my abs, traction control, and hill decent don't work. As for the water temp light being on is because it's not hooked up and it's not very accurate to begin with. You don't looses any lights on the dash. When everything is 100% done you won't have any dash lights on or missing.

As for the air box, I plan on running a cone filter because the Rover air box won't work, the top half will hit the AC compressor.

The LS not needing a maf is yes and no. The LS ECU can be tuned to not need a maf. But I do plan on running a maf.

 

Ahh yea, I fixed my 3 Amigos with the Option B thing. I just wasn't sure what it would be like final state. Thanks for the info!

 

For those of us running a snorkel, do you see it being possible to route piping with no issues to where the existing intake enters the engine bay?

 

The bottom half of the air box fits fine with no issues . The top will have to be modified somehow and it might work. When I get home I will take some pictures to show you.

 

Thanks, I'm sure there is a way to make something work in that space.