I have a 2004 Land Rover Disco II 4.6. My coolant reservoir nipple broke off while running; draining the reservoir into the engine resulting in a blown head gasket. My mechanic suggested to replace the engine. My questions are:

Where do I find an engine for my 2004 Land rover Disco II?

Are there other engine options? ie. Chevy?

Thank you in advance. I unfortunately am not versed in this so any suggestions are much appreciated!!

 

Welcome.

Blown HG alone isn't a need for a new engine......

Did he dismantle your engine to diagnose something else?

I'm not sure how a broken reservoir nipple can empty coolant into the engine either.

Either way, I'd be looking for a second opinion, unless you have other info about it, more than just a blown HG.

Sounds like all your coolant ran out, so it over heated, resulted in HG, maybe. So you do need to check for warped heads.

 

Chevy engine - no. Rover electronics make this tricky.
New engine - not likely
Head gasket job is about $2500 if you pay a reputable mechanic. I had this done 2 years ago before I began working on my own. If you have someone do it, be sure they know ROVERS and also check back here first because the heads can be planed to be made flat, but not shaved to be made any thinner.

I'd start looking for a rover guy around you.

 

If you have more money than brains you could always go with this>> Rover 4.6 Long Block Engine - Discovery II And Range Rover


It's second opinion time!

 

I would also suggest a second opinion

 

There are too many variables and options to answer your question outright, but since you will have to hire a mechanic to do the work, a direct 4.6 Rover V8 swap is really your only option. Don't even think about a GM or Diesel engine transplant. Just buy the exact same motor and have them swapped. The options with this route is a used engine or a rebuilt long-block with top-hatted cylinder liners. A used engine may come with a warranty, but it will be short and its life expectancy will be very short if you don't start learning everything that there is to know about the Disco2's personality traits. They want to run hot and require routine, preventative maintenance to ascertain any sort of day-to-day reliability. You seem like the kind of person that gets into his car and goes, then drops it off at a garage when it starts squealing. That doesn't cut it with Disco ownership; you will constantly incur all kinds of catastrophic damage when you wait until a part has already failed. It will just blow up almost every time. Sell it for scrap and buy a 'Yota so that you will have something that you can keep going with minimal effort and attention. If you are dead-set on keeping your Disco, look up member Abran for another engine. Charlie_V also has one that he wants to sell, COMPLETELY rebuilt. I'm sure that you can have it shipped to your door for the right price.

 

Yeah I agree Land Rover's are not for the non mechanically inclined kind of owner. Out of all the vehicles I've owned I'd say my Jeep Wranglers were far worse on being reliable vs a Land Rover, but the Jeeps were of coarse very cheap to fix for the most part, and you could ignore stuff until it died and actually get away with it most of the time. Land Rover's are reliable, but you must know their weak spots, and be in tune with your vehicles.

If you just jump in turn the key on, drive, turn the key off, and repeat then yeah LR's are not something you need unless it has a bumper to bumper warranty with a 50.00 deductible.

 

Is the OP still around?

My new engine is spoken for, sadly. Otherwise I'd be glad to help. I'm about to swap back to "gimpy". Is it okay to say gimpy? I'm talking about my engine, not a person.

A forum member has recently put a Chevy engine in his rover with all rover electronics and there is a YouTube video to prove it. Very neat, but not for the faint of heart, mechanically or financially. He did the swap in his aircraft hangar, if that tells you anything. I'm still waiting for my hangar. And I talked to a guy who put a TURBOCHARGED LS3/6L80e that does zero to 60 faster than you can count the time in his 04 Disco II (there is a thread on defender source or somewhere and I tracked him down). Very nice guy. He also is an engineer and has complete fabrication facilities. The cost and time was staggering. There's an Isuzu diesel Disco II on YouTube. No word on how much that cost. OM617 Discos? Yes, I've seen proof. But most were Disco I's because, as JamieB alluded, we have slightly more electronics than are convenient for engine swaps. Zombie Motors sells diesel conversion kits for Disco II's, which is a temptation. He's probably a nice guy and he has clearly done well despite me but when I've talked to him I got the impression that I had until the end of the song to pay him or he would stop dancing, I mean, talking, and show no further interest. Is he a forum sponsor? If so, I retract that last statement. Maybe I caught him on a bad day or he thought I had just enough money to make a phone call. I called him a couple of years later and he literally said "didn't I talk to you a couple of years ago? And you didn't buy anything?" Of course, he was right, I didn't send thousands of dollars to someone I don't know in Oregon a couple of years prior for a used engine and transmission that he dragged out of a shipping container with a forklift and a chain. He has a deviously good memory or I have a memorable name, I don't know which. If he is a fan of spaghetti westerns he probably remembered my last name. I'll go with that. Anyway, I kept my pennies and my name and suffered on, buying whole rovers for parts with my phone call money. But if anything goes wrong with a diesel rover engine in the US you will be driven to insanity trying to find parts or a place to fix it. And you'll probably have to change gears and fight a clutch... uncivilized in an 04 (king of Disco IIs). Land Rover changed hands so many times during the Disco II years (mine is a BMW!) and then left us dangling. Now I think rovers are Tata's (I'm not making that up, Google it). I like Tatas (the cars, I mean, as far as you know) but I won't drive one. No offense to the Egyptians or Indians (I can't remember which; that's bad), who are good people.

I wave at Disco drivers because there are no shops or dealerships where I live. It is not because we have the same car--I'm not a cheerleader and I'd rather flip them off because it destroys my image of having a unique vehicle. It is because we both know the effort, time, and money that has gone in to maintaining them to a point that we can be driving and waving at the same time. Sort of like two 50's Chevy drivers in Cuba, if there were very few Chevy cars there. More of a respect thing.

So, you're being a hazed a little, I think. Don't feel bad. I'm almost 50, have been a member of this forum under various names since before AlGore invented the Internet, and have owned a Disco II since they were invented, and forum members have hazed me as recently as yesterday. All gas powered Disco II's are ticking time bombs and the mighty should always remember Proverbs 16:18, "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall." The modern, NIV translation is, "brag about your rover and it will bite you in the ***." Never compliment your rover or convey that it is worthy of compliments. Outwardly treat it with scorn and disrespect, and it will outlast the apocalypse.

I had a jeep. What a piece of crap. And it had a 350 in it! It was older but anyone who thinks a Jeep gets better with age or is worth the ask needs their head examined, if they have one to examine.

Back to the subject. A good mechanic would pull the heads and check everything out, plane them and maybe seat the valves, put a head gasket kit in, and replace the reservoir. This can be done in a miserable day even by lowly me. Then he'd present a huge bill because he can do things you can't. I hate that, but it is the way the world is. That's why I work on my own like some drunken sailor hired to fix the international space station during weekend leave.

Abran is the man to talk with for an engine, and he is a very good guy and good steward of the forum. I owe him some pistons and if I don't drive them to the post office soon he will be justified in taking a contract out on my life, yet he remains patient and kind. If Abran tells you something you can let down your defenses, abandon the options, and just accept it because it will be right; there is no need for second opinions or further research. You'll still need a mechanic to swap the engines but I wouldn't think it would cost more than the head gaskets (for labor), and it might be less if the mechanic removed the engine to replace the gaskets (which isn't necessary). But I have to say, the previous posters are right; once something goes terribly wrong with a Disco II you have to grow some mechanical muscles or it will put you out of house and home unless you go full bore and spend much more on the truck than it will ever be worth; in other words, you need to plan to keep it. Land Rover's nasty trick was selling the Disco II to people who couldn't or wouldn't afford Range Rovers (me), knowing they had to be serviced by people who service Range Rovers. If you want proof of this strategy consider the Land Rover Freelander. Yeah.

One balmy summer I had a love affair with Toyota land cruisers. I wasted days if not weeks of my life reading all about them, finding out how to get the good ones from Canada, looking on eBay and private ads and government auctions, asking for pictures of the undercarriage to look for rust. I called people. I spoke to importers. I watched videos. I looked into getting an importer license. I did the same with defenders. Then I drove a land cruiser. I was expecting 72 virgins but it was no different from the 4runner I had a few years ago. It was a nice car. I did say car. It had car seats and a car dash and everyone else saw me driving a truck from the outside as I drove my Toyota station wagon car from the inside, down the road.

Basically, when my rover ****s the bed, I'm screwed.

If you read the previous posts, mine won't seem so random.

So, options.

1. Spend more than you thought could be possible getting a new engine and paying a shop to install it. Resolve to keep your rover several years and never drive another vehicle that isn't covered by a warranty. Save some money and get a perfect engine from Abran, if he has one for sale, that has really been looked at and tested. Probably even driven and broken in for you. Buy whatever Abran has. He is knowledgeable, honest, and fair.

2. Get a head gasket kit and borrow or buy some tools, take the heads off and to a shop for a two day turnaround to have the heads planed. Hope for the best. Members of this forum will immediately switch from doom and gloom hazing mode to how can I help you mode, send you pictures and how to's, find coupons, give you the direct number for parts suppliers, give you their own phone numbers, and maybe even help in person. They will watch your videos on endless loop and zoom in your pictures so closely that they will tell you whether you have a hangnail or that your plants have aphids. They will all cheer your success. If it pans out you'll be king of the world to your family. If it doesn't, you tried.

3. Skimp and buy a used engine with no warranty and no one to complain to from eBay or a salvage yard and employ the labor aspects of 1 or 2. This is for people who earn their mortgage money at casinos, until their houses are foreclosed.

4. Sell the rover for so little that you briefly consider its value as a storage building, feeling lucky that you didn't have to spend any more money on it and did not gamble family finances, get a new car, and hope you don't see someone like me driving yours down the road with a **** eating grin because he fixed it for 300 bucks.

Long live the king!

You can fix it or replace it yourself.

 

Charlie wins the writing award for his post on the D2 Experience.