All right gents, hope you've all been well. I've been in and out since Frank bit the dust, but I plan to be back again for a while.

No, this is not the powerplant going into the old black beast. This is for the little lady's '01 model. I'll follow this build as well I can, as I have in the past. Pictures and the like. Expect this to be slow going, I have a full time job now, but I will be and already have e been making some progress.

Here's the general idea. 5.3l iron block truck engine backed by a 4l60e as cheaply as possible, but with daily driver reliability and (relative) ease of assembly, while retaining 4wd. I don't want to swap axles, I don't want to make the factory computers talk, I don't want to adapt the factory transfer case. I've already got a donor truck for the motor as well as the transmission purchased. I've got other parts on the way, and still need to order a couple others.

Anyway, I'm at work so I'll keep this brief, but here's your teaser. I'll post some more later.

Alex

 

All right, throwing a little more info in now. The question of engine swap has always been do you adapt or swap the transmission/transfer case? If you swap both, what are your options to address driveshaft angle? The D2, of course, is passengers side drop and most swap options, especially with modern power plants, are driver's side drop. Dodge's seem to be the common exception (not sure about the modern Dodge trucks, but the square bodies are) to driver's/passengers side drop. So, that brings us to where I'm at now.

A couple days ago I made a deal in an 80s model Dodge I wanted mostly for the transmission and axles. I got to thinking and saw the transfer case was a 6 bolt pattern and passengers side drop. You can get a 6 bolt tailhousing for a 4l60, but the spline count is different (21 spline for the Dodge, 27 spline for the 4l60). However! The transfer case is an NP208, and you can get a 27 spline input for a 208, and that's exactly what I'm doing. I've ordered the tailhousing, the input gear, and a new chain for the tcase.

I should have the parts in the next few days. I've gotta finish up my car trailer before I can get the Disco over to my place, and I'm going to borrow a tow dolly for that Dodge. Before long I can start getting things assembled, more parts ordered, and hopefully get the Disco torn apart. I'll post updates as I go along.

Now, let's be straight. If you all want an easy swap where all the factory goodies work, this is not it. There's gonna be a lot of fabrication work and custom parts, and say goodbye to ABS, HDC, ACE, etc. If you want all that, go check out what ACEngineer is doing. He's starting up production on some really nice kits. I talked to him quite a bit early on both on design and maybe about being a test kit recipient, but it ended up outside my price range. I can't recommend that route strongly enough if you want something that really works like factory.

With all that said, this is my back woods route using what I've got I'll throw pictures up as I get things together, and if anyone has any recommendations or questions please post them up.

To finish off, here's a picture of the rig this is all going in. Not much to it right now, but it'll get there. I present.... Bride of Frankenstein.

 

Thanks for the shoutout Alex! Let me know when you get a little further along. This is a prime candidate for the standalone Discovery controller I am working on now.

 

Cool project Alex!

 

Cool, brother! I'll probably be slow moving, but we'll see what we can figure out later on.

 

Thanks collie!

I also picked up some new (to us) meats yesterday. 275/65r18s with about half tread left, for free. That comes out to about a 32x11 which should look nice and beefy on this rig. I'm going to take the lift off of my Disco and swap it over to hers, and re-do mine when I get it running again. I've heard tales of possible oil pan clearance issues without a lift, and that's a good enough excuse for me..

 

Ok, so we've been a long time coming at this, but finally a bit of progress (and a change of plans) has been made.

I finally transported to donor truck from my wife's family farm to our house. I'll hopefully get tearing into that soon. May have to wait till the weather dries/warms up some, but at least it's accessible.

Now, the change of plans. Originally this swap was going to happen on her disco, but we've decided to continue diagnosis on her disco and repair it as is. The LS swap will now be going into my disco as soon as I get some garage space to work on it, unless I decide to skip the garage space once weather warms up. A concrete pad at least would be nice, however.

The donor truck isn't much to look at. It's been a farm/logging truck for years. Literally not a good body panel on the truck, the frame's been broken and repaired multiple times, and the transmission is thrashed. Motor runs strong though, and that's all I need.

 

It's starting to warm up where I'm at, so I should start making some progress in the next month or so. Planning on a compression test in the next week or so, might start disconnecting and labeling parts of the harness. I've got to get my trailer finished before I can get the motor out so I can get my dad's tractor over to my house to lift it out. I've also been getting some more new parts; nice spark plug wires, an intake, a couple electric fans for the radiator, etc.

One other idea I've been chewing on is this. From what ACEngineer has told me is that the truck manifolds won't fit between the frame rails, but maybe they'll fit in the engine bay... upside down?

TURBO?

I've had a turbo off some old Cummins sitting in my building for a while. It needs rebuilt, but I've been debating on what project I wanted to use it on. Starting to think the Disco might be the recipient. 500 hp Land Rover? No promises, I'm just spitballing here, but this might be the route I go. If I do though, that will probably push me into fully committing to the axle swap. The stock axles are questionable even with a stock 5.3. I also have a set of 799 heads that should match a boosted application well. Throw a cam in it at the same time?

As all builds do, this one is growing. We'll see where it lands.

 

Well I did the compression test this evening. 125 psi on the one cylinder I tested. Not glowing, but not terrible. When I get the engine out I'll pop the heads off and see what we're looking at as far as ring ridge and go from there. Maybe I'll throw some rings in it.

That said, I did get it to idle on carb cleaner. Not picking fuel up out of the tank, but that's no problem. I even popped it into gear and it wanted to move. Flat tire and couldn't give it any gas put a stop to that, but it wanted to move in forward and reverse. Trans might be good after all.

Anywho, I'll start taking things apart in the coming days. More to come.

 

My 2 cents: I would consider planning out if you want to axle swap before you start to put the rest of the drivetrain together. If you swapped the axles, you could potentially use a center rear and driver’s side front, which would give you more / better transfer case options. As you discussed a bit above, aside from the LT230, the Borg Warner 1339 and maybe some Toyota stuff, few modern-ish transfer boxes are setup for the passenger side drop for both front and rear. It’s just not common with US-built stuff.

You mention using the NP208, I may be mistaken, but I think that's a center rear output. I wonder if the lateral offset of the driveshaft between the center output of the NP208 and the passenger drop rear axle would cause vibration issues given the fairly short length. Some offset would probably be fine (some vehicles have had a lateral offset output/diff from the factory I believe), but I would definitely measure and see if the angle on the driveshaft with a lift would be too extreme to connect to the rear diff. If it is, you may have your answer on doing the axle swap.