Somone may have said it, but test the block before doing too much work to that engine. A cracked block ended the life of my first engine.

Depending on what you want to spend a rebuilt motor with tophatted liners, sport cams and gas flowed headers from Turner Engineering would be an enormous upgrade over stock. I don't have the gas flowed headers, but my Turner short block with sport cams is much better than the original engine.

 

Well, thats why I want to try to get it running before I go dumping a lot of money in it. I bought the truck with the intention of swapping a Chevy LS motor in, but if I can get the motor running for cheap, thats what I'm gonna do. Do you have any suggestions for checking the soundness of the block?

I'm not really wild about the idea of a rebuilt Rover engine, unless it is top-hatted and those are kinda pricey. A Chevy swap will be a lot of hassle, but a really cheap way to pick up 100 hp and ft-lbs while becoming considerably more reliable.

Right now, I just want to figure out the bare minimum I need to do to analyze if the Rover motor is salvageable or scrap. Whatever I do, the gas needs to be addressed. So I'm going to tackle gas and battery first, then hunt down the coolant leaks and see if it will crank.

Once I get it to where it will move under its own power, then I'm going to rebuild the driveshaft and tackle Disco Mike's 60k maintenance list.

 

The most amazing thing about this thread and project is that you are married to a woman who allowed you to have the truck sitting in the garage for six months already with not much having happened with it.

 

It's technically hers, but I see us splitting use when I am done. Plus I get to do all of the driving while I'm "troubleshooting". I anticipate a lot of troubleshooting. I would have done some to it, but right now the "project car" warchest is pretty much empty. She cleaned the interior, I cleaned under the hood and part of the exterior (started pouring right after I started washing). Other than messing around with the battery, thats about all I've done so far. I hope to get more done this winter.

 

Something also to calculate into cost with RV8 vs LS is gas cost. The LS will cost you nearly half of the Rover V8 in gas when comparing 12-14 on premium to 16-20 on regular with the LS.

I'm with mln, I hope to have a wife like yours some day.

 

Any ideas on what to do about the gas? Siphon good enough?

 

IT'S ALIVE!

And in other news... whoever said the "flood recovery mode" will keep it for starting was full of ****. No disrespect intended. I went from "hmm... it sounds like its gonna start" to revving to 4000 RPM pretty quick. So that probably wasn't the best way to start it after 2 years of sitting.

It was squealing pretty loud, so I shut it off immediately. Sounded like belts, but its hard to diagnose in 2 seconds. Then I restarted again, thinking it did the flood recovery mode wrong. Nope, it started right back up. This time I didn't rev the engine though. Also shut it off quickly.

It puked a little water from the coolant bottle overflow. I recently topped it off with distilled water and some of it came out of the over flow. Its sitting at a higher level than before I started it? Weird. Also I got some really nasty brown/rust colored drops from the (US) drivers side, just aft of the front wheel centerline. I couldn't see anything with coolant in that vicinity. The SAI valves thingys were pretty much directly overhead. I'm guessing on that one, the only thing I know about SAI is alot of carb / older cars used to have it. So, pretty much nothing. Not sure what was actually leaking.

I'm really suprised it started, with 2 year old gas. I'm also suprised I didn't see anything from the "catastrophic coolant leak" I was expecting. Maybe the system didn't get fully pressurized? I'm not sure. Any suggestions? I might try to go change the oil.I don't have a filter though.. I bought oil, just no a filter, not sure how I overlooked that.

Right now I trying to locate my copy of the RAVE to look for the proper jacking points, since there is nothing immediately obvious.

EDIT: I found the jacking points in the owners manual.

 

So after I changed the oil and added a few gallons of high test. When I changed the oil. the first bit out of the motor was brown water. Not good. Coolant in the oil. So I guess that means head gasket or cracked block? I don't know how to determine which one it is. Its not billowing white smoke.

I went for a brief ride. The squeal disappears at idle, but comes back as soon as you hit the gas. I thought I was taking a video of my first drive around the neighborhood, but turns out I wasn't. I did take a video after the second drive, just to hear the engine. It sounds like there is some kind of knock.


After I shut it down there was a hiss from the upper part of the radiator (drivers side), so maybe I have a leak?


And after it cooled off I took of the coolant overflow bottle cap. The bottle was now empty. So either I pushed it all into the engine, or it leaks after the engine warms up. I say the last part because it doesn't seem to leak when cold. Either way, this engine seems pretty hosed but I would really like the opinions of the group.

At least I can move it in and out of the garage without pushing. Another plus is the transfer case works when the truck is rolling, it just doesn't want to play when sitting still.

 

Where those videos helpful?

 

So I just checked the oil and it looked good. If the water is getting in the oil, its not ALL going in there, or it would have been higher than the notches b

Now I'm researching and running the numbers on rebuilt vs LS conversion. TBH, its not just about numbers. A LS powered disco would be cool as hell.