Just read this. Thought of you.

 

He has a dipstick so that's a hydraulic zf. Yikes. He's a worse mechanic than me!

 

Okay well I have a few things to prove or disprove this idea.

Complete ecu bcu tcu instrument cluster and wiring harness

Engine on a stand that requires no electronics (not really my first choice but it is there). The advantage of this engine for testing is that it has a manual fuel cutoff and sealed oil system. Or I could just pull the tube out of the gas can or put my hand over the intake to kill it. It has its own starter.

Spare upper intake/throttle body with tps and a spare crank sensor

Spare flywheel with the little doodle that says hello to the cps

Zf4hp24 on a pallet. With bell housing and torque converter. I also have the shifter assembly

Fuse box

New battery

Specifics for marrying transmission input to crank (part number and source for pilot bushing) but not the flywheel to flex plate.

Source for pre built adapter that I can probably just borrow and duplicate for shipping

Complete donor flywheel

Sufficient confidence and funding.

Does this spark any thoughts, ideas, or emotions?

What I don't have is whatever cable ends in an obdii port, a throttle cable, decent fabrication skills, or a spare ignition assembly, but presumably I can buy them.

 

Okay I found some sites that explained the concept of parallel ECUs. That's what would make a modern engine work in a rover.

You just power the new engine ECU and splice the rover ECU onto existing sensors as necessary to make it happy, but don't use its outputs to injectors and coils. The rover may throw codes if injectors and coils are not used and, if so, use resistors.

I might have to have a tandem TPS. A crank sensor will generally work spliced, from what I have read.

Or use an older engine that doesn't need electronics and graft on a crank sensor and throttle sebsor.

This is all very doable if I am not trying to control the new engine with the rover ECU. Hardest part at this point seems to be the flywheel to flex plate connection and having the right size flywheel, all of which marks4x4 has figured out.

 

Just following up on my initial question. I've talked with some Australians and lots of Americans, and even one guy who put an LS3 (turbocharged) in his Disco II. It is faster than a Porsche Cayenne but has so many mods it might as well be a Cayenne. It is a very, very nice build, as it should be.

So the true answer, focusing on the transmission, is that as far as engine sensors the zf4hp24/22 e needs signals passed from the crank position sensor and throttle position sensor (through the ECU to the transmission controller). That's it. The transmission will shift with all other engine sensors disconnected. In other words, you don't have to have a cam sensor, water temp, oil sender, knock sensors, injectors, coils, idle air, inertia switch, maf or purge and you will get normal shifts. From the engine, the transmission just wants RPMs and torque. Torque can be managed by a throttle position sensor grafted to either a wired throttle or a drive by wire accelerator, and crank can be managed by a 60-2 trigger wheel on the main pulley with the land rover sensor dangled over it. I have had all of the unnecessary sensors disconnected at one time or another (but not all at the same time), so I can somewhat confirm this in practice.

Transmission output to the engine, physical adaptation, strength and stall speed are limiting factors for a swap. The transmission signals the ECU to to retard timing for shifts, without which you get harsh shifts and a bunch of dash lights.

I know of a few successful swaps on the forums, including the recent Chevy v8 one, which uses all rover electronics and no Chevy electronics. It looks to me like you just decide whether you want to use a Chevy transmission (in which case you use the Chevy ECU and transmission controller, and have the rover ECU reprogrammed to manual, and run the ignition leads to the Chevy ECU) or you keep the rover transmission as described above. It should work for any engine that has a torque and rpm curve that is close to a rover v8 and will physically fit. Then it is just a matter of adapting at the front or the back of the transmission, assuming you keep the LT230 in place.

If you use a Chevy ECU, a tuner has to delete reliance in a BCU (security input) to allow engine starting.

Another limitation of a swap, I guess, is that the rover controllers try to retard timing when you pass 5800 RPMs.

Finally, if you toss the rover transmission you could just use a manual (nv4500 or 3550 are two common examples) or hydraulically controlled automatic and reprogram the rover ECU to manual.

Of course, the devil is in the details and the finances but from a macro perspective the rover automatic transmission should not prevent a swap.

And to stave off criticism that I have received privately, or invite more I suppose, and be brutally honest, I think the rover v8 is a compromise engine that is underpowered, gas guzzling, over complicated, insufficiently cooled, has thrown out the best parts of a Buick 215, and has been burdened with overly fickle electronics in the interest of wringing the most power to weight from a smallish engine of a bygone Era. It got terrible gas mileage and was underpowered even by the standards when it was released. The reason it is so light is because it has to be; it is feeble in every metric and cannot be overtaxed. Comparing the torque, horsepower, and reliability with price and gas mileage results in a sad joke. I further believe that the only reason it is the "small block Chevy of Europe" is that they've not gotten enough small block Chevys and, in contrast to Americans, have lots of cheap rover parts to play with. When I talk to Australians about Chevrolet and Ford engines and transmissions, they say things like "over built" and "industrial". So, anyway, that's what I think. But my main objections are that parts and service, and rebuilt engines, are far too expensive, the oil pump is absurd, and some of the layout choices (like the coils behind the intake) just make no sense and must have been designed by an accountant. But then, while I try and basically never give up, I admit that I am a bad mechanic, as empirically proved in most of my posts.