Ihave beeen working on my son's 93 range rover classic . He had run it hot back last Oct on the way back from Land Between thA Lakes on I-65 here in Alabama. we towed it back in (on a rollback) . a waterpump belt had gotten loose and jumped off the tension ideler pulley ( boy what a little thing caused a big problem. Blown head gasket. we reworked the heads and had them milled put it all back together and cranked it back up . motor had knocking sound .Later I pulled the pan started ckecking the rod bearings from front to back, as i went further back the bearings looked worse, but crank looks great !! I priced new rod bearings and as you know they are 3 to 4 times the price of normal parts. so while waiting on the extra money i got to thinking about the legend of this motor . i always heard it was copied or purchased from gm so i've been told. who knows? but i went to auto zone and asked for buick rod bearings (1963 skylark v8 215c.i.) and compared them and were very very close so i purchased 2 and installed them but had finished wanted to here from someone who may have a little input on the subject

 

You are correct, Land Rover bought the cast rights from GM and from that the 3.9L was born, the stories you heard are not just a rumor, they are true

 

I had a Rover 3.5 L, and later a 3.9 L classic RRover. During engine rebuild, I installed Buick 215 main and rod bearing inserts with no problem, and put around 100,000 miles on those Buick bearing inserts. If you know what you are doing, and/or do the research, you will see that many of the engine parts between the Buick and Rover are same, until Rover "advanced" the engine to point that most parts are of slightly different size than Buick. I think that the hydraulic valve lifters, and other parts in the valve train are same as Buick, even up through the 4.6 L. Rover.

 

Forgot to mention that my Rover classic was a 1991. Many Rover guys will try to tell you that the Rover main/rod bearing inserts are made of superior metal, over the original Buick ones. Trust me, as proven by my experience mentioned above, that is all a bunch of bunk; based on emotion and nothing else! The Buick bearings I put in, were the cheapest ones from J.C. Whitney, and, again, I had no problems at all, running them for around 100,000 miles before trading off the classic for a newer Discovery I liked much more.

 

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