Engine Ancilliaries

With the engine fitted, the next stage was to continue with all the under-bonnet ancillaries.

The new radiator had been mounted in its frame with the intercooler, and the fan fixed to the rear. This assembly was lifted into position to check for clearance of all the pipe work, but an overlooked big problem immediately became apparent. The 200Tdi rad has its bottom hose connection on the right hand side, and with my side-by-side rad/intercooler positioning, this meant that the rad connection was immediately in front of the steering mechanism, fouling with any left steering input. The solution was to fit a 300Tdi rad, which has its bottom hose on the left side below the top hose connection. Apart from a baffle plate inside the left header tank to force the water flow through the core, rather than just straight down the header tank, it’s identical to the 200 rad and fit straight in.

In order to have the top brackets fit the tank, i had to install the bonnet slam panel, which in turn required the refitting of the bonnet/bull bar/winch assembly, which has the fabricated brackets for the bottoms of the slam panel’s diagonal braces. I can tell to that lifting a complete assembly of bumper, two tow jaws, winch, mounting, steel cable and fairlead is no mean feat – I had to lift one end onto a strong tool box and then lift the other end; I was only just able to lift the assembly a few inches off the ground to carry it to the vehicle.

This allowed me to start playing with all the air hoses and work out the best solution. In the end, I reused my 12J/19J air filter assembly on the modified mounting from the main vehicle rebuild, with the same connection to the snorkel, and the original manifold hose now connected to the turbo charger inlet. A combination of the donor Discovery and some TD5 pipes and hoses allowed a fairly neat connection of the intercooler, flowing into the intercooler at the bottom and out at the top as LR do on factory installations.

The oil cooler hoses had been offered up for measurement with the rad trial fit, and were extended to suit the new rad position. I inverted them so that the steel pipe with the large stagger is now at the top, since the new rad position relative to the engine is much higher than it was in the Discovery.

The radiator top hose connected up neatly with the removal of about 1″ from the rad end. The bottom hose was a bit trickier, using the SIII bottom hose to run from the water pump up above the chassis cross member, then a section of the Discovery bottom hose with the expansion tank tee-off, and a third section with a 90o bend to connect to the rad bottom. The joint nearest the water pump was made with a purpose made (£1.50) 2″ long, 1.5″ diameter length of aluminium tube from www.integerspin.co.uk (a Perkins Prima LR conversion specialist), while the joint near the radiator was made with a thermostatic fan switch housing from www.x-eng.co.uk . The fan will be activated automatically when the rad outlet temperature reaches 88oC, but will also have a dash switch to activate the fan manually.

The expansion tank has been a pig. The Defender bonnet has a strut on its right hand side, and this would foul the expansion tank when closed if I fitted the tank to the inner right wing, just behind the rad, where I had hoped. It also appeared that I wouldn’t be able to get the tank as high as required above the top of the rad even if I removed the bonnet strut. Eventually, I decided the only viable solution was to mount the tank in the same place it occupies on a Tdi Defender. This meant a bit of wing surgery, making up a new box to act as a mud shield that would allow the tank to sit much further outboard, just inside of the edge of the bonnet. I made this box from galvanised sheet steel, with bent flanges riveted along the edges for jointing. It is secured to the inner wing and wing top with aluminium angle extrusion and is surprisingly rigid. I won’t be standing on the wing top (not that I have ever done that in the past, anyway), but the wing is structurally sound, and I don’t think it has lost much strength. A fabricated steel bracket secures the inboard tank mount to the inner wing. The box will be painted with Schutz and the expansion tank refitted tomorrow.

That just leaves the wiring for the front lighting, fan and winch, plus the battery connections and split charger for tomorrow, and the exhaust for a drier day when I won’t have to lay in puddles underneath the vehicle.  I manged to fix the failed Kenlowe Hotstart the other day – the pump’s drive shaft was seized – so this will be refitted in the engine bay too.