Another Day Another V8

Alcohol is a terrible substance, it makes you do outrageous things that seem quite sensible while under it's influence. Worse than that  when combined with Facebook marketplace, alcohol could, in my opinion, one day result in the total downfall of civilisation. I recently came to this conclusion when browsing said on line shopping venue whilst under the influence of some lager upon which I was conducting an in depth qualitative analysis. In my defence the object of my desire was ridiculously cheap and very close - Just about 15 miles away at RAF Coningsby. This tempting trinket to which I refer was a complete 4.0 Rover v8 engine from a low mileage 2000 model Land Rover Defender.

I messaged the owner, a very nice man who was happy to take my money and was also willing to get the engine out of the vehicle once he became confident that I wasn't just wasting his time. Malc was willing to lend me the Boston Bowl Racing team transporter as an ideal sledgehammer with which to crack this particular transportational nut so everything was set. The deal was done, a tiny amount of money for an absolutely massive engine, it even had the Bosch ECU with it, which to be fair was worth nearly what I paid for the whole package. It had the engine loom, all the injection system, starter motor, a/c compressor, alternator, fan, the coil packs, everything I need except for a couple of relays and an immobiliser bypass - more on that later.

Getting it on the truck was a breeze, the seller had a mate there, the engine was already on a lift, these RAF boys are strong lads and had no trouble swinging the lift round and sliding the stabilising legs under the bed of the transporter. I had the foresight to take bits of wood and lots of ratchet straps with me, they had already thought of the wooden block stabiliser solution though. It all went very smoothly and we left the historic RAF base about 20 minutes after we arrived there. The journey home was uneventful except that the fish and chip shop we intended to purchase our evening meal from was shut. That was annoying as I had taken a big detour to avoid having to reverse the truck in a busy street. Oh well, never mind, I'll go back and put their windows through later.

It was quite late when we got back and dinner had to be cooked so I decided to leave the engine on the truck until the morning, it wasn't going to come to any harm there. Getting it off was a bit of a challenge as I didn't have access to an engine lift - I had sold mine because there was no way I was ever going to need it again. Git. Anyway I used my Dutchman's purchase thing to pull the pallet to the back of the truck then pushed it down the ramps. A long length of 4 x 2 acted as a lever, I lifted each side of the pallet as Mrs pulled the ramps out of the way, it worked splendidly and only took 1/2 an hour from beginning to coffee and biscuits. 

The reality has sunk in now and the reason for getting the engine in the first place has gone. My motor was smoking and I thought it was knackered. The weird thing was sometimes it would smoke and other times it wouldn't, there was neither rhyme nor reason until I connected up my oil pressure gauge. I thought I was hallucinating at first when the gauge went right round and was pinned against the stop at 180 PSI. Then I realised what was happening, the pressure relief valve was sticking. I took it out, cleaned it, slid it back in and the pressure went back to a more sensible 55 psi - that's a good healthy figure for one of these engines, maybe still a little high. No matter, the important thing was there wasn't the slightest hint of smoke even when I revved it's little nuts off. At tickover I am seeing about 20 psi when hot, the warning light comes on at 7 psi so I have plenty of pressure - no worries at all that it might now be too low. I now have no need to change the bloody thing. I was convinced it was burning oil from worn bores or badly fitting rings, I had put new rings in it and honed the bores but it was, I thought, the only place that much oil could be getting in to create the massive clouds of blue smoke I was sometimes seeing. The fact that it was intermittent was weird, now I know why.

So I now have another engine that technically I don't need BUT- it has an extra 500cc at 4 litres instead of 3.5. As standard it has a ton more torque across the range and an extra 40 odd bhp, my 3.5 has been modded though so there's maybe only 20 BHP between them now. If, however, I do the sensible thing and put a hot cam in it, do a bit of head work and run it off a tuneable ECU then I could be as much as 70 BHP up on the standard 3.5. It also has an air conditioning compressor fitted. Hmmmm. I'm not going to do anything for now other than to ponder my options, of which there are many. These engines are really solid and take well to increased power, you can add many, many horses without having to strengthen cranks and the such like. And they do look rather good with a supercharger sat on top. Just sayin'.