1963 IIa V8 Race Rover

[John Boy]

My wife and I had decided to build a different kind of rally car this year, we normally race a couple of BMW's and a classic Mini. This time we would build a race truck for a special type of rally, one called The Road to Mandalay. http://www.endurorally.com/pages/road-to-mandalay

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Found with four flat 4x4 tires.

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I bought this truck with the intentions of cutting the front of the frame off, and attaching my Mazda B2600 front and rear differential to complete the bottom end of the truck. Then just add the body with the Mazda seats and presto, one 4x4 with two wheel option and modern parts.

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And so began the process of hauling this, as I thought, wreck back to Victory for some open heart surgery.

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On the way home from up island, I ran into some Rover club members who asked about my find and invited me to join this web forum.

[John Boy]

Once home a call to the forum membership netted me a top from Alberta that made the IIa look quite good, just look past the rust... :lol:

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Three tires managed to hold air, the drivers blew apart under the addition of fresh air.

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Under the tear down, it quickly became evident that something was amiss, the frame was in ridiculously good condition.

[John Boy]

With the back box of the Rover removed, I could see this was going to result in a plan B.. :shock:

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Every place I jammed my knife, I hit fresh metal, with what looked like factory paint still intact. The frame is iron and not the galvanized I was expecting.

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I found that as the tear down continued, I could no longer bring myself to cutting this frame as was originally planned.

[John Boy]

Tear down of any vehicle is a little like Christmas, or the box of chocolates, you just never know what your going to get, until you get it.

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In fact, rust was something I look forward too, I like a challenge. This was turning out to be quite the disappointment :roll: ...

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At one point, I thought of going to Canadian Tire and buying a beach ball, I had the sand for it. A huge pile from the Rover created a small dune at the garage door.. :wink:

[John Boy]

So with everything off and exposed, Plan B was to find a Rover drive train for the race.
The forum was a good start, and at first, I resisted the idea of a V8. The diesel was a complete non starter, the acquisition of fuel in this remote part of the world would best be served with good old fashion gas.

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So the plan now is to take the drive train as complete as possible from the donor Discovery 3.9 GEM, and wedge it into a hapless little IIa. Then race the tires off the little guy.... :twisted:

[oldgravy]

This should be fun!

[franko]

Sounds like a fun build, best of luck.

[John Boy]

So... with the frame exposed, I have primed and then rock guarded the frame, I work in small sections, making sure the frame is good. Then when everything looks fine, I prime. After a big enough area is primed, I then rock guard, this prevents me from repeating areas, and being overwhelmed by the task.

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The process is slow, but rewarding...

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The completed frame, sent outside and the Discovery is brought in..

[John Boy]

I decided to by a lottery ticket this weekend, I find sitting down now quite a challenge, what with the horse shoes placed firmly up my backside. I had not expected to find the V8 to be in good or even acceptable condition, a rebuild was eminent. So imagine my surprise to find the V8 had been freshly rebuilt, Hone marks are still fresh, bearings show no wear, tolerances are great.

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This has lead me to believe I either have no sense of humour, or I have no ability to understand the written word. Allow me to explain. I have read the Forums of several Rover sites, and was made to believe that these vehicles are consistently a challenge, both to maintain and repair. I am stupefied at the ease this project has presented so far, so I have no ability to understand the written words at several Rover sites, or my sense of British humour is lacking. I blame this on the realization that my father is German, and my mother is British, and we all know that Germans have no sense of Ha ha, and that British women are even worse of than German men.

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So with the fear of chaos from a Monty Python style prank waiting in the wings for me, I find it best now not to press my luck any further and offer some sort of appeasement to the gods of Land Rovers. As such I decided today to drop the transmission on my knee cap, both causing great discomfort and rewarding the Gods of Land Rover with a pound of flesh. I will be taking a bit of time off the build... :wink:

[John Boy]

While I sit on my backside, I do have a few questions. Is there a resource that describes the challenges I will face? Radiator needed, wiring issues, Drive train glitches, etc? I have found a few sites that say Rover V8's can be done, but little info on how. Is there a schismatic of say... a defender V8?

[John Boy]

Ahhh... There is that Monty Python moment I was looking for. I returned the 88 to the garage, which is actually 86 inches from centre hub to centre hub, so.... yup...there's that... and noticed the previous owners hanging of the leaf springs. They are correct on one side and wrong on the other, I am researching to see which side is right. This pattern gave the previous owner a 50/50 chance of being sort of right :lol:

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The front of the frame is the only real rust I have to deal with at the moment :mrgreen:

[red90]

Is the right spring broken or is there an inverted shackle? Shackles should be at the rear on a Land Rover.

[John Boy]

Yes King Kong, one of the shackles is backwards. I'm guessing this must have made for an interesting driving experience, lets hope the previous owner never actually paid someone to set this up, I would want my money back...

So with only a sore knee cap (I once had my entire spine ripped out, went to work the next day and never complained once. I did need to keep a raging stiffy though as my shoulders needed propping up) I proceeded to place the drive train into the 88 frame as a mock up. It is not set to correct hight or location, but just in to see where if any problems I will find.

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My goal is to keep the IIa as original as possible, should anyone in the future want to return this once proud Rover to its original condition. With that goal in mind, I am now trying to determine just how to mount this drive train in place with minimal impact. Having some of the mounting points on the block and transmission close to the original IIa frame points is my next puzzle.

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The final drive shaft might be ...Ludicrously.. Ridiculously... Idiotically.. short, I would just remind the reader that this is a rally car build, not a rock crawler build. There is a need for speed on gravel and old tarmac roads, with the occasional incident of me clearly driving to fast and skidding of the road into a swamp or bush, where the access to four wheel drive will save my bacon, allowing escape from a bad situation and making me look, for all intensive purposes, like a hero, totally prepared to concur Asia... All hail me... :twisted:

[John Boy]

The battery box will have to go, so I will have to find some clever way of reusing it in the build, for any future space alien Archaeologist intent or restoring this Rover to pre world war III condition.

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I can see now that the gear mechanism for the Auto trans will need to be placed close to the bulkhead, and the high/low will be between the seats near a park brake. Obviously next to a coffee holder, placed in proximity of a USB port, my microwave oven and a small sink with hot and cold running water...

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Then there is the front end, thinking I can just make the 3.9 GEM air cooled was my first thought. I wish not to place a Defender front end on this IIa, that would defeat the build, but I am at a bit of a loss at the moment. Then there is also the issue of steering, that's important in a race.. :lol: Lighting is handy in the dark, so there is a need for head lights... It might be helpful to know how fast and how far I have travelled, so a speedo needs to be considered. I could ask the navigator to tie knots in a string and drag a rock to gage distance, or use the stars for distance and speed... The mind boggles... :drunken:

[Rambler]

While it's a chevy V6 and not a Rover V8, the attached series of youtube videos may prove insightful in how the guy from NS made this all fit on an original Series Land Rover. He kept the front end (non defender look), but did forego leaf springs for air suspension :?

[RamblerRob]

actually I think he kept the parabolics but used air bags from range rover suspension to keep them from flattening, or maybe i misinterpreted what he was doing

[DrRangelove]

^^ air bags on the rear leafs as spring helpers for towing. Pretty cool set up.

Quick question to the OP - what are the brakes like on the disco and do you need them? I may be interested in them and a few other parts if you're willing to let them go.

Chèers
Dave

[John Boy]

Thanks Judge Dredd for the video link, It was both informative and painful to watch. At least 6 episodes dedicated to the same repetitive problems, but sometimes talking problems to death prevents them from happening... :roll: I was impressed at the level of math he used to determine proper geometry, that's something you don't see everyday. The finished product was really neat, I thought the air ride was way cool. I think I might use air shocks on my build, but will maintain the leafs. So today I pulled the front and rear differentials off and have begun doing the numbers for the Discovery differentials to be used, the first thing I noted was the bump stop plates on the Discovery are in the same location as the original IIa bump stop plates. So add the spring plates to the Discovery differential, cut off the excess coil stuff, keep the torsion bar stuff and I should be good to go. This will give me disk brakes... bonus..

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The Discovery differential is 3 inches wider than the stock IIa, so a wider stanz is also a bonus for racing.

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So the frame is now destine to be returned to the great out doors, and the Discovery is next to be attacked...

[John Boy]

Quick update, the transmission cross beam was chopped off, I have decided to move it back the few inches needed so that it can be reused in the build. That will both satisfy the Gods of Land Rover by keeping it as much original as possible, and appeal to any future builder of similar projects and their respective budgets. With the Discovery frame being 25 inches wide ID, and the IIa being 25 inches wide ID, I will simply reuse the Discovery motor mounts... because Rover knows what they are doing.... right?

[John Boy]

Well... the island 4x4 guys stopped by the house today to see if they can help with fitting the leaf springs for the discovery differentials, it sounds positive. All things being equal, this build has been pretty straight forward so far, when the frame goes into their shop for work, I will be back on my BMW E3 build. In the mean time, its back to the wife's 450 SL. :(

[John Boy]

Still waiting on the 4x4 spring guys... but in the mean time, the wife's 450 SL is now purple... She's a girl...

[John Boy]

Finally have leads on, now the D2 differentials are next. Yawn.... takes so long. :|

[John Boy]

going into month 3, still waiting on difs being bolted to leafs. :bounce:

[John Boy]

Finally!!!!!!!!!! Frame is home, and I have restarted the build. :D

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With Rover rims and races style tires on, the bottom end is starting to take shape.

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The differentials are 3 inches wider than stock, so the final stanz should be aggressive.

[John Boy]

It breaks my heart to have to say, but I have had to cut the original cross members off and use the parts from the D!, so much for staying original, but the bits just refused to line up. :(