swapping for a bmw engine?

Hi Mark

The P38 Rangie has a strait 6 2.5 TD BMW lump don't know if its the same unit that you've spied, probably not but a BMW engine in a land rover is not unheard of.

Peter

BMW 2.8 petrol was a standard fit in South African 90's I believe. Don't know what state of tune it was in.

South African 110's had a 6-Cyl BMW engine fitted, but I don't know what flavour.

Richard

Actually this was fitted to both the 110's and 90's. It was reprofiled a touch to bring the torque down the rev range a little and I think they did some fiddling with the oil pick up to operate at angles.

Personally I would try to keep things as standard as possible. I recently did a Nissan LD28 into serIII R6 conversion and frankly the engine is the least of your worries. You are looking at adaptor plates, possibly diff ratio changes, almost certainly a new radiator and lots of hoses, and various other bits that may well need to made up by an engineering shop.

Just my tu'pence Regards Stephen

I am not sure of the BMW motor designation but is was the 2.8 six as fitted to the 328 BMW of fairly recent vintage.

Regards Stephen

I've got a scan of an article from the July 2001 issue of LRO, which mentions a BMW 2.5TD engine fitted to a 90:

I think to do this conversion using 'off the shelf' parts, you'd use either the Range Rover P38A manual bellhousing or parts from the South African 2.8i Petrol Defender, both of which used the R380 manual gearbox.

Seeing as the Range Rovers are far more plentiful in this country, that would be the route I'd go :o)

I'm not sure if the standard Defender 300Tdi or Td5 R380 has the same input shaft as the RR Diesel R380 though, or if a Defender LT77 of some type would be compatible with the BMW bellhousing and the engine.

You'd have quite a bit of fabrication work to do with engine mounts and the cooling pack, but if you can get access to or photos of the 2.8 in the Defender it would definitely give you a very good start.

Not sure about insurance, it's obviously more powerful but it may not necessarily make a big difference, depending on your insurer. It might be worth ringing up and asking them, pointing out that the 2.5 diesel was fitted to the Range Rover and so is a Land Rover factory engine...

Hope this makes sense, can you tell I looked at this at some stage? :o)

Martin

So Peter Seddon was, like

It may be a similar engine, but I'd be worried whether it had the torque to shift a 2 tonne LR off the line. Last thing you'd want in a 110 is a powerful but revvy lump. Ignition mapping, cam etc could all be wrong. I'd bite the bullet and get the 2.5 n/a fixed - slogging, stress-free motoring, if a little slow.

Upon reflection I'm going to stick with what I have and make it as good as I can, it's an old high miler so it can be improved.

Unless my recently late father was richer than I think in which case I fancy transplanting a tuned 300tdi and an auto-box...

Regards. Mark.(AKA, Mr.Nice.)