Defender Sunroofs

Had this problem on a mates genuine landrover sunroof on his SIII. I need to sort it on my Defender110 asap. He dismantled it all and used Mastic to seal the sunroof-to-roof seal and Bingo! Bobs your uncle! Etc...a slight smear of vaseline to the seal that makes contact with the glass was done for good measure.

I couldn't trace my leak, so I cured mine by fitting a large roof rack and then boarded the rack with 3/4" blockboard ! :-)

Cheers

Peter

1990 110 CSW (Reggie the Veggie) 1973 Hillman Imp 1964 Rover P4 110 1959 Austin A40 Farina (started for the first time today!)

Thanks, sounds a bit extreme, but followed your advice now waiting to see if it worked. Thanks.

Gerald

In article , puffernutter writes

Peter,

Now Christmas is out of the way, I'm looking at getting Marge running on veggie. I was thinking about a 5 gal. or smaller Jerry can for priming diesel, but hadn't got much further. Then I noticed your sig.

Is "Reggie" a TD and running on pure veg oil? if so how've you done the conversion?

Any thoughts appreciated...

Regards,

Simonm.

Simon, firstly a Happy New Year

Reggie the Veggie!

Reggie is a 1990 2.5TD (19J engine)

So far Reggie is only a partial conversion (mainly through cost at the moment) and also dovetailing the veggie conversion in with other projects.

At the moment I only have a heat exchanger in the fuel line. The heat exchanger is simplicity itself, simply a piece of 15mm pipe soldered inside a length of 22mm pipe. There is one inlet and one outlet soldered at either end of the 22mm pipe for the fuel. The heat exchanger is then fitted in the heater hot water circuit. The 15mm copper fitted nicely in the existing hoses.

So at the moment Reggie is a "fair weather" conversion. As the viscosity of oil is much more than diesel, I am now using pure diesel I plan to go back to vegetable oil either when I perform the full conversion (or when it gets warmer!)

Over Christmas I fitted a diesel heater (I can't spell Ebersp...!) this needed a separate diesel supply. Through

I purchased a custom made 17l aluminium tank (£80) that sits behind my middle second row seat. It is externally vented so there is no smell in the cabin. At the moment that just feeds the diesel heater. However "veggie conversion phase 2" is to fit an electric pre-heater and a six port valve (what I would call the equivalent of a double pole double throw switch with no centre off!) The electric pre-heater (around £75) helps with the heating of the vegetable oil and reduces the time on diesel. The Pollack six port valve (around £50 from bio-tuning) allows me to start the engine on diesel and when the heater circuits have the oil warm enough, allows me to switch over to veggie on the fly. The electric valve is used to switch between veggie and diesel coming in, with the other port allowing you to direct the fuel overflow to the right tank (otherwise the veggie tank can start filling up with diesel or vice-versa)!

Just before you stop, (a minute or so) you switch back to diesel and purge the veggie out so you have a pure diesel start.

In the main I have bought my fuel from a local supplier

[duty paid] although there is no reason why pure vegetable oil purchased from a supermarket wouldn't work just as well, but I don't have personal experience of that ;-) However, if you do that (use supermarket vegetable oil) you should contact customs and excise and pay the duty ! I have not noticed and improvement (or worsening in performance) but as the conversion was done shortly after I bought Reggie and just after the boost diaphragm in the injector pump was replaced as was all 4 injectors. So I have no real yardstick to measure against (and indeed cannot tell if the veggie conversion had the effect of the new injectors or both!) However I can cruise comfortably at 70 on veggie, so I have no complaints!

I think that's all. If you have any questions, just holler!

By the way, we were running on veggie at the MOT and the tester told my wife that he wasn't even going to bother printing out the emissions result as there were no emissions!

Cheers

Peter

1990 110 CSW Reggie the Veggie 1973 Hillman Imp (no engine) 1964 Rover P4 110 (engine in bits) 1959 Austin A40 Farina (got the engine running on Jan 1st but no brakes!)

How about a heating coil in the veg tank as well ?

Eh ? There has to be something

Steve

...and what happens to the fuel pump ? Is that replaced with a gear pump in the oil tank ?

Not according to the printout!

In article , puffernutter writes

[loads of good stuff snipped]

Peter,

Many thanks for the detail - very helpful indeed.

Constructing a heater jacket per your design sounds very easy (Thanks to Father Christmas and a VAT-free day at Machine Mart, my new pillar drill should arrive on Friday :-). I'm thinking of drilling through the

15mm end-stops on a pair of 15-22 unequal Tees so that the 15mm slides straight through. Is that what you did, or did you just cut a bit of 15mm to fit inside? I was also wondering about using glow-plugs in the water jacket to provide 'instant' electrical heating, but this needs further thought...

Regarding completing the process, my intent is to have a

5 gal Jerry can for diesel, with a modified cap to draw off the fuel and vent to the outside. The only drawbacks I can see to this are the possibility of diesel dribbles when changing cans over, and possible fuss with construction/use regs. I like the idea of a solenoid valve for switchover too.

The engine itself probably needs a bit of work first too. She's done 170,000 (I think there's been one rebuild), and the cylinders need re-honing at least as there's a fair bit of blow-by ("they all do that, etc."). I'll use the opportunity to do big-end/little-end bearings too, and de-coke the head/lap the valves.

Assuming all that goes well...

Regards,

Simonm.

SpamTrapSeeSig wrote: The only drawbacks

Also sounds like its critical to stop the diesel pump ever running dry, ie no bubbles from the crossover.

Steve

Good point - an air separator might be necessary, but wouldn't be that awkward to do.

Regards,

Simonm.

Might be, given the viscosity of the veg oil.

Steve

Over here in Holland a pilot project started under the aegis of the Ministry (transport or environment, not sure, possibly both) to promote biofuels. A&G Land Rover Unlimited converts diesel engines to running on colza oil. They do two types of conversion: fully automatic switch between colza and diesel, on the fly as you say, a computer determines when and how much colza oil is added/used (EUR 3900 ie. GBP 2700); and maual switch (EUR 2500 ie. GBP 1700). So far and as far as I know, they converted a couple of Land Rovers, a Disco I 200TDi for example. Customs provides converts with the necessary (tax) paperwork. You have to install a tank (1000 l ie. 220 gallon) in your backyard (which the tank lorry can reach of course). A&G tells me they shortened the service interval, to be on the safe side, and have used oil samples examined by Mobil. Fuel ecomomy is up with colza oil, emissions are down, except for NOx. I'm seriously considering having my Disco 300TDi converted, but costs are a bit of a bother. Colza oil is about two thirds diesel here, costwise. Two guys are taking their converted Disco

200TDi to China. On Colza oil. All the way. I could give you the urls, but it's all in Dutch...

Found a website in English:

Richard