Tag Archives: upgrade

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July 5, 2013

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Landrover

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How do you spend the Extra Horsepower

Extra Horse power in land rover series…? you think I am crazy right..? I am sane and sober by all means, but yes, I am trying to squeeze few ponies power in dolly’s engine by adding SU carb instead of worn zenith and electronic ignition…

I hope I got few ponies already now, to squeze one more HP, I might as well decommission the current air filter and replace it with  high flowing air filter… with something like this…

KN filter for SU HS6 carburettor

Yes… that is KN filter, some says it built to last… let see how long it last in land rover series :)

I hope it will add half or one more ponies.. :), but the next question is, with the extra horses… how do you “spend” it…? there are few options I have in my mind…

  • Air condition,
  • On board air pump and
  • Power steering,

I finally decided to spend the horse power for Air conditioning as Jakarta is very hot and I frequently get stuck in Traffic jam… lot of choice on the air condition system and I just follow what ever the local garage suggestion on what brand to use…

Because I have plan to have double blower air condition and the Station wagon is big… we opt for bigger compressor as in below picture:

Sanden 505 VS 508

Both are Sanden Compressor, the above is the 505 type (smaller one) and the below is the bigger one 508 version…

And the local garage made all the necessary bracket and fitting and install it in Dolly engine..

Air condition Land Rover

Installing Air condition in series land rover

And this is when the new air compressor installed…

Sanden 508 compressor in Land rover

Sanden 508 compressor in Land rover series

And this is the Engine bay af ter everything installed…

Land rover engine bay

Here you can see the new air filter vs old air filter and new Aircon compressor

I still left the old non-functioning Air filter for two purposes:

  1. Just in case I will cross Sahara desert anytime soon.. I can connect it to the carburettor
  2. To hide the messy cable behind it (which it failed to hide it anyway :))

So that’s it for now… if you spend few extra horsepower with something interesting, please write it down below… Cheers

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May 12, 2013

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Landrover

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Everything About Tuning The 2.25 Petrol Engine – ACR, Turner & others perspective

engine2.25petrolWarning: Long article but worth it..! There are a lot of information about how we upgrade our old engine… some says.. : drop in the 2.5 cam, milled the head by 0.02 inch, ported and polish etc etc.. all is good advise but I read this discussion (or debate) with great interest and decided to put it here in case we need  reference lets start (I deleted conversation that are irrelevant), and unfortunately, I can not see the poster names unless it stated at the end of the post.

Someone: I think that these engines have a specified max rev limit of 4600. Though going over 4000 for anything short of a few seconds is probably not a good idea. My tachometer has the occasional misbeat but in no way does it wander like yours does. If its something to do with the ignition and not a bad connection it’ll show up on a vacuum guage as well, they’re cheap, easy to fit and very useful.

Roland (ACR): We set the Power Plus engine red line at 5200RPM this will give plenty of safety margin as they will run to 5700 on an intermittent basis with no problems. There is little to be gained by running much over 4800 as the power falls off rapidly over this point. However if you enjoy using the power e.g. racing rush hour traffic, off road competition etc it is useful to be able to run past maximum power so that the engine drops into a more favourable part of the power band on changing up a gear as the spacing between gear ratios on the 4 speed box is large. Regarding oil temperature the red line is around 250 however Mobil 1 will work safely well beyond that . We would keep the 250 as the upper maximum it is very unlikely even desert temperatures will push the temperature this high.

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April 28, 2013

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Landrover

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Electronic ignition for land rover series

Another little weekend project…  this time,  installing Electronic Ignition distributor to replace point breaker (we Indonesian call it “Platina” ) distributor which already 30 years old … I have few problem with current stock distributor is:  the vacuum is not working properly (blocked) and also the wires, contact point seems no longer in top shape, might as well replace with the electronic one. For those who want to read a longer explanation on ignition system, you can read it here : http://www.jetav8r.com/Vision/Ignition/CDI.html

You may ask why do we want electronic distributor..? Well, many reasons actually… some of them are the following:

  1. Less moving  part hence minimal wear and tear hence better performance especially in high mileage car where wear tear affect timing and loss performance
  2. In point distributor, sparking at the points burns the contacts and wastes energy, Electronic ignition systems allow most of the available energy to reach the spark plug and improve combustion
  3. Better starting and smoother running
  4. No need to check or adjust and clean contact breakers
  5. No capacitor to fail or go weak
  6. More water resistant

Having said that… the perfectly set up (if both new) electronic and breaker point distribution show no significant difference in terms of performance. The disadvantage however, unlike point distributor, if it is fail, you can not fix it, have to replace the unit. Just for peace of mind, you can bring the electronic  “gut” for spare that will solve the only disadvantage of electronic distributor.

here is the picture of typical point distributor:

This is the electronic distributor

The following video showing the conversion from point distributor to electronic (5 minutes video).

Do I see or feel any improvement using this set up..? I will say yes.. :)

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April 20, 2013

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Landrover

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Killing few bugs in one strike – land rover series III – Starter motor upgrade

Few days ago I have to manually crank the engine of land rover series III, due to malfunction of the starter system… as I said earlier there are a lot things can go wrong, it is expected from vehicle with more than 30 years old. So I need to investigate few things:

  1. Key ignition works OK,
  2. Starter motor, So and So but it works
  3. Battery need to replace with newer one (but still have some power to crank the engine)
  4. Starter solenoid is not good
  5. Cables and negative ground is loose and rusted in few places

Few things failed at the same time will be very difficult to fix in short time or on the road, just to give illustration how the starter system in land rover

starter

Actually it is very straight forward… but it need big cables everywhere, because the current is quite big, cables from battery to soleniod to starter (big red cables) has to be able to handle 250 amps… . Can you imagine if the contact is loose, the cable will not deliver enough current to turn the starter motor, and the cables become hot (in fact I saw the rubber/ insulation get burned) especially near contact point.

This set up is using old technology, now I want to upgrade it to newer technology where the it will more efficient, simpler, less wear and tear and easier to maintain…. this following video is explaining what is the advantage and dis advantage of the three starter motor types… (6 minutes video), which I strongly sagest you to watch it before continue reading this article…

Of course I want the latest technology hence I opt for Hi Torque gear reduction type… and here is the set up:

hitorque starter  From the above diagram, seems that  it involved more cables than the original set up, however there are few benefits using this set up:

  1. The current to ignition key is much  smaller only 0.5 amps hence less likely to burn the cable inside the cabin (saver)
  2. There are additional relay which will handle higher current (30 amps instead of 250 amps), if the relay fail, it is very easy to replace. only less than 1 minute job (easier to maintain)
  3. Solenoid is still there but become one with the starter motor (simpler)
  4. If you watch the video, you will understand that the new starter motor will draw less amps and because it “pre engage” it will less likely damaging the flywheel
  5. I am also change the old cables on the ignition system with bigger and better cables

The actual comparing side to side with the old starter motor as as below

IMG-20130403-00781

So… that is the upgrade, and  I am pretty please with it… Now starting the engine is very pleasant is much smoother and easier… it works first time, any time and every time . Gives me smile when I turn the engine on. I may be will not need the manual crank handle anytime soon, but I keep it ready in its place just in case…

Is it the end of the story..? NO.. far from it, one thing that I remember from the school back then is… we need to know what is the route cause… and certainly this upgrade is not addressing the route cause on why the Landy suddenly stop in the middle of the road… without addressing the real problem, this upgrade will become useless.

So stay tune.. more on this later

Cost of upgrade : US$ 350