REMOVING THE ENGINES
Our Range Rover project gets underway as Trevor Cuthbert removes the engines from the donor and project vehicles
o provide a better engine for our French-sourced, left-hand drive project vehicle, we had located a complete Range Rover LSE with a 4.2-litre V8 engine, which would also give us the parts we needed to convert to right-hand drive.
But first, we needed to hear its engine running before we considered removing it. With fresh fuel in the tank and a fresh battery, it should have been a breeze to start, but it wasn’t. A new key fob battery was fitted in case the immobilisation system was not being de-activated, but to no avail. An auto-electrician was then brought in, and spent most of the day on it, returning the next day after consulting wiring diagrams, giving up at lunchtime having failed to remedy the problem. Given that the LSE had been laid up for a long time, we finally threw in the towel and searched for an alternative donor.
TA better donor
Another friend, Andrew Boyd, had the ideal candidate for sale – a 1990 Range Rover with a professionally tuned 3.9-litre V8 that was in excellent mechanical condition, but condemned an MOT failure due to structural corrosion beyond reasonable repair. A deal was agreed, and the 3.9 was brought home from County Donegal on the back of the trailer.
Having consulted with Damon Oorloff at Kingsley Cars near Oxford, it was clear that the project would have to use a larger proportion of the donor vehicle than simply the engine and dash. Kingsley Cars is a bespoke Range Rover builder producing high-end Range Rovers sourced from all over the world. The majority of these builds require right-hand drive conversion, and Damon was able to tell me that the wiring loom from a left-hand drive car simply would not work in a right-hand drive car.
So, from the 3.9-litre donor Range Rover, we would need the complete wiring loom, fuel system, dashboard and steering system, front axle, and the engine with its exhaust system. The job would now involve almost completely stripping the donor vehicle, as well as our project.