Hello Bombers! I'm Jesse and I daily drive my 1988 Range Rover Classic. It's mostly stock, has a 2" body lift and 235-85/16 (31" I think) Duratracs, and an oil pressure gauge. Plus a sweet Bluetooth stereo with amp, 6x9's in the cargo shelf and a 10" sub, and a CB radio.


Well actually I daily drove it right up until I overheated it and blew a headgasket in the 3.5 L V8, due to a reman'd radiator that was partially blocked. Sucks because it blew the day before my wedding and we were going to take it to Colorado for our honeymoon. The driving was much more pleasant in my 2010 Ford Flex (not to mention the fact I could maintain interstate speeds in the altitude haha), but I was really looking forward to playing around on backroads up in the mountains in the Rover.


The motor was getting tired anyway at 110k miles, oil analysis indicated some bearing problems and it had been using water since I bought it 4 years and 15k miles ago. And the rear main seal had just started leaking which sucks because other than a tiny drip that would show up once in a while from the original radiator it didn't leak ANYTHING up until that seal went.


So with the V8 needing a headgasket and rear main, and my fondness of the old Mercedes I5 diesels, I started looking into a swap. The 3.5L all-aluminum V8 makes 150hp which gets the 4200 lb Rover to 60 in 15 seconds downhill and with a tailwind. And it drinks gas, 12 mph highway and I've had a tank or 2 under 10 mpg after wheeling it all day long. The Mercedes turbodiesel was factory 125, but diesel horsepower is different, and that 125 moves a massive 300SD down the interstate surprisingly well. Ultimately I'll be upgrading the turbo (looking at a 9CM hy35w--modeling after Dieselboy's 300SD) and playing with and/or upgrading the injection pump, but for now I'm aiming to have it swapped and running by mid-October when out TN Land Rover group makes its annual outing. The current plan is to adapt the OM to the land rover 4HP22 slushbox, but that may change when I get further into the project.


I picked up a 1982 300SD for $350 that had been sitting in a dudes yard for 7 years with 2 windows out. Tried and tried to get it started at the PO's house to no avail, so I winched that big low slung sucker up on a trailer with a come-along. Needless to say I had my 9000 lb winch mounted on the trailer the next day. And of course as soon as I got home and plugged in the block heater and put in a freshly charged battery it fires right up and I drive it off the trailer. Pulled the motor and trans and a bunch of other goodies then carried it to the scrapper.


That's where it sits now, I'll start pulling the V8 out of the rover next time I'm home for a weekend and the saga will continue!