Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Hi All,
Im currently trying to fit a gen3 in to my county, I just got the conversion plate to fit a rover gearbox up to it but have found the flywheel/ring gear doesnt have enough clearance, after speaking to marks 4x4 adapters mark told me that they are working on a kit but they wouldnt have anything done untill sometime next year, he suggested i could grind out the bellhousing and adapter plate to make some more clearance but then i would still need to wait for the flywheel they are doing to suit it, which once again wont be till next year. So basically that has screwed my plans of using my LT95 unless someone else can suggest other options.

After talking to marks 4x4 adapters though i wonder how the hell people can afford to do these swaps, he basically made a few suggestions all of which were going to cost me several thousand dollars, even there simple setup for the fuel system was going to cost me over a thousand dollars, similar bits could be had for under 500 if i buy them indivually. I guess he thought i was a wealthy land cruiser driver with no concearn for money!!

At the moment my only real option it seems is to buy a t700 and an adapter kit to suit that to the lt230 transfercase,.. once again marks suggested i go for a t400 as they only make a kit of that, which is stupidly expensive again and out of my price range as well as the price of a t400.....

this is not looking good at the moment. certainly not cheap or simple, well it looks like i will have a 350 conversion plate and mounts for sale now.

Mick.

Hi,

Something amiss there. I have a 350 that was bolted up to the front of an LT 95. I'm sure it used a Chev flywheel with the standard Borg and Beck rangie clutch.

The Chev bolted up using an adaptor plate and the bellhousing had to be ground away to fit a Chev starter. If I still have the flywheel you can have it, but it is missing a couple of teeth.

Cloughy will know the answer here.

cheers, DL

it's been a few years now, but I did a 350 conversion with an old range rover.
I got an adaptor plate from Marks together with a brass spiggot bush. The engine then bolted straight up to the bellhousing with the only modification required being a bit of cutting for the starter motor fitment. Engine mounts remained original.

I do recall having a problem with the flywheel (the replacement engine originally was mounted to an auto) and the one I obtained had to be machined to fit over the crank.

It was a carby engine and the original fuel pump was able to keep up with the flow requirements of the new engine.

eventually pi$$ed it off cause the cast iron lump was too heavy for the vehicle.

This is the gen3 LS1, not the old cast iron 350, they use a 12in clutch and the ring gear is huge, it doesnt fit in the 350 adapter, otherwise it would all bolt together minus 1 bolt in the adapter plate, which is what i had been told it should do, but it seems theres no flywheel to suit(that i know of) it for now.

It seems Marks have been on this conversion for a while now (12 months that i know of, was supposed to be done early this year ), why not use a LT95/ T700 combo, i used this when i fitted a gen3 to my old 110 (never finished it, scrapped the idea). There are other options than Marks!

This is the gen3 LS1, not the old cast iron 350, they use a 12in clutch and the ring gear is huge, it doesnt fit in the 350 adapter, otherwise it would all bolt together minus 1 bolt in the adapter plate, which is what i had been told it should do, but it seems theres no flywheel to suit(that i know of) it for now.

Dunno what the bolt pattern on the crank is relative to earlier GM motors, but is it possible to retrofit a flywheel off an earlier motor? Maybe there is something with the right bolt pattern, but using smaller bolts/centre locating hole that you could get the centre or bolt holes machined out in?

Depending on who you know in various trades, you could maybe even select a flywheel with the right diameter, get the bolt holes welded up (if you know a good enough welder) and then redrill it to the right pattern. Problem is you then need a starter motor to suit.... Although, maybe you could do the above to your current rover V8 flywheel? Again, just throwing ideas, I haven't looked at the components in question, and have no idea how they may or may not line up.

I reckon though you should be able to sort some kind of solution out for considerably less than the cost of changing transmissions....

If I were you I'd be going the th700/4l60 to lt230 conversion. There are a few of the rock crawling guys that do adaptors for this. I'm not sure how the rover gear box would handle the power of a gen 3 (excluding the lt-95). I've never owned a manual but I've not heard much about them being tough boxes either.

John Davis has done a number of conversions fitting LS1 in rangie. But I don't know what gearbox he used - unlikely to be LT95.

Bush65 wrote:John Davis has done a number of conversions fitting LS1 in rangie. But I don't know what gearbox he used - unlikely to be LT95.

I remember an advert from eons ago for john davis that had small print about gen 3 conversions for p38 style rangies. I emailed them for info but they never got back to me. I assume they used a beefed up ZF as at the time the cost of gen 3's was far higher than the present costs, so tranny costs wouldn't have been much of a concern I imagine.

I rang them 2 years ago about this, and they said they had done one, but weren't interested in doing it again or giving me any info or help with this.

Hi,

If I could buy a clone of my POS for 5g tomorrow I would. The question is really what the difference is between a Gen 3 / 350 SBC / LS1 and what the options really are. When this is sorted it should be stuck.

DL

DL wrote:Hi,

If I could buy a clone of my POS for 5g tomorrow I would. The question is really what the difference is between a Gen 3 / 350 SBC / LS1 and what the options really are. When this is sorted it should be stuck.

DL

A 350SBC can be a gen 3 and an LS1. Gen 3 is the architecture (Generation III) name of the engine series. The older SBC's are gen 2's and 1's though rarely referred to as this. Both the gen 2 and 1 were very similar to one another. Technically the Gen 3 is the 2nd newest architecture used in the small block chevs (latest being gen IV family comprising ls2, L98 etc). LS1 is the particular model of motor ie its a 3rd generation small block chev with a displacement of 5.7L.

Differences between the Gen III and Gen I and II engines are vast. I cant say for certain but many say that the bell housing bolt pattern is identical except the gen III motors have one less bolt. As has been said there may be clutch differences too. You could write a book about the differences (not that I've read one... ).

Ive had a gen 3 in my defender 110 for coming up 5 years

Mine is bolted up to a torque flite 727 and we had the same issue

We just ground out the bell housing, the adaptor plate didnt need grinding in my case

Its been raced almost 40,000kms and that part of the conversion hasnt been an issue at all

Cost = about $4 in angle grinding discs

If you want a smaller flywheel have you tried the macleod stuff I think Rocket Industries is the Oz agent they have heaps of stuff for Gen3s also drag places and commodore hot up places, the drag guys have to put approved flywheels in and sometimes they change size. You will need to work out how to fit the starter motor though

Thinking of all this Im glad I just ground it out!

how much meat did that leave in the bellhousing after you ground it out? the lt95 might just be a little to small to grind out....

Hi,

Don't know how quotes work, but Stuee had some valuable info and said:
'Differences between the Gen III and Gen I and II engines are vast. '

I was trying to say that there would still be a lot of compatible parts, including flywheels maybe.

cheers, DL

I ground out the bottom section about 400mm along the edge

There is a hole at the bottom where its ground out completely about 100mm long

I ground out just enough to make it fit

Well after closer inspection and fitting the adaptor to the back of the block looks like the grind out is the way to go tho i think sending it off to the mate's workplace and having the adaptor and bellhousing enlarged on a mill is the best way to go rather than do it with a grinder ....

As for the clutch i think redrilling and tapping the original flywheel to take the landrover pressure plate may be the go as the standard gen3 pressure plate will require to much of the bell housing to be removed and i cant see any dramas with fitting the smaller clutch the std 10in rover clutch with some slight mods will be fine and have plenty of bite to hold up to the extra HP its just going to take a bit more R and D to make it all work right