Stage 1 V8

Greetings all -

I am a new poster here as I just discovered this forum and I am hoping to buy myself a Stage One soon.

I used to own a Series III 88". I sold it now and want to replace it with a pickup model Land Rover with better road manners. Living in the USA means I have to stay 25 years and older - so the Stage One is my logical choice.

I browsed through the board and saw topics on changing the gear ratios in the transfer box and installing various over drives. Has any one tried to swap the geat box for the newer 5-speed variety?

Also - does anyone have any ideas on the costs of the transfer box gear swaps? Is that a DIY job?

Thanks for the help!!

Welcome firemanshort,have not tried to fit a five speed in a stage one but you might need to make up new mounting brakets on chassis for it , plus you would have to make new floor pans, gearbox tunnel and rear propshaft i would presume.

To change the transfer gear's in the standard LT95 is fairly straightforward i did mine with the box in situ, the best bet is to find an old two door rangie box and use the transfer gear's out of that.

As reguard's fitting an overdrive again this is a straight forward diy job, i would say simpler than changing the transfer gears, depends what you want i used to live in a town and never benifitted from having an overdrive as as soon as i had engaged it it was time to take it out again thats why i went for the uprated transfer box option.

Basil

If you swap the gears in the xfer box - does that affect your speedo readings or is the speedo cable on the output side of the xfer like on the regular series unit?

Good question that, i honestly don't know, my speedo is out because i run bigger tyre's than standard but i don.t know if my transfer box throw's it out by more.

I know that if you fit n overdrive that this has know effect on the speedo.

Basil

The drive gear for the speedo is downstream from the transfer gears, so changing transfer ratios will not affect the speedo accuracy. The only thing that will affect it is tyre sizes, or changing the ratio of the axle differentials.

Richard

Firemanshort
Hi David
Good to see you on the forum.
Regards Huzey

Richard - in your experiences at your growing shop - have you ever swapped out an R380 or other 5 speed into a Stage One?

Hi David. I think I have seen you on other forums.
I was going to put an lt77 in mine but decided against it due to the weakness of the box, I am also using a larger engine. I have just bout a zf auto so am going to use that. It will be some time before it is installed though.

firemanshort wrote:Richard - in your experiences at your growing shop - have you ever swapped out an R380 or other 5 speed into a Stage One?

I haven't tried it yet. The main problem is that the LT95 has its own integral transfer box, whereas every other LR gearbox uses the LT230 transfer box. I don't know how the key dimensions of the LT95 transfer box compare to the LT230 but I doubt they are the same.

At a guess I would say the simplest conversion would be the LT85 'Santana' box as this has a nice long bellhousing like an LT95, so you probably don't need to move the engine mounts. The LT85 replaced the LT95 used in early 110 V8s, and I would guess that LR changed as few parts as possible. The R380 (V8 version) is a couple of inches shorter than the LT85 - best used if you are converting a 4-cyl 90 or 110 to V8 power. It bolts straight on to the LT230 transfer box in place of an LT77, and uses the same transmission tunnel and floor panels. Biggest problem is finding one - they were only available in later V8 Discoveries, and most of these had the autobox. (I don't know whether very late V8 Defenders (1993 onwards) got the R380 - the parts catalogue lists an R380 box for a V8 Defender but I have never seen one for real.)

I currently have a couple of spare gearboxes in the workshop - an LT95 and an LT77/LT230. I will try to compare the transfer box dimensions and see what if anything I can learn.

Richard

I had a look at the two gearboxes today.

Prop flanges - the rear flange is the same stud pattern on both boxes, so a Stage 1 rear prop will bolt straight up to an LT230 transfer box. However the front flange on the LT230 is the same stud pattern as the rear, so the double jointed Stage 1 front prop will not fit. 2 options - either use a standard single jointed front prop (possibly from a 4-cylinder Defender), or change the flange for one from a Discovery 2, which I believe has the same double-jointed prop design as the Stage 1.

Dimensions - the most important one is the distance between the front and rear flanges, which I have measured (using rather crude techniques) at 485mm for an LT95, 500mm for an LT230. The difference is small enough that the sliding splines on the propshafts should cope with it. The distance from the rear prop flange to the centre of the gearbox mounts is about 40mm more on an LT230 than an LT95, so the gearbox mount plates will need to be modified or new ones fabricated. But all in all, I reckon an LT85 5-speed box could be made to fit a Stage 1. You would also need the seatbox, floor panels and transmission tunnel from a 5-speed V8 Defender, although I am told that these components are exactly the same on the later 300TDi, which are probably easier to find in breakers than a V8.

If I ever have an LT85 box to spare, I might be tempted to try this conversion myself.

Richard

Thanks for following up on the LT85 gearbox measurements.

I wrote a note off to the Lads and LEGS. They gave me this information:

The popular ratio that makes the appreciable difference to your vehicle is .9962:1. The gear and gasket kit for the transfer box is £150.00 (plus vat where applicable.) UK carrier £10.00. (plus vat)

What is the stock transfer case hi range gear ratio for the Stage One?

-Firemanshort

From memory, standard Stage 1 ratio is 1.33:1 or thereabouts. Even the ordinary Rangie ratio (1.13:1) makes a huge difference. I suspect that with the 0.9962 transfer gears it will probably be overgeared unless you fit a larger engine.

Richard

Hello guys,

I'm still comntemplating this conversion myself and in the meantime found this site with nice info to identificate the different gear-pairs: http://www.vislandrovers.nl/extra/revis ... nel.php#v7

Still thninking about wether to upgrade to a 3.5 9.75CR or a to a more expensive 3.9 9.35. I'll be running LPG 99% of the time so the higher CR would make for a more efficient engine.
Anybody ever went to a 10.5 CR?

I have heard of people using 10.5:1 when running 100% LPG. IIRC some of the P6's ran at 10.5:1 and you needed 5 star petrol to run them which had an octane rating of 100. I guess 98 octane shell optimax might just do it. Although I read that there is company called bayford thrust that has started selling 99.7 octane 4 star but its rare as rocking horse crap.

Jon

you can run very high octain so long as you have old school dizzy that you can mess with to get the timeing right!!!