Hi All
I've been thinking of how to get more power from my 2.5 petrol fender.
How easy or hard would it be to fit a turbo and would the engine take it?
Cheers
I suspect you will largely be in uncharted territory here.
But the diesel LR engines (including the Tdi) originate from the same block and crank.
However I don't know enough about the 2.5P to know how tough it is, or even what CR it runs.
In theory yes you should be able to turbocharge it and run a lowish boost pressure on it without really needing to lower the CR. There are many modern cars that can run turbo or supercharged applications with CR's over 10:1
If you wanted big boost, then you'd need to lower your static CR.
You could go for a rear mount turbo setup, Google STS turbo's to give you an idea how they are located and work.
Or if the exhaust ports line up, you might be able to use 2.5 TD or Tdi bits in terms of exhaust manifold.
Is the 2.5P injection or carb??? If carb you'd need to decide if you want a blow through or a suck through setup.
If EFI then you'd want some way of controlling the fueling, even if by a 3rd party ECU setup.
Not sure what gains you'd see, but as a percentage of the current performance it should in theory be a noticeable increase.
More obvious routes to more power would be a Tdi swap with a couple of tweeks to the injector pump.
V8's are fine, not sure on your current mpg, but fuel consumption isn't a strong point for V8's.
Last up, if turbo power appeals, then how about a 2.0 litre Turbo?
The Mpi Defenders/Disco's used the 2.0 Rover T-Series engine, think they had 136hp, so more powerful than even a Defender Td5, although they did lack low end torque. But what is important here is, all the bits are available to mount them up to a R380/Lt-77 (forget which).
In some Rover cars the same engine was used with a turbo and made 197hp and a shed load of torque. Still lacking punch at very low rpms I admit, but very strong mid and top end.
There's no reason why you couldn't fit one of these to your Landy. If you changed the diff gears to 4.7:1 it'd solve most of the low end grunt issue too as it'd keep you in the mid rpms more than the low rpms.
Sadly the Rover engine is made of chocolate though, so if you want more than 200hp from it you'll need to upgrade the rods and pistons. But no reason an engine like this couldn't be made to out perform a 4.6 RV8 and weigh less doing it.