Lola is a 1973 Land Rover Santana Series IIa I imported from Spain in Nov 2022. She had undergone a mild cosmetic restoration before making the trip across the Atlantic to Maryland. She came with that powerhouse of an engine, the venerable Land Rover 10J 2.25 diesel that generated a whopping 62 horsepower. A few road tests told me what I already knew, that this Rover was not made for highway travel. She topped out around 46 MPH & sounded like she might explode doing it.
Lola is going to be my daily driver, so I started looking for what engine / gearboxes I could swap in to get better highway results. Boy did I go down the rabbit hole! So many options. 200TDI, 300TDI, Rover V8, Mercedes OM17, LS & even electric. Each came with it pros & cons. At the end of the day I chose the Rover 4.0 V8 with an R380 gearbox & an LT230 transfer case. The Rover V8 is based on the GM Buick V8 215 & produces 190 HP. More than enough for what I’m looking for. Parts are readily available & they are common enough that they wouldn’t break my budget.
I managed to find a Disco 1 manual with a 4.0 engine that had just been “rebuilt.” The jury is still out on how “rebuilt” it is, but the price was right, so I grabbed it.
At that point I started thinking about what else I could do to make Lola safer & more comfortable. The first order of business needed to be brakes. The drums on a series were just not meant to handle to power of a V8, so I would need to upgrade them to discs. While I was at it, I wanted to upgrade the leaf springs to coils suspension. After doing the research, I came to the conclusion that I was in for a TON for custom fabrication to make it work. I also wanted power steering, so that was a factor what I decided next.
My friend Rover Bill mentioned that it might be easier to just get an RRC LWB donor vehicle & use the chassis & running gear. I was sold. It seemed at lot easier to transfer the Series IIa body to another working chassis with all the upgrades I wanted, than to try to make them work on a 50 year-old Series chassis.
Of course, this turned a 1 monthish project into a whole lot more.
I was able to source a 94 RRC LWB donor vehicle through Will Tillery in Virginia, and started the work of stripping the RRC down to the chassis & running gear. The process if dismantling goes a lot slower when you’re trying to carefully preserve the parts I was removing for future use or sale in the Rover Revival store.
As I started to dismantle Lola I started to find areas l that needed attention where corners had been cut on the restoration. Poorly repaired footwells & doors & galvanic corrosion. No plan ever survives first contact.
Next week, I'll start prepping the RRC chassis for blasting and working on welding the modifications I'll need to make the Series body fit.