Head Removal

[scapistron]

Few tips I can drop in here for anyone else this deep. First, make sure you have plenty of rust reformer primer and black paint. Engine out is a great opportunity to get in there and wire brush any surface rust, rinse with carb cleaner, prime, and paint.

With the engine out access to the upper control arm bolts is fantastic. Upper control arms are probably fine, but you'll probably be paying for an alignment in the near future anyway.

Lastly, the oil cooler for the SC V8 fits on the SC V6, so if you think more cooling is better go for it.

I'm jealous of anyone who is this deep with the AC disconnected. I replaced the motor leaving the AC intact, major regrets.

 

[M32H32IS]

Dang Joe, thank you for sharing. This is awesome!

 

[Land Rover Joe]

Dang Joe, thank you for sharing. This is awesome!

You are most welcome @M32H32IS !

Keep us posted on how things proceed.

Also, @scapistron has some excellent points and allude to my observation that this is more about the "journey" and not the destination.

He is right that you need to have lots of paint and cleaning supplies readily available. I had bought tons (like 6 or 7 different packages) of brush kits for cleaning (plastic, steel, and brash) thinking I had gone completely overboard.

No chance - I should have bought more.... that is how much cleaning is going on to prep the frame / body / engine or whatever to put some rust converter and fresh paint on. So that is hours (and hours) of work and probably here the difference between pro mechanics and what we are doing: a pro will hang a part in the amount of time specified in the workshop manual. We will take 10 times that to learn how to do it, get the right tools and stuff assembled, clean and refresh everything while working through the job, and then find new problems and figure out how to fix those too.

I have "before" and "after" photos for a couple of examples but two things I personally like to attack (and I am a perfectionist) are paint and wiring looms. I like to freshen up the paint and clean out corrosion as well as tape up and protect all the wiring looms and sometimes use new conduit (for the engine bay that is largely high temp / resistant tape and conduit). It doesn't look like much when you have all the stuff out (and is very expensive when you add it all up) but I think it looks so much better and helps to protection the truck.

Just some random thoughts to pile on to @scapistron and his very accurate and true advice.

 

[Land Rover Joe]

Few tips I can drop in here for anyone else this deep. First, make sure you have plenty of rust reformer primer and black paint. Engine out is a great opportunity to get in there and wire brush any surface rust, rinse with carb cleaner, prime, and paint.

With the engine out access to the upper control arm bolts is fantastic. Upper control arms are probably fine, but you'll probably be paying for an alignment in the near future anyway.

Lastly, the oil cooler for the SC V8 fits on the SC V6, so if you think more cooling is better go for it.

I'm jealous of anyone who is this deep with the AC disconnected. I replaced the motor leaving the AC intact, major regrets.

Great advice and we have indeed been going crazy with the brushes, solvents, rust converter, and gloss black paint.

What happened with your AC?

We will be putting it all back together in a couple weeks..........................