Discovery I 5-speed

Scott Brady

Founder
As I recall, the early DI's and Defenders had an issue with the 5-speed, which was upgraded. My question is do you know what year the upgrade happened? Or, how can you determine if the transmission has been upgraded?

Please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe the Disco's had 5-speeds up until 1996.
 

gjackson

FRGS
Discos had a 5-speed as an option through 96 or 97. Not many sold in that config though. They had the R380 5-speed, same one for the D-90s. The D110 originally came with an LT-77 (also 5 speed but with reverse next to 1st) and there are a lot of people who upgraded their 110s to the R380. I think there may have been a recal on the 110s for the R380 upgrade, but I don't remember. They did tend to go out pretty quickly.

In general the LT77 is considered a very tough transmission by LR standards, and I think the problems may have been related to the shift pattern being so different from anything else sold in the US.

You can tell the R380 from the LT77 by shift pattern. If reverse is below 5th, then it's an R380. If reverse is next to 1st then it's an LT77.

I'm not aware of any problems with the Disco R380, but that doesn't mean there wasn't one. For the TD5 R380 Land Rover did some updates to account for the increased torque, so newer (post 2000) R380s are better.

You lookin at one?

cheers
 
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gjackson

FRGS
Yep. Would be a cool project. Drop a TD5 into it (or a 300 or a 2.7 powerstroke) and make a sweet exp. rig!

cheers
 

iguana4x4

Wiki_4x4
Gearbox problems and solutions

The LT77 (Reverse by 1st gear) gearboxes had a design flaw in the output shaft that goes to the transfer case, then the transfer case input gear had the same flaw, the thing is, that these parts are not properly lubricated and the splines wear faster than normal. The R380 (Reverse under 5th gear) gearboxes had a revised desing with drilled input gear and some different seals to avoid this problem.

An easy way to identify the problem is you will hear a clunk in the transmission when accelerating or under hard breaking.

*Don't confuse with the rear suspension arm ball joint clunk, the ball joint clunk will come from the rear.*

Solutions:
I had to replace the transmission output shaft and t-case input gear with the revised parts in my Defender 90 (parts cost was about U$500), the splines were really worn so this was my only option.
If you have an LT77 in your vehicle and you don't have the clunk yet, you can buy a kit which will replace some seals and gaskets, these will divert oil to the problem area reducing wear of the splines.
 

Jonathan Hanson

Supporting Sponsor
That East Coast Rovers Disco almost looks like a . . .gulp . . . bargain. Don't they normally charge near that just for the Tdi conversion?
 

gjackson

FRGS
I'm not sure what they are charging for a tdi conversion these days. I think they stopped doing them for a while when there was a legality question. Don't know if they got that resolved. They do good work from what I've seen, but are very proud of it!

cheers
 

Jonathan Hanson

Supporting Sponsor
A friend of mine wants to drop one of the International 2.8L Tdi engines in his first generation Range Rover. I was surprised to find out from this site:

http://www.landyonline.co.za/workshop/international28lhs.html

. . .that the 300 Tdi has a design life of only 120,000 miles. I assume that is some conservative industry standard, but still . . .!

The design life of the 2.8L is listed at 300,000 kilometers or a bit over 180,000 miles. 135 horsepower and 277 lb/ft of torque (@1400 rpm!). Nice.

The 2.8L has a forged crank, sompared to a cast crank on the 300 Tdi. That might explain the difference in design life, although I think of forged cranks as enhancing strength rather than longetivity.
 

gjackson

FRGS
Yeah, a 2.8 will be what I replace the 300 with when I need to. Nice engine! Guy in our rover club put one into his discovery. Guess it worked out well except that the shift points on the transmission were all messed up!


cheers
 

Dmarchand

Adventurer
That's because he stuck with the V8 ZF governor and torque converter.

I'm in the midst swapping those pieces out on my ZF. I've been driving the 2.8 though for 2 plus years now and it's a nice engine. I kept the V8 ZF as well to save some cost and largely because nobody had experience at the time with what could be done around the ZF and a higher torque engine like the 2.8. Now that more people have done the swap, their is more trial and error knowledge it seems.

Graham, their is discussion/news that the 2.8 production may be discontinued by 2009 though. Parts will be available for 10 years after.
 

gjackson

FRGS
I had heard that. Not sure how long LR is going to keep the 300 going, but since they are now providing that engine for military use, it could be a while.

cheers
 

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