series 3 ambulance

[kizz81]

hello,
its looking like i will be joing this area of the forum soon me and a friend are looking at buying a old series three ambulacne and making abit of a project from it to make it a camper sort of thing
it'll have the petrol engine in it which we are think of taking out and fitting the 2 n quarter diesel which he has lying around in his shed,
is it possible to fit a turbo to this? will the engine take it?

we are looking at buying a fairly crappy one thats been stood around for about 10 years, because it'll be cheap and we can then fix it up using wha we have to hopefully make somthing quite cool

any one have any ideas what we could do with it ?

cheers kieran

[carbore]

My immediate reaction is that if you are sticking in a new engine why not go for something better like a TDi. Although obviously it money etc it would seem a shame to spend all the time on an engine swap and then turboing it and then the interior etc only to have something a "bit" better.

Also im fairly certain that the 2 1/4 desiel is not well regarded and the petrol is better desiel economy is offset by desiel price now and the petrol drives better, although I have no first hand experience its just a comment from someone wo is ex army and had a desiel as his "company car".

[Rich_P]

The 2.25 Diesel is a good engine if you know how to use it (i.e. it's not a car engine, it's an agricultural/industrial engine).  Although I do not know how good it is for pulling such a big bodied vehicle along.  It is slower than the 2.25 petrol, but it makes up for this in overall reliability (no dizzy or carb to worry about) but when they do go wrong they tend to go wrong proper.  With current fuel prices, over 10,000 miles there would be a difference of about £1,000-1,2000 in fuel costs with the petrol vs diesel.

Turbocharging it would be a tad silly.  It's to my understanding that the engine lacks the necessary oilways internally to survive being turbocharged to any decent level, and then there's the oil supply to the turbocharger...

I must say at times I wish I had a 2.25 diesel rather than a 2.25 petrol. 

[Bob Ajob]

The 2.25 diesel won't take a turbo, there is also a fair bit of messing around converting a petrol engined Land Rover into a Diesel Land Rover, such as the fuel tank for example, petrols don't have the fuel return that diesel's need, the electrics needed for glow plugs aren't there etc etc.

If you are looking at making the ambulance into a camper, consider keeping the petrol, but going LPG with it, plenty of space in an ambulance for a large LPG tank. You could also do other things to beef up the engine and give it more go, I should let James.Harwood fill in a bit here -poke-.
I guess it also depends on what you fancy doing with the camper, just using it for shows etc, or overlanding with it - your usage may decide the engine choice for you, and there are plenty of 200 tdi engines floating around if you are thinking diesel.

More than anything, go for it, and enjoy it :)

[kizz81]

hello,
thanks for the great advice,

weve been looking at a couple of differant possibilities of what to do with it,
we reckon we can buy it, strip and do nessacery repairs then kit it out with what we need mainly to make it comfy for camping but possibly do somthing like the landy rally in it
for under £300, thats our target, all of the work we will do our selves,
we have a 2 n quarter diesel sat around and a salsbury axle so that'll be a big money saver
mates dad is offering to weld up a roll cage for it, would cost about £50 ( wouldnt be to protect against rolling it as it wont be an off-roader ) just to bolt extras to like my flashing leds and some spot lights and camping lights
we will aim to respray it for around about £30 with some tracter paint, probley in bright orange or somthing simular

should be a good expiriance if nothing else!!

first stage is see how much money i can attempt to earn by working at auldi or somwhere like   :| it's tough enough keeping pinky ( my 90 ) on the road while paying for uni and the associated partys  :lol:
its all good fun

cheers kieran

[kizz81]

hmm a project that will have to wait now as i seem to have just brought a range rover,

hopefully do the ambulance in a couple of years 

thanks for all the help

kieran

[Rich_P]

You big gayer.

[kizz81]

hello,
cheers for that  :lol:
i quite prefered the comfort and reliability after the last couple of weeks with my 90,

we will be doing the ambulance but not for a couple of years now

cheers kieran ( the big gayer )