Dez' 'fleet' thread. Another bl00dy transit!

More transit developments. Something that may well interest a few on here for various reasons.

The transit started being erratic/problematic electrically.

First it wouldn’t start in the mornings. I took this to be cold and damp effecting something. After a few hours of sun on it, it would start then go all day.
It spends a lot of time stood outside in all weathers so damp ingress was plausible.
It cut out in use twice, both in very wet conditions at the end of long journeys. This got me a bit twitchy but it started straight back up so wasn’t a major issue. I pulled the ECU and checked it was dry, and separated all the big multiples and rinsed them out with wd40, but it made no difference.

It also wouldn’t Rev til warmed up. If it wasn’t fully warmed up it would cut out over 1500-2000rpm. Again, this was easy to deal with if you weren’t in too much of a rush, and it pointed to it being the pedal.

It was totally erratic as to when and how it would do it. I drove to Derbyshire and back down the m1, it started right up, I drove an hour each way, and it was faultless. The next day I tried to go to Phil’s house 10 miles away, it took an hour to start it and it cut out 20-30 times on the way there. I left it running at his whilst we loaded up and it only cut out twice on the way back. But by this time I’d had enough.

The major issue to fixing it the conventional way was it stubbornly refuses to talk to any diagnostics. I’ve had it on 6 machines in my ownership and it only communicated with one of them, and then not fully. I said right at the start if it started doing any of the transit electrical sh1te they’re known for, it was getting manual pumped.

There are other people who have done this, there was even a guy sort of selling a conversion about 10 years ago but he totally disappeared. Any other Info was fairly scant, but from what that guy showed you on his YouTube vids and a few other Facebook comments, i figured I had enough to go on to have a crack.

First thing was buy a pump. This was slated as being a 300tdi Land Rover pump that you needed on the transit groups. but MonzaPhil of this parish pointed out 200 and 300 tdi manual pumps were the same, with later 300s actually being electronic anyway. Seeing as he breaks land rovers he supplied me with the pump, fittings, and half a pedal assembly.

Some general views of the pump. It’s in full Land Rover trim with the cable bracket and the land rover hub.





Don’t know what Landy the pedal is off, but I assume discovery? I wanted it as it has the correct throw to work with the pump, and I should also be able to use a stock cable. Obviously it’ll need some chopping up to fit, but that’s not hard.


I need a manual pedal as the transit are fly by wire. The pedal is entirely plastic, so not a whole load of use for adaptations. The big grey multi plug above it is what connects to the pedal. They’re known for being problematic, so much so Ford released an upgraded one.


First part is get a few things out the way. Bumper and grille off, Slam panel and rad out, then ancillaries stripped off the motor- vac pump, water pump and hoses, fan, water neck, thermostat hosing, inlet manifold, etc.


The pump is here, passenger side of the engine, under the (now removed) inlet manifold.


This water hose was one of the biggest pita bits to remove, as the jubilee was round the bottom, and it was seized.


With the timing cover off, you can see how the pump is driven. Only the pump and the cams driven off the chain, so fairly straightforward.


You have to take the cam sensor out to lock the flywheel/crank, it’s on top of the bellhousing behind the engine. 13mm drill bit down the hole.


This is the support bracket for the back of the pump. It’s a real sh1t to remove and you have to remove it totally otherwise you can’t get the pump out.


It bolts to the block here, behind the pump. Notice pump now removed!


Pump is then held on by 3 bolts behind the drive pulley. By this point I’ve locked off the cams and pump with a few 6mm drill bits and released the chain tensioner before removing the pulley.

OMG!!!

Following that upgrade route would not have been an option?

I mean apart from all the pump works You just started to describe (which would've absolutely overwhelmed me), You still need to find a way to mount that landy pedal, when there is currently probably nothing, not even space, to mount it to above the e-pedal?

The first part wasn’t too hard, as long as you’re skilled with a file.
Yes I could have used a mill or something, but engineering is about using what is appropriate and available, not ridiculously over-speccing things as people seem to think it has come to mean.

Those bolts are for clamping force only, all location is provided by the spigot, so super accurate machining is unnecessary. I mean as stock it uses a 9.2mm hole for a 8mm bolt, which should tell you everything about the accuracy we’re working to.

The transit pump has a metal compression gasket between it and the timing cover, which can be pryed off and laid on the new pump-


Allowing me to mark where the new holes need to be. They overlapped, so they could just be slotted rather than redrilled.


I had a nice new 5/16” file in the drawer, so it flew through this job.


Something like that.


And repeat.


All 3 only took me half an hour. Again, appropriate and available.

Step two seemed easy on the face of it, but was more convoluted to make sure you don’t end up losing your pump timing.
First you have to lock the Landy pump in the timed position so you can remove the hub. It has a boss on the pump body that you slide a drill bit through the slot in the hub and into the boss. The internet said it was 10mm, on mine it was actually 3/8”. So that’s the pump in the ‘timed’ position.

What you then need to do is lock the shaft, so you can remove the hub. To do this you slacken this bolt, remove this tab, then lock the bolt down again. The end of the bolt bears directly on the pump shaft, locking it up.


You then rattle off the big nut, and get the puller on the hub. They’re ‘kin tight so you will need a big puller and the big rattle gun.


One pump with hub removed. Two things to note- the now visible locking pin boss at the top there, and the fact the pump has a woodruff key slot, but they don’t use it, they rely solely on a friction fit. That’s why it’s important to lock the pump up before doing this as if you don’t you lose your timing and you need specialist tools to find and reset it.


The transit hub is then slid on and eyeball aligned before tightening. You can’t use the pin as the transit hub is 6mm and the pump is 3/8”. You could turn a sleeve to go in the pump body to step it down to 6mm, or widen the slot out to 3/8”, but it’s really not necessary. Just leave the pump locked with the bolt until you’ve refitted and timed it, you can still access it once fitted.


The pump then bolts up, with some longer bolts.


And they’re nutted on the back. As you can see they’re not hard to get to.


The last bit here is the rear bracket. I took the one off the transit pump, overlaid and marked it and the Landy one for cutting, cut them then welded the bits together.


Then the pump went back on, pulley was fitted and the chain timed up. stealthstylz called round with pulley end timing kit (and a new crank seal) at this point because I wasnt too keen on timing it just off the bellhousing hole, the drilling there is very shallow and doesn’t locate very positively- I guess that’s why the timing kit exists in the first place.


And that’s the pump in place, ready for me to move on to adapting the associated bits to work with this pump.


And the rear bracket refitted. Very fiddly to do, easily the worst part of fitting it! This pumps do use about 4hp to drive them though by all accounts, and having that weight and torque hanging off the timing cover unsupported isn’t a good idea, so it definitely needs to be there.

This has been discussed a few times on the transit forums, with only one example found, which was non-turbo. There were some plant engines also discovered, but they were non turbo too. Apparently you could buy a turbo one in China (a part number exists for the pump at least, you can theoretically order one, but it’s £1200+!) but no one could ever find an example. Could be language barrier, or maybe this just didn’t sell any!

Interesting, I guess there’s a lack of people from turkey on English speaking transit owners forums to get info from.

Tbh sourcing a foreign pump isn’t really be worth the hassle or expense. As I’ve shown it’s not that hard to mount up a very cheapy and easily available alternative. I would like to know of the plastic water manifold that screws to the back of the water pump is different though, as the only one available here aims a hose straight at the throttle linkage which has to be modified. If there was an off the shelf part that got around this it would be nice.

I have dealt with someone using the karpal Singh name on Facebook previously, that was who I bought the salvaged repair panels off. Down the medway somewhere. He was not the guy who is in the videos showing the manual pump conversions though, so I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with their Facebook name(s)? As neither of em had the look of a mr. Singh! Whole thing seems a bit iffy tbh. The guy doing the manual pumps used to post under the name ‘andypdq’ but then just disappeared off the forums and YouTube about 10 years ago.

Next it was onto the more incidental parts of making it work. The injector hard lines just join straight up, once I’d pulled off the bits of tape I was using to keep things clean. You’ve got to do them in the right order to give you room to swing the spanner though, the bottom one next to the block being first, then work up and out.


These next few pics are showing the fuel lines. The return was easy as that’s 8mm both ends, I just cut the old lines off the fittings and ran a new length of hose, looped to clear everything.
This corner is busy, there’s the EGR pipe, the main rad hose, heater hoses, fuel lines, and the throttle cable still to add. Not to mention the inlet and EGR setup over the top of it all.


I had to get a bit creative on the feed as that steps from 12mm to 8mm (it’s not for flow reasons, it’s to prevent them getting mixed up) and I didn’t have a step joiner the right size
So I made one out of male and female hose barbs joined together.


Cable toed to further to tuck out of the way, and that’s that bit done.


Spill rail was same size both ends too (if you cut it back to the injector anyway and do away with the joiner) and I happened to have some line the right size, 4mm maybe? So that bit was easy.


The next head scratcher was the throttle cable. The pump end was easy, it just slots in.
The cable was a stroke of luck, I found out by accident a LHD one is actually about 15-16” longer than a normal RHD one. This was only because I was being cheap and bought one listed as LHD as it was a fiver less as I though I was going to have to lengthen it and it was only any good for robbing the end fittings from, as Phil’s parts catalogue suggested they were the same length. But it turned out to be inch perfect in length! .

Then it takes a gentle loop over the back of the rocker cover. You can see here I’ve got the inlet on to check clearances, and how it almost totally obscures the pump.


Before snaking back the other way and running across to the bulkhead the other side of the servo.


This area is very tight on space, mostly because the servo is massive. It’s hard to see where anything can possibly come through, and I had to drill a couple of small holes to stick a screwdriver through so I could get a reference for each side. The first one was a bit tight to the inner arch, but the second one was pretty much spot on in terms of height in the footwell and space to the arch. I had to trim the insulation back both sides to do this, before drilling the hole out to 18mm to allow the end of the cable to pass through.


The pedal was a bit hit and miss also, I took a wedge out to adjust the angle to even let it fit into the wheel well for starters.


I was in full ‘making it up as I go along’ mode, but I slightly shortened and re-angled the arm, and changed the angle of the pedal pad to position it nicely and stop it hitting the floor mat before it hit full travel.


The backplate was heavily trimmed for height and width, before the one stud it hit was marked and drilled. With it partially located I then added a strip at the top to take it up and onto the other stud and the raised plinth the transit pedal originally sat on. The third hole is the original cable stop hole, that takes a rubber grommet and then the cable end.





It all fits pretty well, and the pad is pretty much where the old one was and has about the same amount of travel.

So that’s the only real welding and fabrication required done.

Unsure why you are seemingly keeping the EGR when ‘deleting’ the main feature of the engine management on the engine. Surely, that could, you know, disappear 😆
Otherwise top mechanical pump conversion. That’s a nice solution to the EDC pump. 👌🏻

This is quite a big problem now. Computer aided design and manufacturing seems to have how become so prevalent that younger people don't realise there are other, quicker ways to achieve the same end result.

Young mechanic at work paid somebody to design and laser cut some brackets for his mountain bike, think it was about £120 for 4 brackets. I showed him some cardboard aided design and made 2 of them that were exactly the same as what he'd bought (they were a mirror image of each other) in less than 15 minutes.