The V8 Owners Forum -

Hi everyone, its my first post in here.
I'll start from that I'm planning build of hatchback sleeper with V8

The problem is that in my country only land rovers and cheerokees are good sources of V8 and there is no possibility to get some 2wd LT77 from sd1 or 2wd bellhousing parts. Luckily i found Daf LDV Lublin R380 2wd gearbox which could be good donor gearbox (donor because it have short stick). Is it worth to change tail cone and some initials? someone did it before? should i change something more than tail cone? is it possible with 4wd LT77? any advice?

sorry for my english

It may be easier to change the bellhousing & input shaft on a 2WD gearbox to fit the V8.

Chris.

i guess that flywheel and clutch need change too, and this is propably more expensive option (for me). I can afford only budget solutions.

Fistful,
The R380 box should be OK as a donor. If your engine already has a flywheel then you could use the clutch and substitute the clutch plate for one with the same spline and diameter. Alternatively you could have the clutch plate spline swapped over to the correct one if you are struggling with sourcing parts.
Obviously you would need the correct bellhousing to mate engine and transmission, though.

I have a Rover P6 sedan that was automatic and I converted it to manual LT77 after the Borg Warner auto stopped working. I used the bellhousing off the auto box with a steel plate to mate the new box to the housing and cut out the location hole for the release lever and mounted the slave cylinder. I used donor parts off an SD1. My LT ran the input bearing due to my not knowing about that fault back then and now I use a 4speed overdrive Jaguar box.
As the LT77 and R380 were used in the SD's (in South Africa at least) I cannot see any reason why your R380 cannot be made to work.
Modifying the 4WD LT77 is a bit more than changing the end casing as the output shafts are different too.
As for flywheel, a friend of mine has a P6 that he races in our local classic class and he uses a 2,5L VW Combi flywheel that he modified as he could not find a decent Rover flywheel at the time. He uses the VW pressure plate and modifies his clutch plates to whichever box he happens to be using at the time.

At the end of the day, it boils down to how badly you want to do the job and whether you can access a good machinist who won't rip you off then with a bit of lateral thinking you can achieve a lot on a modest budget.

Go for it, it's worth it. I am heading to change my P6 box for the Toyota Cressida (T21?) 5speed using the same bellhousing and clutch setup as I have always had.

Thanks. I think it's only a matter of time when I'll do that.

I have an additional question. Is it possible to remove input shaft from gearbox through front (I mean bellhousing side) of it?

No.

You need to strip the cluster.