I have been chipping away at the old girl. I was happy to remove the valve covers to change seals and inspect the rockers, and find them in perfect condition with no wear evident at all. I asked the original owner and he reports always having changed the oil at short intervals, and he switched to synthetic oil "back in the day" when it became commonly available. Clearly that pays off, and I'm happy to not need to replace things with aftermarket junk, or pay up for the expensive Land Rover parts.
Things are coming together now, I've sent out the injectors for service, repainted them along with the fuel rail which was looking a little haggard, and got the intake reinstalled with proper gaskets and sealant. I also peeled back and replaced all the perished tape on the engine wire harness. Everything looks a lot tidier.
Meantime the Y pipe has been out for welding a crack under the flange, and I had the shop weld it on the inside too. Then I was able to match port it to the manifolds and eliminate the awful exposed tubing section, although there's another one of those where the downpipe meets the collector, which I can't reach. I also match ported the manifolds to the gaskets, taking off 2-3mm almost all around every port and blending them in, but found that the head ports already lined up fine to the gaskets. I hope this will give a little bump to power, everything was so badly aligned that it HAS to help. Manifolds got several coats of high temp ceramic paint, we'll see if it holds up. For now they look new. I filed the Y pipe flanges flat and put in a new stud kit in the manifolds so I hopefully do not have to cuss at them anytime in the near future.
The intakes needed some cleaning up too, but I was reluctant to grind on the heads in situ and did not want to remove them. A project for a rainy day in the future, perhaps. If the exhaust porting makes a noticeable difference, I might strip off the top end next time she needs a coolant change, take the heads out for a good look over and maybe even have a shop port and flow the whole intake side for me.
New heater hoses going in along with new stainless proper Norma/Gemi clamps. The good stuff!
I stripped back the aluminized heat shielding on the fuel feed and return hoses. The original hoses are making me nervous due to age, but there does not appear to be a way to easily replace them given they are made with special fittings and factory ones are NLA. But the hoses are in great shape externally. Another rainy day future project, I'll strip these out one day and take them to a hose shop to get new ones made out of braided stainless. They really should be replaced, as should the stub hose by the pressure regulator, but honestly I have become shy about swapping even such things as hoses when the old ones look so good. Not even the best quality rubber, including fuel line, seems to hold up very well anymore. I have some aftermarket heat shield material to put back on the fuel hoses as well, and a new steering shaft heat cover is coming since the original one is really making things look bad under the hood now that all else is looking better!