kevin s's blog

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Time to give a summary of the work I have done on the Land rover over the last 4 or so years, this is what it looked like when I bought it,

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It had 9 months MOT and I manged to drive it 250 miles home with no problems (apart from consuming half a gallon of oil), this was in september 2008, I decided I wanted it usable for the following winter. I pullled the roof off put it in the garage under the Lotus and set to, the main rust repairs needed were the A posts, footwells, one front dumb iron,

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the bottom of the front panel and the drivers door, All the sections were fabricated by hand and fitted, and the drivers door was replaced with a £5 ebay buy. I also decided I wanted to add some more comfortable seats with head restraints and was given a set of toyota MR2 leather seats which were fitted, finaly the heater fan had completely fallen to pieces as the car ahd been run with no splash guards , so I fabricated a new case and made some full lenght alloy splash guards. Once all this was done I fitted some ebay bodysides with defender windows and painted the whole lot with a roller and Teamac agricultural paint which gives a superb finish when applied in the cold.

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This gave me a basic functional vehicle, but there were still some areas I wanted to improve
Firstly the gearing was very low so I fitted range rover 3.54 diffs (a straight swap).
Secondly I could not afford 20mpg so I fitted LPG, the constituent parts were a mixture of new and secondhand parts which I fitted myself with a single small tank under the passenger seat which entailed modifying the seat box (with the lid of a WOK). Initially it was a conventional orifice plate mixer system but after a while I splashed out on a Blos variable mixer which makes it drive superbly, at the same time I converted it to a 1.75" SU as well, with the original weber I found dryed out deposits left when on LPG blocked the jets, the SU seems impervous to this, after this it averages around 18mpg on LPG so equivalent to mid thirties on diesel.

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There were also some remaining body issues, the rear floor and it's supports were corroded and the rear lower corners of the rear wings were missing. For the rear wings i formed some new alloy and TIG welded it in, not pretty but strong, for the rear floor I made a new tubular steel frame to go under the floor and then fitted a new sheet of alloy for the floor, the frame underneath was also made with mounting points for forward facing seats and seatbelts.

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The next thing I decided needed attention was the engine, it got to the stage where it was using agallon of oil a month(500 miles), I purchased a secondhand engine which came with a unleaded head for the princely sum of £75, I stripped the engine, there was a bit of a ridge on the bore but I have seen worse, so I skimmed the head to put the CR up to 9:1, and put it back together. Then one saturday I swapped the engines over, 2 years later it is still going fine. I also added mega squirt programable ignition, this allows a second map for LPG and is almost totally waterproof.

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One thing was not happy with was the series 3 dash and bulkhead fitted, I realy wanted the original series 2 style dash, but good series 2 bulkheads cost a fortune and I had a virtually rust free series 3 one already, so I decided to backwards engineer the series 3 one to series 2, this involved: removing a welded in bulge in the centre and replacing with a flat panel, welding pieces in the steering column and heater holes, Welding on the s2 windscreen brackets, removing the dash top mounting brackets and of course welding in the new dash. After looking for some time I could not find an affordable donor for the dash so I decided to make this as well, I took patterns of other cars and set to, the end result was very pleasing. For the heater I kept the S3 box but modified it to take a ord scorpio radiator and exit through the base, I then ducted this to a round smiths heater which had the centre cut out, copies of the original the dash vents were made from an old heated towel rail and it was all fitted in the original way. The steering wheel was also a lucky find, it is a ford consul mk1 one which fitted straight on th S3 column and looks far more original. The instruments wiring and switches were the S3 ones re-located.

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some photos of the heater

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At this point I considered it pretty much completed , then this happened,

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the clio hit it when parked, it broke the transmission brake linkage and the landie rolled off down the road and wrote of a VW golf coming the the other way. There was no damage to the front where it hit the golf, but at the rear the X member was bent and there was damage to the body mounting rail and rear door, I reached a settlment with the insurer and it only took one sunday afternoon to fit the new rear 1/4 chassis and body mounting rail later on I also fitted a new rear door, and that pretty much brings us up to date.

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That brings us pretty much up to date, there is not much more I want to do, future plans are to further improve the heater (add a coolant pump) but otherwise it will be just a matter of maintenance.

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Had a good look at the lotus, I don't think the coolant is coming from the water pump, the bottom radiator hose clamp was loose, hopefully fixed now.
Also picked up a fiberglass rear wing for the minor today, so now we have 4 usable wings, also welded the remainder of the flange on the rear of the roof, next job is to weld it back on.

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Made some significant progress on the minor this weekend, the roof section is back in, all the paint cleaned off and the welds cleaned up, there are a couple of small piceces to repair around the rear corner of the the side window and then we will fill and prime the rear end before moving onto the remainder of the drivers side repairs.

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It does look like the Lotus water pump is leaking as well, hopefully I will get a chance to pull it out and take a closer look in the week.

In the meantime I have been using the TR every day with no pronblems appart from the usal heater linkage issues (vent flap comes off cam) one day I will have to get around to adjusting it.

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Andrew finished the welding inside the boot and we painted the boot in primer, next up will be to seam seal it and stone chip coat inside the boot.

I also started pulling off the gutter, good news is the roof panel and flane around the rear window look ok with only 1 local repair needed, so next up will be to repair this area and then fill / prime the rear end.

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