A Landy is reborn

[tractorman]

Some progress has been made, though not as much as I hoped! The new air filter has been fitted and the EGR valve removed and holes blanked off. I might have used the EGR if I had the control side of the system; but I only had the valve and the throttle sensor and nothing else (I think it's controlled by the Montego's main "computer" and has a separate pneumatic sensor somewhere).

The new master cylinder was fitted yesterday, though the new tee piece was a swine - it just wanted to leak fluid and some severe tightening was needed to persuade it not to do so! We bled the system today and it still has air somewhere - though there is a bit of "pedal" at the end of the first stroke. We decided to leave it for a say or two and then have another go - in the hope that it's aerated fluid after the messing with the leaking tee piece. In other words, we were so pi$$ed off that we gave up for the day (and it was getting late and the apprentice wanted her afternoon walk!). Thinking of which, the apprentice gets excited when the return spring on the brake pedal squeaks. Unfortunately, she jumps and nips... Phi was working the pedal!



Thinking of the tee-piece (about where the alternator wires come from the main loom in the photo), if the tightening hasn't really worked, I can't make a new pipe - there were two three-inch offcuts from the old layout and no new pipe. I don't intend to buy another coil of pipe for one short length (between the two tees). That's the reason the pipe from the master cylinder isn't nice and "straight".

I intend to make a start on the lower dash on Friday (other duties tomorrow - so no mechanicing!) and, if we can improve the brakes over the weekend, I hope to get the wings refitted - that will make a big difference. There again, it's a year since I changed the Golf's oil, so that should take priority.

[tractorman]

The best laid plans: I had intended to do some gardening on Thursday afternoon, but the weather put a stop to that. I managed to do it on Friday, so the dash hasn't been touched. However, I adjusted the brakes again yesterday and think the pedal is just about acceptable, so have moved on from that a little:



That the bumper looks as if it has a bend in the picture; but it's pretty straight in the flesh (considering it is on a Land Rover) and the wings seem to be true too (though the o/s one looks as if its too far back). I wouldn't mind so much if it wasn't for the fact that the bulkhead is further forward on the offside!

I need to sort the wing tops at the back, where the bolts go through; the splash shields need to be fitted and the pin on the bonnet needs adjusting, but it has certainly changed the look of the thing! I've measured up for the header tank and, while not perfect, it will fit on the nearside wing; tomorrow's job is to make a reinforcing plate and stays for that and, with luck, fit the thing and connect some hoses to it (and the heater).

[tractorman]

It's been a while since I added anything, but work has progressed slowly (well, it is a Land Rover so nothing's fast!)

One thing that has annoyed me this week is this:



It is a Karcher washer (a 730 MXS to be more exact - the biggest domestic one the made at the time). The annoying thing is that they made a fan for the motor out of something that almost looks like polythene. Not only did they do that, but the splines aren't the same pitch as on the end of the motor. I heard it tinkling a little last time I used it, but it decided to pack up altogether the other day - when I decided to wash the car for the first time in about four months! I lashed out and bought a new capacitor, but it was only partly successful: it would start and run, but if I stopped it and tried again, the fuse blew! I am now about out of 13A fuses! A "new" (refurbished) K7 is on the way and will be put into drain-clearing duties almost straight away as Phil has a problem with one that is at the bottom of his drive.

Back to the plot though!

The bonnet catch had never worked properly since I go the Land Rover and the new bonnet was even worse. I stripped the catch and the pin and cleaned it all up and the bonnet still wouldn't close properly. It was a while before I realised that the lip didn't clear the centre panel and a little effort with a block of wood and a large hammer cured that problem! OK, I did loosen the bolts holding it to the wings too - but still couldn't get it to move far enough!

It looks much better now - and opens nicely too!



You can just about see two relays on the n/s wing. I didn't when I tried to shut the bonnet

The header tank and various bits of piping have been sorted (at last) and there's a large piece of the old cab floor (home made with 3mm ally) under the wheelarch to reinforce the wing (the Montego header tank had pulled itself out of two of its three holes). I need to go over the plate with seam sealer (and do the bolt heads) and the splash shields are in place - they have stiffened things up a lot too).



You can see the relays more clearly in this pic!

I haven't finished that job yet though: I need to make some brackets to hold the copper pipe in place and tidy it up a little. You can see the washer bottle in the bottom of the picture; it's in the offside because it was perilously close to the injector pump when I tried it in its correct place on the n/s wing. I also had to make a better mounting for it - it used a piece of "V-shaped" steel that fitted rather too loosely in a dovetail affar moulded into the back of the bottle (and kept falling off when I touched it!). It has spoilt my wiring harness though - the sleeving is rather too well occupied for me to squeeze another cable down it!

Here's a better view of the bottle:



If you look below the top hose, you can more or less see the relay panel (with a fuse box) for the headlights (dip and main), rad fan and horns. It was only a temporary fitting though - one hole was bad to drill and needs "moving" slightly as the radiator was right on front of it! The relays have been wired to the fuse box and the earth leads made up, ready for fitting to the mounting bolts, so it won't take too long to finish that job.

If you look carefully, you can see the splash shield through a gap in the wing! That's because the dual circuit master cylinder and Defender(?) brake servo took up so much space. It will be sorted out before I sort the wing tops (which have all sorts of holes and marks on them).

Phil was here yesterday and asked it the engine was ready for starting yet. I put the earth lead on the battery and, after a bit of churning, it was making some lovely smoke! I didn't run it for long though - there's no water in it yet!

[arceye]

Looking Good, I reckon you are now at that stage where it will all come together rather quickly, be smoking down the road before you know it now.

mmm, the smell of half burnt diesel on a cold winters morning

[tractorman]

I suspect that's wishful thinking but at least it looks like a Land Rover from the front end! The tub needs a proper floor as it's just a wavy sheet of ally with the remains of the "U"-section underneath. The three supports were missing, probably because the back chassis is LWB and the supports' mounts were in the wrong places. I will be able to use the front two LWB mounts, but the back one cuts right across the fuel tank's filler neck! That will need a bit of clever metal-mangling as I need a flap in the floor to get to the filler.

I suspect you are right about the smoking though - it gives out a lot of reek when it is first started; that's mainly because, at the moment, it's taking a bit of starting; I suspect some work will help as there's bound to be a lot of carbon about after it had a small exhaust (that would throttle the turbo).

I have managed to get the front "distribution panel" fitted and partly wired the relays. I then discovered that the new cable for the headlamps is only 1mm and, while I have some nice heavy cable for main beam, I have none for dip. Also, I have plenty of cable for the RH indicator but none for the left! So there's more cable on order. I can't even find the original wiring for the front lights, let alone use it. There again, the wiring may have been thrown out because a previous owner used blue wiring for everything!

I would have done a bit more yesterday but there were a couple of neighbours' kids petering Nell at the gate and they weren't too happy when she came into the garage to escape them. Roll on next week, when the little pests go back to school: there are about a dozen under 11's on our "block" at the moment and they seem to congregate by my gate - and I hate young kids!!

One bit of good news: the antifreeze has been installed and, so far, none is on the garage floor! However, the nylon bleed screw on the radiator is suspiciously easy to turn, even when "compressing" the new rubber sealing washer. I was suspicious when I took it out: there was a lot of silicone sealant around it. Tehre again, the whole Land Rover seemed to be held together with silicone sealant!

[tractorman]

Progress has been slow and not very photogenic! The front lights have been wired up and relays sorted for horns and heater fan (and headlights). The windscreen washers have been wired up and the hose just needs joining up. That means everything in front of the bulkhead has been done (says he!) and is working. I did take a photo of the front yesterday, but it was too sunny for the camera, so I deleted the picture - it was too wet when I got the camera out today!

The fuse box and relays (with the radiator switch for the fan on the LH side)



I must remember that I wired the fan switch the wrong way - the live is straight to the switch and the relay's coil earths it, which is bad practice!

I rerouted the wiring for the side lamps and indicators (and repeaters) so they go into the headlamp housing and join a harness there. The harness comes out of the top of the housing and goes through the inner wing to connect to another harness (as per Land Rover design!). However, I need to put some more cable ties on and some clamps on the stays on the inner wings to stop the harnesses falling down and getting messy (the original wiring was a real mess!)



Moving backwards is the way to make progress, so I have done some work on the dashboard! The lower dash had a lot of rust in it and the metal was hardly as thick as a tin can! Not the easiest of stuff to weld (and I am not an Arceye!). However, I have managed to make it almost presentable, though it needs some sanding, seam sealer and paint before I can fit it! I also want to modify it a bit so that the radio and other accessories look as if they are part of the dashboard - that will probably be a next year job.



The large hole is for an access panel to the next "electrical panel", which will have fuse boxes, connection blocks, flasher unit and a relay for switched feeds. One thing's for sure, it will have a few more fuses than the three that were connected!

Note the new angle grinder (and green hose on the "new" pressure washer). I got fed up of swapping from cutting disc to flap wheel (and later, from flap wheel to wired brush), so I bought an Aldi grinder the other day. It's OK for a £19.99 grinder, but nowhere near as handy as the more expensive one!

I spent a long time looking for the fittings for the screen vents this morning; I thought they were with the vents and other dash bits in a box, but no! So I looked at where I had last seen them (on the shelf under the lathe) and then spent quarter of an hour looking before I gave up and got the "odds and sods" storage box out - which had all the screws and bits to put the upper dash back together. This is the box I bought about three weeks ago and emptied the contents of all the aerosol caps and tin cans into it so that the trolley was useable.



Middle section, RH side...

The air was bluer than the Landy!

So I managed to get the top bit of dashboard put together and fitted:



Thinking of things disappearing, I was lighting the fire this evening and had cut up a branch for logs and kindling. I put the wood on the hearth while I went to get something and came back to find a lot had disappeared. A little detective work and a camera caught the culprit coming back for more:

[arceye]

Coming along nicely, can you send the doggie up here with some wood please its getting quite chilly had a nice fire yesterday though with being out of action, some hardwoods and a few handfuls of anthracite, jeez I was warm as toast.

[tractorman]

Nell likes her sofa too much to deliver fuel, though I suspect she'd like a ride out in the car just as much!

Off topic: I serviced the Rayburn today and a chimney sweep came this afternoon and was able to clean both chimneys - for £40 each! We've never had the Rayburn's chimney swept as the people who put the thing in put the elbow the wrong way round and I could only "rod" to the cooker and not up the chimney! The sweep had some very thin and flexible rods with a fancy brush that could get in between the "ridges" of the liners and used a cordless drill to spin the rods. 32 years' worth of soot came out and I hope the Rayburn does a lot better as a result - though the new oil supplier has sent some special "vaporising" additive to "clean" the flame and reduce the soot that comes from modern Kerosene. I haven't lit either the Rayburn or the multifuel stove though - the weather is supposed to get warmer over the weekend and we aren't used to warmth in this house!

I managed to fill, sand and prime the lower dash and have fitted it so I can work out where the fuse boxes etc will go. I even remembered to work out where the radio needs to go so I can reach it while wearing a static seat belt!

One useful job was to refit the windscreen. It means that I can get to the saws in the shed where I was keeping the screen without having to get the screen out every time! It also means the new (wider) pressure washer can go where the old one used to live, making a little more space in the garage.

[tractorman]

I have hit a slight problem: in spite of a large area for the fuse boxes and bus bars, there isn't enough room for them. To be slightly more exact, there's room for them, but I wouldn't be able to get the cables connected as the terminals take a lot of space! I've had to order some more compact boxes with a built-in bus, so I can't do much with that for a few days. I managed to get the sockets in for the flasher unit and "master relay" (for switched feed), but haven't connected them up yet. Yesterday's efforts were limited to sorting out the harnesses where they come through the bulkhead and fitting a couple of blocking diodes on the alternator "exciter" feed. There is a second wire to the feed that comes from the "glow plug's" second relay (which shorts the resistor).

I actually "drove" the Landy yesterday! As I wanted to check the diodes, I connected the battery and started the engine. Then I thought that, as the seat base was still on the seat-box, I could try the clutch to see it it was free and the slave cylinder had the right travel after I removed the bodged up fixings when I put the new hose and pipe in last year. That obviously meant trying to put the Landy in gear and, as there was a foot of space in front of it, I eased it up to the door. Then I remembered that it had been sticking in reverse, so I reversed and then pulled forwards a couple of times to see if my cure (a nylon bush at the bottom of the gear lever) had worked. I'm most pleased to say it has - and the gear change is really positive. I doubt the "official" cure of a new gear lever would have done as well as my bush is oversized to compensate for the wear in the selectors.

[tractorman]

An action-packed few days has seen some progress - though, when I'm doing wiring, the mess of cables makes me wonder!

The new fuse boxes arrived yesterday and were fitted by midday. They still take a lot of space, but at least I can get the cables on the terminals!

I've fitted the "Master" relay (for switched feeds) and flasher units, though the relay is wider than the socket and pushes the flasher unit out of its (interlocking) socket. I'll split the sockets and move them apart a little to make sure nothing works loose later on. The master relay is connected and the flasher unit just needs the feed connecting (I forgot it this morning!). I spent a while sorting out the wiper cables yesterday and, when I came indoors, remembered that the heater fan's cables go in the came sleeve, so spent a happy hour sorting those this morning!

As winter approaches, the Landy will be moving to the little tractor's shed. As the tractor hasn't been started since May last year, I thought it wise to charge the battery before trying to start it. That done, there's very little life in the eight or ten year old battery and, though the engine will just about turn over, a full crank rotation killed the battery! So a new "quality" battery is on order; the original was a cheap one - on offer from the local Case (who bought out David Brown) agents, so has done pretty well on a tractor that is past its prime.

Out of daftness, I reconnected the big tractor's battery and spun it over. It was last run in July or August last year (though the battery has been charged about four times since) and it almost surprised me: I didn't bother with the heater and, as it always does, it started within about ten seconds! I left it running for quarter of an hour and felt guilty as it would "annoy" the neighbours. I went back to the garage after putting the tractor back in the shed and the neighbours were just coming home from a shopping trip!

Nell doesn't seem to like the tractors. She loves the car and gets excited when the Landy is running, but went and hid when I started the tractor!