Practically Classics Forum

Today's first job was to tidy up the earth lead as someone had a bargain buy - and used a good yard more than necessary!



The original earth lead from the battery (below passenger seat) went to the top right of the gearbox (where the orange pliers are) and a second lead came from the left side (where the red side-cutters are) and bolted to the front "gearbox" crossmember. As the photo shows, I connected the leads at the crossmember and took a much shorter lead to the engine. That gives me a lot more space to feed the fuel lines (and positive lead) through to the engine.

A quick look at the pipework going in. There's a bit more metal work to be done to make supports for the floor (to protect the filler neck and the top of the tank where the pipes will go). The pipes will be fixed to the new supports - not left as the fuel line is at the moment! The exhaust is fitted loosely at the moment - I just wanted it in while it was easy to do - and before I forgot that it needs to be fitted!



Ah yes, arch liners! Beware that, if you fit them, mud can collect behind them - especially if you use cheap plastic! A previous owner has fitted some clear "HIPS" ( plastic - like ready meal containers) and not sealed it - and it has cracked too! The nearside liner had collected a fair bit of muck - and the footwell had some bad repairs, but I thought the offside footwell was OK when I poked some of the scabby stuff. I tried a slightly different piece today and discovered that I put the welder away too soon!



The liner:



The hole:



I gave the footwell a quick going over with the angle grinder and wire brush and was relieved to find that this is the only hole - the other bits were, as I thought, just surface rust and soon showed bright and sound metal. I'll have to dig out the bit of boiler flue, clean it off and cut a bit out of it to weld around the corner (it's a square flue!). Come to think of it, the flue is on the floor about a yard away from the Landy's back wheel, so not hard to find!

That bit of flue went into a wider and longer rectangular sectioned flue which I must dig out of the back shed - I want to make a front number plate bracket with it! One advantage of the old flue is that it is nice soft metal - just like the Land Rover's bulkhead - so will weld in easily.

I finished the day by removing the pipes from the lift pump, filter and injector pump and sanded off the filter's top and bottom castings and gave them a coat of etch primer. I was sick of the blue, orange and red paint that covered it. I suspect it will be a nice shade of VW Tornado Red tomorrow and have a nice new filter fitted (it's the same element as the ones on the tractors and I bought two new ones seven years ago - and haven't used them yet!). I want to put a cost of that smooth silver paint on the bulkhead, so a grubby filter housing would be out of place!

The "plumbing" is done at last; I just need some better P-clips to hold the pipes in place and I can get that job finished. However, I'm not too happy about the pipe from the filter to the injector pump: it's a trifle loose in the filer in spite of plenty of PTFE and "red Hermy", so I may have to sort out a new pipe for that bit - it's the pipe on the RH side of the filter (it was on the left side originally, but I swapped it over to tidy things up a bit!

I was relieved that the riv-nut gun and nuts arrived yesterday - and pleased that the two "factory-fitted" holes in the bulkhead were obviously designed for 8mm riv-nuts to hold the filter. Although the filter is slightly cock-eyed, it's in the Land Rover mounting holes, so it must be right



So, after priming the system with a bellows thing, I connected the last pipe to the filter, put a battery terminal on the new positive lead, connected the battery and spun the engine over for a little while before it sprang back into life. The exhaust isn't connected and, as if to prove it was alive, the wind blew the exhaust smoke back into the garage just as the camera decided to take the photo!



I think the next job will be to take the windscreen off and clean up the bulkhead below it and the rusty bit in front of the dashboard (that I discovered when changing the windscreen earlier in the year). Then I can get some blue paint sprayed on the bit I repaired below the windscreen and get the wing back on at last.

It's been a middling sort of week, not helped by a headache all day yesterday. Progress has been somewhat slower than I had hoped!

I took the windscreen and offside wing off one day as there was a hole on the top of the bulkhead where the windscreen sits and there was a nice hole in the offside footwell. Another reason for taking the wing off was to give access to the downpipe studs on the exhaust manifold:



You can just about see the front stud below and behind the alternator...

The patches have been welded in and primed, though I think I should have bought another footwell and fitted the lower part rather than patch the existing one - I was certainly welding to some very thin metal in places! While stripping the windscreen, I decided that the washer jets needed changing - someone had put jets in the bonnet, but I have a nice "new" bonnet to go on (without the dish for the spare wheel). The original jets were in place - but blocked solid - and I had to take the top and back of the dashboard out to get at them. Of course, they were somewhat corroded (after all, it is a Land Rover), so I ended up drilling them out!

You know how it goes - one job leads to the next and the washer jets were no exception - the instrument panel had to be moved to get the dash bits off. So I had a closer look at the wiring and now know I will have to rewire it before I start the engine again! I then had a look at the under-bonnet rats' nest and it is even more interesting!



Note the helpful colour coding - like the green/black connected to the brown/green - by taping the terminals together!!

There's a nice hole I made after "cleaning off" a rust bubble above the top door hinge. That hole should have gone around and included a patch on the front of the bulkhead. OK, I should have bought a repair panel - but the budget was blown a month ago...



Note the footwell patch on the outside edge of the footwell. Yes, it's a bit of that boiler flue - which was the same thickness as the footwell!

This is "interesting" as some Montego wiring disappears into the Land Rover wiring harness and reappears in strange places (like the rear light harness!). The bundle of "choc block" connectors for the front lights is another codge that I could live without - it's far too near the bulkhead for a neat splicing job - I'd have to take both sides' lights back to there, or have a foot-long extension to more connectors. I fear it will be a complete rewire from behind the instrument panel!

Spot the cock-up time:



There was a pea-sized hole on the top face of the bulkhead. I cut a patch out after trying to "dab" the MIG to see if I could fill it with weld. The hole soon became a thumbnail-sized hole; I cut a patch and tried it in place, but decided to grind the area flat again before welding it. Unfortunately, I forgot I was going to grind it flat and welded the patch (where the hole is on the "upstand"). Then noticed that I hadn't done the grinding and had left the patch to one side, ready for later.

There isn't a hole under the right hand patch

Progress is being made - I have got stonechip sprayed here and there, mainly under the front wings, but also the bottom halves of the footwells. That used just over two litres of the stuff - all I had. I removed all the odd self tappers, nuts and bolts and goodness knows what from the inner wings and patched where the exhaust would have gone through the n/s inner wing (to make the inner wing a little more rigid) and gave then a coat of smooth Hammerite (and emptied another tin of "paint") yesterday morning.



Spot the tub in the background! There are two digger buckets in front of it: I bought them from a scrapman in case they can be used on the digger - if not, they will make interesting planters!

The bulkhead has been filled and primed, so is ready for top coat (I hope it matches). I had intended to do that yesterday, but had to go shopping - and then get a stone out from behind the Golf's NSR brake disc. That's the second stone in six months - and the fourth since I started driving in 1970!

I spent a little more time with the rats' nest and ended up taking the alternator off. I'm still not sure of the make or model - I suspect a Delco, but could be wrong. I had an interesting time though - the adjuster was right back and the belt was still dog tight. I took the water pump pulley off to get the belt off the alternator (though I gather that this is a common problem with the Land Rover/Prima conversion). However, as the alternator was hard against the engine mounting bolt, I think some effort will be made to improve the situation!

I shouldn't have bothered though - I now realise that the mounting bracket on the engine is only held to the rubber by half a bolt and is about an inch too short to sit properly. I then made the mistake at looking at the nearside one - and it isn't much better!



The "blue wire" at the bottom of the photo is actually a brake pipe that has been oversprayed at sometime. That kinda worries me - the seller said he had refurbished the brakes but the dark blue is a legacy from it's distant past - and they are copper pipes. I see a big plumbing session in the not too distant future!

One job that I might have to do is disable the EGR. As I wrote earlier, the hose from the valve doesn't go anywhere and, without spending ages hunting for a replacement, I can't find one. If I do, there's no guarantee that the EGR works anyway. A third good reason for not disabling it is that it will make the rewiring a heck of a lot easier! In an ideal world, I would sort the system out: it reduces the Nox emissions and makes the engine smoother (so they say!).

Keeping you out of mischief mate, landies will do that you know

A "mistress" would too - and cost less to maintain!!

I did nothing today - apart from shopping this morning (including some cable clips, a relay for the engine fan and some cheap seat covers that Halfords were selling for a fiver). I am considering the options for the brake servo/master cylinder - I have the choice of hammering a nice bonnet that I bought on eBay a while ago (without the spare wheel mount and dish) or finding a proper S3 brake pedal and servo mount etc. I want to keep the Disco (?) servo and nice new master cylinder, but don't know if the servo will fit the S3 bracket. The annoying thing is that, apart from some ageing on the pipes, the brakes are excellent - the handbrake even works well!!

Phew - what a scorcher!

The ideal day to spray paint - hot and no wind! So, after doing my morning duties, I got the compressor and spraying stuff set up, warmed the paint and wiped the bits I wanted to spray (inside of the footwells, bulkhead corners and the top of the bulkhead (where the windscreen goes). One thing I was fairly sure about was that the blue would be a different shade (I fear the Landy is more like F**d tractor blue ). So, after sorting out my nice new mask, I decanted some warmed "Marine Blue" into the gun and sprayed like mad! I was right about the shade - it's the same shade as the "new" bonnet though, so it won't look as if I got the wrong paint - but adds to the "Bitza" feel of the machine!

Satisfied with the results, I did various other things (walk the dog and have lunch being the important duties) and repeated the process. I won't say it's a good example of spraying - I deliberately left the rubbing down slightly "off" so that the finish would match the rest of the paint! That is why there's a reflection below the vent - the metal was uneven there when I bought the Landy. I was annoyed to discover that, on the LH bulkhead, just outside of the windscreen mount and down a little, there are signs of paint reaction. As the whole panel was done with the same high-build primer (and the same anti-rust primer), I was a bit surprised!



The sills look better than the bulkhead - though the photo almost reverses the different shades of blue! The bonnet is more the shade that the Workmate is and the sills are a lot darker (the sun was shining through the garage door when I took the pictures!).



My only gripe is that my spray-gun (a Clarke HVLP one) needs quite a lot of pressure and doesn't put a lot of paint out! I suspect that a slightly larger nozzle would help a lot! I still managed to get a slight sag though (on the RH side just below where the bulkhead starts to slope back) - though I have a suspicion that it may have been the anti-rust primer that caused the sag (and it was brush painted!)

So I'm now at the stage where I can start putting things back together and make some space in the garage! However, I must remember to fit a new gaiter to the front propshaft and sort the exhaust before I put the floors in!

I'm glad to report that the outlet union on the fuel filter is nice and tight now the Hermy has set, so that's one job I don't have to go back and put right!

Nice paint job there. The odd sag and ripple is par for the course on an old Landie isn't it tho?

Quite so Rob, a friend asked when he saw it if I was going to pull the dent out of the front wing and I said that a perfect Land Rover was all wrong! I had the chance to pull the dent the other day (when I sorted the wings) and I left it - and the other "war wounds". However, I didn't rub the whole of the bulkhead, just the bits I filled and sanded, so I don't expect the paint to last long! I have a mind that the offside footwell will need work in a year or two (or three...) and the top corners of the bulkhead won't last much longer, so I'm prepared for a (relatively minor) restoration later on.

I called at the local garage this morning (I had to go to the shop for some biscuits, so I was in the area!). After a chat about Land Rovers and Kev's now departed MX5, Kev asked if I still wanted a 200Tdi engine. It turns out he sold a "Surf" (a Hilux import thing) and took an MOT failure Disco in p/x. Apparently the Surf was listed at 9:30 and sold at 11:30; the Disco was tested a week or so ago (by Kev) and has rotten body mounts. However, the Disco had only done 80K ('N' reg) and the engine is perfect. I had a look and was sorely tempted, but where do I put the thing to take the engine and gearbox out?!

Yesterday's job was to take the parcel shelf (which includes the heater ducting) out - it's rusty too - and clear the back of the bulkhead so I can paint it and fit some soundproofing (which is on order). I also had another look at the alternator and think it might be better with a RH mounted one that would pivot from above - out of the way of the engine mounts. I checked a conversion site and found that they had also done it that way, so I was on the right track!



Noticing the vent grilles reminds me that I haven't sprayed the vent covers - I'll have to remember to do that when I have the sprayer going again!



After a few wise words with Kev and his older brother (a Landy freak who has an early S2a 88 and a S3 109 station wagon that needs restoring), I came home and fitted the gaiter on the front propshaft. I then did the wise thing and pushed the Landy forwards; the jubilee clip on the "gearbox" end fouled on the clutch cover and twisted the new gaiter! So, at the moment, it lacks a clip on that end; I suspect a cable tie would foul as well, so I may have to try and find the proper metal "strap" that I might have thrown out!

Not the sort of progress one wants: I spent an hour or so trying to remove one of the two manifold studs (the easier one) and failed. That ended up with the manifolds on the bench and I will have to drill the studs out. If heating the area to bright red with the oxy set didn't move them, I suspect drilling and retapping the thread is the only answer - no, I won't use a nut and bolt instead - keeping a spanner on the third bolt while tightening it up would be rather difficult!

I'm just glad the engine is in a Land Rover and not a Montego - I suspect the engine would have had to come out to get the manifolds off as, if nothing else, finding the bolts was tricky and working out where oil pipes connect was "interesting"! I don't know if the EGR was ever connected or working on the Land Rover (the valve is there but the actuator thing isn't), but the inlet ports are dirtier than the exhaust ones!

I noticed that the flywheel housing is the bit that's obstructing the propshaft gaiter: it's a big chunk of metal on the Prima engine and there's not a lot of space around the propshaft. I suspect that's why the original gaiter was in such poor condition. There is another little expense coming soon - the splines on the sliding section are somewhat worn.

One thing I didn't mention - I think the Disco that Kev offered me was a 300Tdi, not a 200; so it would have taken a lot more effort to fit it. The various bits filled the Disco engine bay, so I suspect it's a really tight fit in a series engine bay!