OK First of all Land-Rovers dont tend to get abandoned unless there is something wrong with them, and a smashed windscreen is not the sort of thing to really check a Landies progress.... But a couple of missing tyres would, and in some-ones mind possibly more than the cars worth to replace...... so it MAY Be 'not too bad' underneath, but I wouldn't expect to return it to service as easily as replacing the tyres and glass, trimming the weeds, giving it a wash and fiddling with some adjusters......
There are going to be 'problems' in there.
First of all, vehicles that have 'sat', first thing is normall the brakes will have rusted; and on a series, field find, I'd suggest that for safeties sake, you plan on renewing the brakes all round as a matter of course; front to back, master cylinder, wheel cylinder, hoses, lines shoes and adjusters. Probably servo and hand-brake too.
Next up, ruber perishes, and the most likely candidates are probably up for inspection while you are about the brakes; hub seals, all round, and the swivils.
Good chance that the hubs have been sat full of water, and the bearings will probably be best replaces, while the swivil, almost 99% garanteed that the seal will be shot and the crome on the swivil, if theres any left, rusted, flaked and pitted, demanding a fairly hefty repair bill to renew it all.
Likewise steering ball-joints; sat they will have rusted up and as soon as you start using them, the perished rubber sealls will fall apart and the rust inside will wear out and it will all go sloppy, if it isn't already.
Moving up.... springs will be the next target, and almost certain to be rusted near or actually solid; CAN be cleaned up, but not really worth it, so new springs and U-bolts probably in order, along with dampers.
Steering box, likely to be sloppy, again, can be adjusted, but probably past it.....
And THEN you have the chassis; spring hangers, out-riggers, main-rails, etc.
Clutch is probably siezed, and may free off, and if you are LUCKY the engine and gear-box may prove to have life in them, once you've snatched the clutch free, and changed the fluids and done a bit of tinkering, though clutch master and slave cylinders are likely to 'go' as soon as you start puting pressure on them, and the flex hose is probably the one it left the factory with!
If you have motor or transmission niggles, then you are looking for replacements or tear-downs on them, and the gear-box is normally the more troublesome, especially if its been sat for some time, condensation collecting in it and the water falling to the bottom of the box, where it rusts the cogs, while without lube splashing over teh selector forks and indents, they tend to sieze and or rust.....
Then you'll have the normall assortment of niggles with aluminium corrosion, dead earths, general wiring faults, sticking heater controls, perished heater hoses, rusted radiator and heater matric, burned out heater fan, cracked seats, and PROBABLY rotten bulkhead, or at the very least door-pillars, and foot-wells.....
It is NO small undertaking, and from the ground up, you have an awful lot of stuff that you will simply HAVE to replace new, for the simple reason that its not WORTH trying to salvage stuff, second hand bits are as likely to be as bad, and its more expensive or unfeasible to try and recondition stuff, given spares costs and availability.
On the main-land, I'd bank £100-£150 to sort the brakes, £250 to sort the suspension, £150 to sort the swivils, £50 to do the hub bearings, and possibly another £150 to do the rest of teh steering mechanism.
To that, a new set of tyres will set you back best part of £200, and you haent even LOOKED at chassis welding, engine, gear-box or niggly electrics and body fittings.
To take a field find to service, with a mix of new and used parts, and a little 'luck' that you dont have too many 'big' hits to deal with in there, REALISTICALLY you need to anticipate the thick end of £2-£3000 worth of bits, and LOTS of hard work.
What you are likely to end up with, pretty much depends on how contientiouse you are, and how many 'short-cuts' you take along the way, and how many compromises you make.
With a bit of luick, a lot of hard work, and an awful lot of attension to detail, and more likely on the thicker end of budget, you can end up with something VERY neat, tidy and serviceable, with an awful lot of life put back into it....
If unlucky, you can put all that timem, effort and money into it and find stuff that demands even more, or you just NEVER get finished......
And Financially, here on the mainland at least, on a 109, whatever standard you get the thing completed to, you wont see a fraction of the build cost realised in its resale value.....
An 88, is a little more worth-while, but with tidy serviceable examples fetching around £1500, and really good ones little more than £2K, where they have cost thier creators often twice or more that in parts alone.... this is NOT an eccconomical way to a 'cheap' landy.... you HAVE to be doing it for the love of it.
Now, I am on the mainland, and I kow things are a bit different in the ROI.... and the second hand value of an old Landy may be a bit higher, but I'd not expect it to be a lot higher.
I would however expect parts to be harder to source, particularly second hand, and most new parts, from the mainland, with ROI taxes added, pretty horendouse!
And, I seem to recall there is another googlie in there over Irish Rovers, in that most of the series Landies imported to ROI in the 70's, were brought in on agricultural impliment 'exemption' from duties, as the value added car tax on them was astro-bloomin-nomical, and when they had seen out thier useful service as an agricultural vehicle, sold on, those original perchase taxes were due...... so a Landy worth a few punts, sold demanded a few thousand punts to Dublin... Which was what saw so many abandoned in fields....
I SUSPECT that registration may be worth checking into, becouse if you bought it and tried registering it, you might find yourself hit with some rediculouse back-tax bill..... but then theres a whole load of stuff over there about 'classic cars' built before 1984 or something, and importing them from here..... where the ecconomics mean that what you find your field find may make a useful donor for a few bits to go onto something imported from here as your 'project base', jusdging by other proples q's on the topic...
But like I say, I'm not totally familiar with the regs in ROI but that would be the first thing I'd check out, what the rules and regs about registring at the end are going to be, and the logistic hassles to be found.
Next availability of bits, and part prices, certainly on the target areas I've mentioned.
THEN I'd check the bank balence and do my sums to see if I could reasonably afford to see the thing completed, on a near worst case basis.....
THEN I'd start looking to see where I could do the work, and if I actually had the time, tools and patience for it all........
FINALLY If I was pretty confident I could take it on...... THEN I'd go poke about it, and to be honest, I'd not be expecting much!
Will it tow, or need a trailer / flat-bed? Will the brakes be siezed so it wont roll, and will the chassis colapse as soon as we try tugging it......
anything better than that pretty much bonus!
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