1998 Defender 300TDi Rebuild

What a great project.

Raw ingredients of a superb looking 300tdi Defender and a galv chassis sound excellent.

Good luck.

Looking good so far. It'll be great when the bits start going on the new chassis and it starts looking like a Land Rover again.

Another weekend and more parts coming off the Defender.

First part to come off was the bulkhead, it looks in good condition but there is some rust along the seams above the foot wells.



Then the engine.



Seriously running out of space to put things now

Recently progress on my Defender has been really slow due to there being a lot of rusty bolts that have taken a long time to remove in order to strip down the rolling chassis. In particular the M20 nylocs on the radius arms were a real b@$tard to get off! Even with a 1/2in drive breaker bar they wouldn't move, I had to use a 3 meter piece of box section as an extension and even then it took two people to get it it started.



I had been thinking about what to do with the old chassis because I felt it a shame to scrap it, but following the advice provided on another thread I decided to chop it up and get it scrapped.



Though, I did find a new home for one of the cross members. A fellow forum member Hogie had posted a thread about chassis repair pieces as his cross member had rotten through so told him he was welcome to the lump sitting on my driveway.

The next nightmare job was removing the bushes from all the suspension parts. I have a homemade shop press that I had made a while ago and was able to remove some of the bushes with it, however in the process I have destroyed the press. The top bar has completely bent so I will be repairing that next weekend so I can finish getting the bushes out. I did manage to remove the bushes from the radius arms so was able to start cleaning them up.

You can also see the gearbox cross member in the photo above, once I have blasted it I may have to replace the side plates as they look quite rusty on the side that buts up to the chassis. I am now in the process of cleaning up all the parts I want to get galvanised which includes the radius arms, trailing arms, other various suspension parts, gearbox cross member, brake disc guards and inner wheel arches. I will also get the bulkhead and tub capping galvanised however I may have to do these separately as I don't have the space at the moment to strip the tub and bulkhead down. My plan is now to build up the rolling chassis as quickly as possible so I can work on the engine and gearbox and get them installed as this will free up space in the garage to start working on the body work.

As mrchurchill109 said, you have to have a plan and that sounds like a good one. I bought a pair of second hand (newish) wheel arches which are galv or zinc plated. I've since discovered you can get rigid plastic ones. There was a pair on ebay yesterday for £70

Since my last post I have been preparing all the suspension parts and axles ready to be galvanised but although I have been working hard, I haven't really had much to show for the effort. However I now have a nice pile of clean parts ready to send away.



Last year I made a small shop press; however in the process of removing the ball joint from the A-frame fulcrum I completely trashed it. However this gave me a reason to upgrade. Made press 2.0 from the remains of my old press with much stronger beams at the top and bottom and a huge 20 tonne jack! (You can see the previous 5 tonne one on the bench!) I definitely built this one for Landys .


Also started cleaning up the final drive housings ready for painting. I am going to replace the open diffs with Ashcroft ATBs so stripped the final drives in preparation of rebuilding them.

I found I needed to fabricate a tool to hold the drive flanges whilst removing the retaining bolt. The handle is made from the track rod I removed from the Defender, I like the idea of making tools for the Defender out of old Defender parts!


I also started to clean up my wheel hubs. The first image shows what it looked like after being removed from the vehicle.

A quick blast in my blasting drum.

I left the old bearing races in whilst blasting, I am going to replace the bearings anyway so leaving them in protected the inside wall of the hub.

I re-tapped the threads as these were really rusted and difficult to reach with the blasting media.

You can see below that when I removed the bearing races I now have a nice clean and shiny surface for when the new ones go in.

Before paint I masked all the contact areas.


One down, three more to go! And then all the other parts, I am starting to realise this is going to take a lot longer than the year I originally planned! But when I look at the before and after picture below I think to myself that this is time well spent.

All looking very good where you've blasted and painted the components. Wish I had the time to do that with mine. Hope you managed to make a note of which bearing cap goes where on the diff carrier! Because they're not interchangeable. Like big ends etc. they mate them up in the factory before reaming out and tapping the holes for the bearings.

Absolutely fantastic, mate. Be prepared for the long haul and days of complete frustration. That way, if you just accept that they are coming, you'll get less frustrated by them. I hope so anyway I've had some dark days when everything has gone wrong. Good luck, you are doing a great job.

Nice work mate. They can be very time consuming at times, so as said be prepared for the long haul. Even more so if you're leaving no part un-turned like some of us do.
Oh and you have far more patience than me masking those hubs up

Brown said:

All looking very good where you've blasted and painted the components. Wish I had the time to do that with mine. Hope you managed to make a note of which bearing cap goes where on the diff carrier! Because they're not interchangeable. Like big ends etc. they mate them up in the factory before reaming out and tapping the holes for the bearings.

Click to expand...

Really good point, I assumed that would be the case so drew a diagram as I was stripping them and have put each cap in a separate bag with it's bolts and adjuster; and then labelled the bags.

Al2O3 said:

Absolutely fantastic, mate. Be prepared for the long haul and days of complete frustration. That way, if you just accept that they are coming, you'll get less frustrated by them. I hope so anyway I've had some dark days when everything has gone wrong. Good luck, you are doing a great job.

Click to expand...

Thanks Al2O3, so far the only thing that is making my blood boil is my bloody blasting pot! It keeps getting blocked, today it got to the point where I had to keep my foot on it so I could rock it to keep it from blocking up, not fun! Tomorrow I'm going to strip it down and see if I can fix it before I go mad.

aaronmorris said:

Nice work mate. They can be very time consuming at times, so as said be prepared for the long haul. Even more so if you're leaving no part un-turned like some of us do.
Oh and you have far more patience than me masking those hubs up

Click to expand...

Thanks aaronmorris, I did start to get frustrated that it was taking so long but then my Wife reminded me I'm doing this for fun. She is absolutely right, so now I'm not letting myself get impatient. I realise it is going to take as long as it takes.

Looking good so far
It takes time but once it's all done it will be worth it

I would be really interested in some basic details of the blasting equipment you use - if it's professional then I will leave it but if it's affordable Machine Mart or similar I would appreciate some basic details of the compressor model and the blasting canister thingy.

ianc2051 said:

I would be really interested in some basic details of the blasting equipment you use - if it's professional then I will leave it but if it's affordable Machine Mart or similar I would appreciate some basic details of the compressor model and the blasting canister thingy.

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Hi ianc2051, the main piece of my set up is the blasting pot which I bought from ebay for about £65 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/38-L-10-G...ng-Cleaning-/130427874115?hash=item1e5e1b6b43. The sand is Jblast Supafine http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Supafine-...e-Fine-25kg-/390593311285?hash=item5af12cf235. As mentioned above I am having a lot of problems with the blasting pot as it gets blocked all the time, looking at more expensive machines the difference seems to be the pipe work so I am going to rebuild my pot and upgrade the pipe hardware. I will post an update in the future to let you know if my improvements worked.

My compressor is this one - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Air-Compr...tr-90-Litre-/151375892762?hash=item233eb4d11a.

Lastly is my blast cabinet that I made from a steel oil drum and scrap metal I had in my garage, cost me about £50 for a piece of perspex, a small strip light, gloves, jubilee clips, hinges, a bolt lock and a piece of rubber door seal.

Thanks for your reply re the specs of the blasting equipment - I appreciate your reply.

Ian

That's good progress with a 14 CFM compressor. Mine is rated at that, but I'd held off buying a blaster because I'd assumed you'd need loads more capacity. Seeing as you've done all those components and haven't complained about how long it takes, I might think about investing next time I have a lot of rust to clean off irregularly shaped parts.

It's looking good so far.

A little tip for you, line the inside of your blast drum with rubber mat, it'll last for years then.
As it is it'll soon ware thin and blow holes in it.

Brown said:

That's good progress with a 14 CFM compressor. Mine is rated at that, but I'd held off buying a blaster because I'd assumed you'd need loads more capacity. Seeing as you've done all those components and haven't complained about how long it takes, I might think about investing next time I have a lot of rust to clean off irregularly shaped parts.

Click to expand...

Its not too bad, you do need patience but when the blasting pot isn't jammed it works really well. The end result is definitely worth the effort.

markSX said:

It's looking good so far.

A little tip for you, line the inside of your blast drum with rubber mat, it'll last for years then.
As it is it'll soon ware thin and blow holes in it.

Click to expand...

Thanks Mark, that a good idea.

cube1729 said:

Hi ianc2051, the main piece of my set up is the blasting pot which I bought from ebay for about £65 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/38-L-10-G...ng-Cleaning-/130427874115?hash=item1e5e1b6b43. The sand is Jblast Supafine http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Supafine-...e-Fine-25kg-/390593311285?hash=item5af12cf235. As mentioned above I am having a lot of problems with the blasting pot as it gets blocked all the time, looking at more expensive machines the difference seems to be the pipe work so I am going to rebuild my pot and upgrade the pipe hardware. I will post an update in the future to let you know if my improvements worked.

My compressor is this one - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Air-Compr...tr-90-Litre-/151375892762?hash=item233eb4d11a.

Lastly is my blast cabinet that I made from a steel oil drum and scrap metal I had in my garage, cost me about £50 for a piece of perspex, a small strip light, gloves, jubilee clips, hinges, a bolt lock and a piece of rubber door seal.

Click to expand...

impressive diy