Alan the A-Suffix Restoration

Assessed next project today, restoration to start soon.



Alan the A-Suffix was bought late March and relocated to my Dads barn. Top of engine is apart and was ready to go back together when previous owner Alan was struck down with the dreaded C. It remained parked up for the next 4 years until I bought it.

Lots and lots of nice original a-suffix features





Not a lot of Rot, Alan was a welder, o/s/f inner panels and drivers footwell needs sorting, bit of grot on o/s/r d pillar but frame is otherwise is solid. except the doors and upper tailgate.

Engine is a 11A SD1 9.35:1 engine

Pistons are 20thou and bores are in good shape, except where the rings sat for 4 years. engine turns smooth on the starting handle.



It has new hydraulic lifters of an unknown origin and looks like the original cam.

questions please

For the Rivet counters - Should I stick with SD1 engine or try source an early RR block?

Assuming I stick with what I have should I fit a new cam and if so which? 3.5 3.9 etc. Some sites warn against new lifters and old cam

Do I trust the lifters or should I go for a set of OEM jobbies? some problems out there with non OEM lifters?

the rockers are worn but not badly, Alan bought a set of rockers and Blue Box shafts. Are there problems with some replacement bits being made of cheese?

The n/s head has nasty corrosion right where the fire ring on the head gasket would go. weld or skim further?



Lastly one of the long head bolt trashed the helicoil in the block at about 20ft/lb. what tricks are there to repair this, Wurst Time Sert? Anyone got experience?

Cheers

Ok time for an update on this project. fast forward to Sept 15 and the engine is now a runner
Stripped thread was fixed using helicoil.

Heads torqued down nicely, I have not yet sorted the corrosion over the fire ring area of the head, this exercise is just to see if the engine runs

Once all together need to sort the fuel supply, needed to drain the fuel tank of varnish but couldnt get the fuel pump to fire up. traced the wiring back and found the add on feed that routed into the engine bay but the feed was isolated by some kind of home made immobiliser. I ran a 12v feed via a jump lead to the supply and the fuel pump started pumping. Disconnected the feed to the fuel filter and pumped the tank dry into a Jerrycan. I then stripped the carb float chambers and cleaned out the varnish.

This stuff doesnt look nor smell like petrol


With fresh fuel in the carbs and the ignition wired up the engine was back firing through the carbs. The distributor position didnt look correct, I unfortunately dont have any idea of what the previous owner was doing when he started the engine overhaul. Pulled the distributor and with engine at TDC got it installed roughly in the right place and...

It started!, no coolant in it so I didnt run it for long but it sounded sweet. Initially I thought that the clutch or gearbox was dead but subsequently found the transfer box in Neutral Doh

A long break then until June this year, the only work done is a concrete floor went down in the barn.
Firstly I planned to strip the entire interior from the car and store to protect it from fire and grinding spark damage. some bits like door and side trim will need replacement But I hope to reuse a lot of what came from the car.
Rather than remove the doors I chose to strip them right down, just leaving door shell and latch as I need to do extensive work on A post and sill and can use this as a baseline for alignment

onto almost daily working on this project now at last 6 July
Boot floor and tailgates off, the boot sides are home made out af all sorts of things, the side curtains and arches are heavily patched

The fuel tank is home made but last owner being a welder is some bit of work

Side windows came out with no broken studs, rear quarters were more trouble but came off intact. The original C Post vents are both missing

Luckily I have loads of space to store bits as they come off the project. Try not to concentrate on the SIII swb Tub

7 July
Started strip down the front end, so far not had to reach for Mr Grinder

When removing sill fixing for the nearside front wing about a litre of murky water dribbled out of the screw hole. oh dear
That inner wing is looking less and less apealing the deeper I dive

Still no use for the Grinder

Next out is the dash so that I can get the loom out.

This lot is about quarter of the extra wiring that was behind the dash for stereo and immobiliser.

8 July
Remains of dash and loom extracted
I left the rear loom in place for now as it is out of the way


Plenty of chocblock connectors and other such abuse. I will clean this lot up and see what I can do. I am surprised that the loom was not bound in any way except in the engine bay. Is that normal?

Excellent photos,keep up the good work ,saving another great motor

14 July
The big push, need to start somewhere So I started on the n/s front corner. It looked solid and the sill had been replaced by a very robust looking home made unit.
First off need to get rid of the fixings and small tag welds for the inner wing. Which came off intact

What was behind did not look pretty, concidering calling this car Patches

Patching over rusty steel is never going to last long but then when your car is worth less than your shirt and limps from MoT to the next it is understandable that it ends up looking like this.

Inner wing was a similar approach to patching over patches so while on the inside it looked solid, the underside was a very different story

It didnt take a lot of effort to start separating this out. I tool the heavy decision to strip it back to what appeared to be remains of the original body frame.


This footwell and bulkhead side panel was 4 layers thick in places and weighed over 10kg

15 July
Digging deeper The gearbox cover needs to come out as I now plan to remove the homemade sill. The tunnel predictably needs repairs to the front corners

It was fixed in using a mixture of original fixings most of which I was able to undo and roof bolts with square nuts

Heelboard looks saveable as is the rear floor section

welded but unprotected repairs to the gearbox cover. over all very salvageable

chassis has a nice solid ring to it when tapped with Land Rover special tool 1

This is the drivers side bulkhead side panel and footwell and yes that is bathroom silicon sealer.. shudders

17 July - Happy Birthday Mrs Thestag
I managed to get time to remove the driverside inner wing

The bulkhead had been patched but many years ago. I will leave this as is for now


Not sure that this inner wing has much life left in it !

Back to the passenger side a post. I tried to cut it back to solid steel and also remove all patches

18 July
The series of beautifully welded patches over patches over rust made the decision to remove the homemade sill an easy one. I braced between chassis and roof cross member and got busy

It came off in one bit and is a massive bit of engineering, might be useful to an offroader as it is so heavyduty. The B post however was a flipping nightmare

22 July
This is it cut out

This is the epic lump of steel and rust that I pulled out. Not bad for a single skin

Froggatts inner sill bolted in place

Froggatts outer sill lined up and pop riveted to the inner sill

Removed for welding

23 July
I would have got way more done today if I hadnt continually battled with the wire feed on my old SIP Migmate

24 July
I finally threw in the towel on the lower half of the a post. it is just too far gone and my welding is not good enough to seam weld in a fragile hinge section to an other wise new repair panel

Here it is clamped roughly into place. The door was replaced along with rear wing to get alignment and shut gaps (hahahahahahaha)
The jack pole on the bottom hing is to steady things and I even popriveted and bulted the mortal remains of the bulkhead side back in place to stead things. Getting it so that I was happy with alignment and that the door would open and close back to the same place took the best part of the day

25 July
Sodding welder!
It was so close to getting the 10lb hammer treatment today but I managed to resolve the wirefeed issues. See below for the utter hash of welding the a post below, seriously starting to doubt my own amateur welding skillz

First a bit of scrap steep to stop the top roller flexing and then found that the steel liner was just kissing the bottom roller.... which it wasnt yesterday! I cut it back with the dremmel and order is resumed.

salvaged bonnet pull and glovebox support panel from old bulkhead side

Clamped it into place

with inner a post welded to outer and bulkhead bolted and clamped up the door opened and closed nicely

Now that I am happy with alignment I just keep getting drawn back to this bloody mess. The original steel is not as weak as it looks

26 July
So unhappy with it I was that I cut it out

Made up a patch to but weld in

Dropped the sodding welding magnet onto the floor

Thats better, bit more grinding and a skim of filler and only us lot will ever know

Made up a patch for the leading edge

And done

still on 26 July
Started work on the nearside footwell. I wanted to replicate the ribs and therefore only the black panels are available and the contour on these is not always correct


Separated the side panel from the footwell. The lip also needs to bend through 180. I will do this carefully to avoid stressing the steel to fracture

cut out the old floor and bulkhead mounting, predictably it is quite heavy

Spent an hour faffing and clamping until I got to this. not perfect but maybe the best I will get

Blimy you seem to give the word restoration a new meaning.

I wasnt expecting quite so much work on this corner but this project is starting to make Rosamund look easy. I just want to get the frame solid enough to lift it and get at the chassis. In for the long haul now
Dissapointed that the rear floor, arches and curtains need so much work but that will be easy by comparison