Defender 90 FFR winterised Rebuild

Hi guys
I decided to copy my build thread over from EMLRA for you all to see

October 2014 I bought a winterised 90 in a very worse for wear condition. here it is on the day I collected it from south London


A quick walk around






After a year, MOT looming and noticing some spots that need welding. A rather leaky fuel tank, rear axle casing, gearbox transfer box, engine, roof bulkhead seal....everything really. I made the decision to take it off the road and rebuild it on a galvanised chassis, renew everything I can possible. reinstate all the interior, radios and weapon mounts and all the appropriate winterised extras.

my aim is to return it to its in service state before it was cast in late 90s. it was never updated with the newer seats, wolf wheels or safe weapon mounting.

the great strip down begins!
taking off the bonnet and wings

then the doors

then the roof and the rear tub

the the gearbox fell out


followed by the engine

I then took the bulkhead off then axles, and the last few brackets etc.


im now left with a rather large pile or 'scrap' and a lot of land rover parts spread across the home, garden, and shed. On the plus side my new galvanised chassis has arrived courtesy of Richards chassis and its now weathering so it will take paint in the mean time I have the axles to rebuild, radius arms, and various brackets while I wait. pics to follow

cleaning parts ready for paint. There's still a quite a few bits I need to wire brush but I thought I'd get these painted and out the way

With the weather being the way it is at the moment decided to get myself a cheap 6x4 greenhouse to put on the patio and it works great here's a pic of my work shop

Ok so massive update
In the great weather last weekend I managed to finish off the axles and managed to get them unit the chassis with a little bit of help. I think the photos speak for themselves











Please forgive the state of the front wheels my paint delivery was late and missed the good weather

More coming soon!

Another small update I've been working on the rear cross member the past couple of days




I also got the main chassis harness in

Looking good so far
and good to see the use of por15, bloody good stuff

That looks really ace. Props for doing it outside aswell!!

Looking lovely!!!

Made some progress in between the god awful weather, I've been renewing engine parts degreasing and renewing the paint

Looking good, I'll be following this one.

Yeah looks ace well done

The rear tubs been getting in the way lately so I thought I'd progress with it enough to rest it on the chassis and get it out the way

The tub stiffners had quite a bit of bimetallic corrosion. I purchased some repair sections from YRM and I fixed these in place over the rot, put the members back across and primered it all. I couldn't find a match on original under colour so I've base coated it all and il have to find the original colour later

I finally got round to sanding the rear tub getting a quick coat of paint of the top and got the tub temporarily rested on the chassis, i've not gone over the top with the sanding still some brush/chipping marks though subtle still show its history



Gearbox, transfer box, prop shafts and then bulkhead all coming up very shortly

Spent the day cleaning painting and servicing the gearbox. Quite annoyingly the mail man tried to deliver my clutch kit but I was out so il have to wait until Monday now before I can get it mounted

Fantastic work ! really enjoy a chassis up rebuild, and I'm watching this too

I had the day off today and decided today would be a good day to make some progress.
I cleaned the last parts of the gearbox and fitting the clutch

Next I got the engine crane out and mounted the gearbox and tightened it all up

Next I went onto the bulkhead, the footwells were showing signs of light corrosion I could have just patched it but I thought better and replaced the whole panels. Unfortunately I could not find any the same with stiffener ribs so I just had to get plain flat repair panels and weld these in place. I still need to get so sheet steel to ad the flat plate stiffer we that goes inside the footwell

Now all the welding a done I cracked out the POR15 and gave it a liberal coat, once that semi dried I got the nato green out and gave it a nice thick coat. Then with the misses help I got it all bolted on I finally feel like I'm making progress!

truly stunning work - I hope you are very proud of that. I know I would be

Thankyou Disco1BFG for your kind words

This weekend I've been working hard on the pedal group these has suffered quite badly from trapped mud collecting behind them so we're quite badly rusted outside, but a good wire brush and a good clean and prep by POR15 and they look good as new






I also cleaned the transfer box fitted it and fitted the prop shafts





Interestingly the transfer box was a 1.4 ratio I thought all MOD defender were 1.6 perhaps the resident experts can weigh in to my knowledge it hasn't been painted since it was released yet both the gearbox and the transfer have the same over spray and yellow type overspray primer, waxoil? So what do people think, original?, MOD retro fit? Or fitted by a previous owner

I can't find where I read it but I believe alot of 90's had the 1.4 box fitted whereas 110's always had the 1.6 box.
I suspect when the tdi was introduced around 1989 they started fitting 1.4 boxes to the 90 na's for the military. I reckon it's original.