Hi all
First I would like to thank the contributors of this site as in the past 10 months you have helped me allot! There was no need to post a question as it had already been answered!
Ok here we go, its a little late and like normal I didnt write things down but this is basically a quick write-up of my rebuild.
In December 2008 we managed to get our hands on a brilliant original and all standard 1985 Land Rover Defender 90 V8 with only 22 thousand miles on the clock (verified by MOT)! It used to be owned by a telecommunications\radio manufacturer so its got a couple of holes in it where things where attached but apart from that its in pretty good nick, hardly any rust and not a dent on the beauty! First off we are planning on cleaning the whole thing up; adding a couple of extra bits and start trying out some green-lanes and off-road events and just see how things go basically.
This is my first project (well my dads doing some of it, good old father and son challenge dad lets try and not have bits over to make a trailer!).
I have always been into tinkering things and was looking at getting a track car but after a coupe of stupid accidents I thought this would be a better route to go and it was one of those right time right place things.
On viewing the Landy for the first time it seemed to be in decent nick, well without a roof or doors and we couldnt get it started!
We managed to be owners of this fine project through a silent action (basically you pop an amount and your name on a bit of paper, hand it in and later you find out who bid the most), their where bids from £50 to £200 but we stuck in a bid at £530 as we had a tinkering someone put in a bid at £500, so we were lucky!
Well we have it home, first off getting it started, it turns over but that's it. A quick dry out and a fresh battery put on and it started in no time, a little smoke but that soon sorted itself out once warm. It didn't overheat at all and took ages to get up to full temp. We ran it up a private road quickly and all felt fine, suspension, steering, gears, brakes, axles where all good. The breaks are really good for a car of this age as well given front disc and rear hydraulic drum.
We then started on cleaning the engine up first so off comes the front wings, attachments and radiator, heater unit and most cabling - good old wash and sand up then minor polish to finish, we aren't looking for show like cleanliness just to get rid of all the rust and crap thats built up over the years. We came up against no problems luckily apart from the odd solid bold but thats nothing that a bit of WD40 and a bottle of Coke cant deal with.
We decide to paint some bits now so ended up doing bits like manifolds, air box, caps and metal pipes. As I said we aren't looking for it to be show clean just bit easier to clean the mud off!
After that it was time for the front suspension to come off, here we came up against a bugged nyloc nut on both the drivers and passengers top shock mount. We clamped the shock down but the nut just shred as we tried to remove it. A nut cracker was brought out and soon the suspension was apart with no other issues. We didnt bother completely removing the front axle as the ball joints seemed to be fine, half shafts and diff, ass it was up on axle stands anyway things where easy to get to for cleaning and painting. A quick scrum and the shocks looked like new, as there car has done sop little miles in comparison to its age all these bits are still the original factory fitted parts (as this was owned by a company its got receipts for every bit of work done, I dont think it ever even went off-road!).
Back to the engine, here we removed the manifolds . Hang on, no gasket here, after a quick call to Keith Gott it seemed that some Landys of our year didnt have them but they had a part to fit so I popped over and picked it up, ok it may not of had one from the factory but I still would like something there, if you didnt need them then why do they still use them now!? Everything else buffed up fine for a little project next year we are going to get the rocker covers off and polish them up really nicely, but we are not looking to start that type of things yet, lets get it all together and working first!
So front suspension is put back together all painted a nice shiny black now, the heater box has also had a recon and a spray up awaiting for the wings to be fitted before refitting it.
We then removed the centre section, this was a case of taking out the seat box and cleaning up the drive and transmission as well as the chassis bits here, we then pondered, it wasnt our original plan to remove the rear tub but I just really wanted to! So off the rear tub came. In the end it seemed like a good idea as it wasnt that much work and let is see the whole chassis, we left the front bulkhead on as it looked in perfect nick and seems a bit of a job so dont touch what isnt broken came to mind. It seemed the Landy which we had was actually in bloody good nick, there was not a bit of rust on the chassis or component parts, nothing broken at all, just dirty!
Then the rear suspension was looked at, this came apart also with abit of an issue as the bottom shock nuts where bloody tight and in the end we bent a shock and the other was a bit rusty so replacement where ordered, I didnt bother with up rating parts as I dont know what the Landy can handle yet and some say it will handle more then what I would want to do, so that fine by me.
The chassis rear cleanup begins, in the end we ended up using about 5 wire brushs and 3 rust remover angle grinder discs, I didnt bother going back to bare metal as in theory if what there stays, its protected so I just rubbed things down until nothing else came off, which seemed to work well. After the rub down we painted it with black satin Hammerite, I know many people go for the Waxoil route but I wanted something that repel mud easily and come up to a shine (something which now seemed stupid as after its first outing, got its a bugger to get everything shiny again, a bit of an obsession of myn). Painting of the axles as well as outriggers was also completed at this time. About 2.5 or 3 litres of paint did the trick with 2 coats.
Spraying begins. We already have a top loaded spray gun and air compressor so what paint, We decided to go for cellulose based paint as we didnt want to go down the 2 Pac route due to my mum (yes I know, my mum) being a health consultant so the choice was kind of already made before I pondered it.
Over a weekend we finished rubbing down and spraying the wings bonnet and rear tub, we even have them on the car now! Everything fitted fine bar the front drivers wing, for some reason it just doesnt alight up to the bulkhead like the passengers side, there is a gap about 5mm going up to about 8mm from top to bottom. The wing is aligned correctly on the front and sits flat, I think a bit of the problem here is putting something back together that was built by hand. We tried allot of things to see if things would align up better but to no avail, so we moved on, maybe comeback to it later My dad did most of the rubbing down but I helped a bit of the tub, I had the easier job or spraying. Starting with the wings and bonnet before we had just enough time before dark to shoot the rear tub. We got 2 coats of filler primer on so far then have decided to fit the bits when dry. We decided to do the filler primer and then fit the bits as we want to spray the final coats on the car as to not scratch newly sprayed paint by just fitting the panels. Also we wanted to do a light colour spray on some of the edges that meet bodywork so we had top coat over parts me might not be able to get completely with the gun later.
We had to fit a new rear breather pipe on the axle, the replacement seems a bit long so instead of loping it off I ran it along the drivers side chassis towards the back where the loom comes out then up into the rear wheel arch before popping to through the wholes for the rear light wiring into the tubs cabin and fixed it behind the rear light wiring cover.
We went to a Newbury show for 4x4 and picked up some bargains! we got 2 front doors - lift up handles with winding windows and the small metal piece that runs along the door for £80, they need a bit of work but they will come out fine. We also spotted a rear door which we got for £20! It looks to be from about years 96-98 and theirs only one small rust hole but perfect apart from that! Windscreen rubber was picked up by my keen eye for £5 brand new and front air vent rubbers for £7. There where some quite nice Landys there and some with some nice battle scar that I recon made them look even better in a way.
Both the doors have been filler primer sprayed and put onto the lady for aligning the sills, in a way this is also a check to see the tub and wing line-up together. Bonnets been on and off a couple of times as there seems to be some sort of reaction with the previous paint as we didnt want to be stripping things back to bare metal before spraying, so something is reacting with the miller primer but it was soon sorted (i.e. black chequer plate over the centre of the bonnet lol)
Anyway, loads of rubbing down was done and re-spraying a filler primer coat in some places was needed and that stage has been done.
The colour painting begins. We have decided I will give the top coat spraying ago. After talking to some people in the know it seems the gun we were using for the filler primer was fine but a better gun would be needed for the top coat. Guns can be from cheap starter kits like the one we shot the filler primer with to hundreds of pounds. The gun we got was only 40 notes but is good enough for what we need, after all we are spraying in our garage with a half decent compressor that I only just drained the tank of about a litre of water from, opps!
This is my first time spraying something this big but its worth ago I thought. I have had a little problem setting the gun up but in the end I think we got there, ok its not amazing but theres a decent reflection and shine on it and I have even started polishing it yet!
We did the bonnet and wings as well as seat-box and doors off the car (the roof was already the correct colour as this was the original roof that was then found in the back of a barn, has the reg etched onto the windows!). Spraying in general went well, I had a one or two runs when using the gun on some weird angles or places I should have let of a little earlier at.
Top coat polishing begins! We started by rubbing down with very light (1400-2000 wet) sand paper on the orange peel parts and also on the thick overspray before moving onto G20. G20 is a very very fine liquid polishing paste. The whole car was first done by hand on the bits that needed it before getting my new machine polisher out and ding the car all over again. This was my first time with a machine polish and even though I practiced I still had one or to hiccups (after all its not a nice sleek bodywork, industrial would come to mind for a Land Rover!). After the G20 was completed the place was covered in this white liquid, the guy did warn me when I got it the place would get covered, he was right!
Next stage was a T-Cut to take off any overspray or orange peel that had popped up, I did this by hand over the whole car and then again in spots that needed it like the wing tops and around the fuel filler cap. I use AutoGlym polish for the next fine stage after a T-Cut, I use the Auto Glym polish because it has nice results and can be used on any paint and is nice enough to use as a bottom layer polish as well as a top layer, 2 coats were layed down over the whole car. After this the Maguires (pound for quantity, easy of use, availability- yes there are others out there but nothing compares-and its just a Landy!) starts, the first layer is the Mags Step 2 Polish ( I dont bother with any of the NXT range because we are using old school cellulose based paint and once again, its just a Landy.
Step 1 of the Mags 3 step setup is the paint cleaner and as its only just been sprayed then I didnt think it was worth it (though Mags paint cleaner is brilliant for the instances where your paint is dirty but not quite in need of a clay bar, the paint cleaner is to remove and overall film and marks rather then stains or bird ****e). I think I layed down 2 layers of the paint polisher, this was also applied by machines on a low settings (around 1600rpm) and then again on 2000rpm for the top layer stage 2 polishes.
Step 3 of the Mags series came next. This is the carnauba wax (again in the original range not the NXT range) 3 coats where applied for this as I wanted to build up a nice wet look and have enough down for when the first couple of washes came it wouldnt start making stains. This layer was applied by hand as I didnt want to go and damage the polish I had just layed and at the same time push the wax too deep in.
Finally I applied the AutoGlym protection seal; this is basically a very final top layer polish that covers the whole car in one creating a complete film over all the body work. I love this stuff, sometimes it cant be seen but then in the certain light it really does make the car look fab and on certain curves reflections look like a mirror image even when you know the paint isnt mirror underneath!
All coats where applied with 20-30 mins between sessions and of-course using separate cloths for each product and each layer.
Its almost there!!!!!
Final touches is our last stage, this is things like touching up any chips I have made already, making sure bots and nits are tight as well as putting the coolant, washer water, windscreen wipers already purchased chequer plate wing tops, bonnet cover and rear quarter protectors, plugging holes from prev owners, sealing areas and greasing everything up and the wheels were painted white as to the original colour I believe (same as the top of the roof) and fit the windscreen .
It seems there is one guide that most people follow and after getting our hands on a windscreen we though we would give it a try. The guide is the one with Autoglass doing it think on a dark 110, they basically use abit of rope, well we did that but it came to a point where I pulled the rope to hard and dad pushed to hard and well crack, a huge crack from the drivers side to the passengers side! After a couple of phone calls, starting at over £200 for someone to replace the windscreen dad found someone down the road (well one of a windscreen companys national centre . I live in a small village!!!!!) who did it for £70, a couple were brought but had marks and scratches on so being proud of what I had done so far we asked for another one, and in no time a nice new screen was fitted. We also had to get some new hub caps as the original rubber ones where starting to come apart as the rubber had gone hard. They where pricey though, 1.50 each!
I know your thinking, but what about this bit or that bit, and your right, unfortunately I didnt write things down as I went along as there is more just when did I do it and what was the original problem again?
UPDATE, as it where... still got little things to do and have done things since, I swapped out all the light lenses for new ones, all white and put LED lights in, supposedly...the flicker rate depends on if there road legal or not, all good one myn
Anyway I hope you all like and never know might meet ya one day.
Adie
First I would like to thank the contributors of this site as in the past 10 months you have helped me allot! There was no need to post a question as it had already been answered!
Ok here we go, its a little late and like normal I didnt write things down but this is basically a quick write-up of my rebuild.
In December 2008 we managed to get our hands on a brilliant original and all standard 1985 Land Rover Defender 90 V8 with only 22 thousand miles on the clock (verified by MOT)! It used to be owned by a telecommunications\radio manufacturer so its got a couple of holes in it where things where attached but apart from that its in pretty good nick, hardly any rust and not a dent on the beauty! First off we are planning on cleaning the whole thing up; adding a couple of extra bits and start trying out some green-lanes and off-road events and just see how things go basically.
This is my first project (well my dads doing some of it, good old father and son challenge dad lets try and not have bits over to make a trailer!).
I have always been into tinkering things and was looking at getting a track car but after a coupe of stupid accidents I thought this would be a better route to go and it was one of those right time right place things.
On viewing the Landy for the first time it seemed to be in decent nick, well without a roof or doors and we couldnt get it started!
We managed to be owners of this fine project through a silent action (basically you pop an amount and your name on a bit of paper, hand it in and later you find out who bid the most), their where bids from £50 to £200 but we stuck in a bid at £530 as we had a tinkering someone put in a bid at £500, so we were lucky!
Well we have it home, first off getting it started, it turns over but that's it. A quick dry out and a fresh battery put on and it started in no time, a little smoke but that soon sorted itself out once warm. It didn't overheat at all and took ages to get up to full temp. We ran it up a private road quickly and all felt fine, suspension, steering, gears, brakes, axles where all good. The breaks are really good for a car of this age as well given front disc and rear hydraulic drum.
We then started on cleaning the engine up first so off comes the front wings, attachments and radiator, heater unit and most cabling - good old wash and sand up then minor polish to finish, we aren't looking for show like cleanliness just to get rid of all the rust and crap thats built up over the years. We came up against no problems luckily apart from the odd solid bold but thats nothing that a bit of WD40 and a bottle of Coke cant deal with.
We decide to paint some bits now so ended up doing bits like manifolds, air box, caps and metal pipes. As I said we aren't looking for it to be show clean just bit easier to clean the mud off!
After that it was time for the front suspension to come off, here we came up against a bugged nyloc nut on both the drivers and passengers top shock mount. We clamped the shock down but the nut just shred as we tried to remove it. A nut cracker was brought out and soon the suspension was apart with no other issues. We didnt bother completely removing the front axle as the ball joints seemed to be fine, half shafts and diff, ass it was up on axle stands anyway things where easy to get to for cleaning and painting. A quick scrum and the shocks looked like new, as there car has done sop little miles in comparison to its age all these bits are still the original factory fitted parts (as this was owned by a company its got receipts for every bit of work done, I dont think it ever even went off-road!).
Back to the engine, here we removed the manifolds . Hang on, no gasket here, after a quick call to Keith Gott it seemed that some Landys of our year didnt have them but they had a part to fit so I popped over and picked it up, ok it may not of had one from the factory but I still would like something there, if you didnt need them then why do they still use them now!? Everything else buffed up fine for a little project next year we are going to get the rocker covers off and polish them up really nicely, but we are not looking to start that type of things yet, lets get it all together and working first!
So front suspension is put back together all painted a nice shiny black now, the heater box has also had a recon and a spray up awaiting for the wings to be fitted before refitting it.
We then removed the centre section, this was a case of taking out the seat box and cleaning up the drive and transmission as well as the chassis bits here, we then pondered, it wasnt our original plan to remove the rear tub but I just really wanted to! So off the rear tub came. In the end it seemed like a good idea as it wasnt that much work and let is see the whole chassis, we left the front bulkhead on as it looked in perfect nick and seems a bit of a job so dont touch what isnt broken came to mind. It seemed the Landy which we had was actually in bloody good nick, there was not a bit of rust on the chassis or component parts, nothing broken at all, just dirty!
Then the rear suspension was looked at, this came apart also with abit of an issue as the bottom shock nuts where bloody tight and in the end we bent a shock and the other was a bit rusty so replacement where ordered, I didnt bother with up rating parts as I dont know what the Landy can handle yet and some say it will handle more then what I would want to do, so that fine by me.
The chassis rear cleanup begins, in the end we ended up using about 5 wire brushs and 3 rust remover angle grinder discs, I didnt bother going back to bare metal as in theory if what there stays, its protected so I just rubbed things down until nothing else came off, which seemed to work well. After the rub down we painted it with black satin Hammerite, I know many people go for the Waxoil route but I wanted something that repel mud easily and come up to a shine (something which now seemed stupid as after its first outing, got its a bugger to get everything shiny again, a bit of an obsession of myn). Painting of the axles as well as outriggers was also completed at this time. About 2.5 or 3 litres of paint did the trick with 2 coats.
Spraying begins. We already have a top loaded spray gun and air compressor so what paint, We decided to go for cellulose based paint as we didnt want to go down the 2 Pac route due to my mum (yes I know, my mum) being a health consultant so the choice was kind of already made before I pondered it.
Over a weekend we finished rubbing down and spraying the wings bonnet and rear tub, we even have them on the car now! Everything fitted fine bar the front drivers wing, for some reason it just doesnt alight up to the bulkhead like the passengers side, there is a gap about 5mm going up to about 8mm from top to bottom. The wing is aligned correctly on the front and sits flat, I think a bit of the problem here is putting something back together that was built by hand. We tried allot of things to see if things would align up better but to no avail, so we moved on, maybe comeback to it later My dad did most of the rubbing down but I helped a bit of the tub, I had the easier job or spraying. Starting with the wings and bonnet before we had just enough time before dark to shoot the rear tub. We got 2 coats of filler primer on so far then have decided to fit the bits when dry. We decided to do the filler primer and then fit the bits as we want to spray the final coats on the car as to not scratch newly sprayed paint by just fitting the panels. Also we wanted to do a light colour spray on some of the edges that meet bodywork so we had top coat over parts me might not be able to get completely with the gun later.
We had to fit a new rear breather pipe on the axle, the replacement seems a bit long so instead of loping it off I ran it along the drivers side chassis towards the back where the loom comes out then up into the rear wheel arch before popping to through the wholes for the rear light wiring into the tubs cabin and fixed it behind the rear light wiring cover.
We went to a Newbury show for 4x4 and picked up some bargains! we got 2 front doors - lift up handles with winding windows and the small metal piece that runs along the door for £80, they need a bit of work but they will come out fine. We also spotted a rear door which we got for £20! It looks to be from about years 96-98 and theirs only one small rust hole but perfect apart from that! Windscreen rubber was picked up by my keen eye for £5 brand new and front air vent rubbers for £7. There where some quite nice Landys there and some with some nice battle scar that I recon made them look even better in a way.
Both the doors have been filler primer sprayed and put onto the lady for aligning the sills, in a way this is also a check to see the tub and wing line-up together. Bonnets been on and off a couple of times as there seems to be some sort of reaction with the previous paint as we didnt want to be stripping things back to bare metal before spraying, so something is reacting with the miller primer but it was soon sorted (i.e. black chequer plate over the centre of the bonnet lol)
Anyway, loads of rubbing down was done and re-spraying a filler primer coat in some places was needed and that stage has been done.
The colour painting begins. We have decided I will give the top coat spraying ago. After talking to some people in the know it seems the gun we were using for the filler primer was fine but a better gun would be needed for the top coat. Guns can be from cheap starter kits like the one we shot the filler primer with to hundreds of pounds. The gun we got was only 40 notes but is good enough for what we need, after all we are spraying in our garage with a half decent compressor that I only just drained the tank of about a litre of water from, opps!
This is my first time spraying something this big but its worth ago I thought. I have had a little problem setting the gun up but in the end I think we got there, ok its not amazing but theres a decent reflection and shine on it and I have even started polishing it yet!
We did the bonnet and wings as well as seat-box and doors off the car (the roof was already the correct colour as this was the original roof that was then found in the back of a barn, has the reg etched onto the windows!). Spraying in general went well, I had a one or two runs when using the gun on some weird angles or places I should have let of a little earlier at.
The colour we went for in the end is Slate Gray, I thought about doing the gold colours (blue and orange) but the difference in time and paint kinda answered the question, Gray it was, but its a nice gray, one of the original colours I believe (giving the roofs the same!).
Top coat polishing begins! We started by rubbing down with very light (1400-2000 wet) sand paper on the orange peel parts and also on the thick overspray before moving onto G20. G20 is a very very fine liquid polishing paste. The whole car was first done by hand on the bits that needed it before getting my new machine polisher out and ding the car all over again. This was my first time with a machine polish and even though I practiced I still had one or to hiccups (after all its not a nice sleek bodywork, industrial would come to mind for a Land Rover!). After the G20 was completed the place was covered in this white liquid, the guy did warn me when I got it the place would get covered, he was right!
Next stage was a T-Cut to take off any overspray or orange peel that had popped up, I did this by hand over the whole car and then again in spots that needed it like the wing tops and around the fuel filler cap. I use AutoGlym polish for the next fine stage after a T-Cut, I use the Auto Glym polish because it has nice results and can be used on any paint and is nice enough to use as a bottom layer polish as well as a top layer, 2 coats were layed down over the whole car. After this the Maguires (pound for quantity, easy of use, availability- yes there are others out there but nothing compares-and its just a Landy!) starts, the first layer is the Mags Step 2 Polish ( I dont bother with any of the NXT range because we are using old school cellulose based paint and once again, its just a Landy.
Step 1 of the Mags 3 step setup is the paint cleaner and as its only just been sprayed then I didnt think it was worth it (though Mags paint cleaner is brilliant for the instances where your paint is dirty but not quite in need of a clay bar, the paint cleaner is to remove and overall film and marks rather then stains or bird ****e). I think I layed down 2 layers of the paint polisher, this was also applied by machines on a low settings (around 1600rpm) and then again on 2000rpm for the top layer stage 2 polishes.
Step 3 of the Mags series came next. This is the carnauba wax (again in the original range not the NXT range) 3 coats where applied for this as I wanted to build up a nice wet look and have enough down for when the first couple of washes came it wouldnt start making stains. This layer was applied by hand as I didnt want to go and damage the polish I had just layed and at the same time push the wax too deep in.
Finally I applied the AutoGlym protection seal; this is basically a very final top layer polish that covers the whole car in one creating a complete film over all the body work. I love this stuff, sometimes it cant be seen but then in the certain light it really does make the car look fab and on certain curves reflections look like a mirror image even when you know the paint isnt mirror underneath!
All coats where applied with 20-30 mins between sessions and of-course using separate cloths for each product and each layer.
Its almost there!!!!!
Final touches is our last stage, this is things like touching up any chips I have made already, making sure bots and nits are tight as well as putting the coolant, washer water, windscreen wipers already purchased chequer plate wing tops, bonnet cover and rear quarter protectors, plugging holes from prev owners, sealing areas and greasing everything up and the wheels were painted white as to the original colour I believe (same as the top of the roof) and fit the windscreen .
It seems there is one guide that most people follow and after getting our hands on a windscreen we though we would give it a try. The guide is the one with Autoglass doing it think on a dark 110, they basically use abit of rope, well we did that but it came to a point where I pulled the rope to hard and dad pushed to hard and well crack, a huge crack from the drivers side to the passengers side! After a couple of phone calls, starting at over £200 for someone to replace the windscreen dad found someone down the road (well one of a windscreen companys national centre . I live in a small village!!!!!) who did it for £70, a couple were brought but had marks and scratches on so being proud of what I had done so far we asked for another one, and in no time a nice new screen was fitted. We also had to get some new hub caps as the original rubber ones where starting to come apart as the rubber had gone hard. They where pricey though, 1.50 each!
As another final touch we decided to get new seat covers, the back of one was fine but both bottom covers were shot. The new ones arent the same but there decent and look perfect anyway, on a side note if the standard seats that are in there now align correct with the steering wheel and controls then fitting a bucket seat would align you off center because of the extra width in the side bolsters, so
you would be driving not true to the wheel as it where, so whats the point?!
I know your thinking, but what about this bit or that bit, and your right, unfortunately I didnt write things down as I went along as there is more just when did I do it and what was the original problem again?
UPDATE, as it where... still got little things to do and have done things since, I swapped out all the light lenses for new ones, all white and put LED lights in, supposedly...the flicker rate depends on if there road legal or not, all good one myn
Anyway I hope you all like and never know might meet ya one day.
Adie
