Time to overhaul the old girl.

If you had seen in the intro section I've had this old girl for 14 years now, I paid £250 for her in 2000, it came with two months MOT and TAX, a built in steam generator and plenty of rust worm. When I bought the car it had a complete Defender front end, back in the late 90's when the Defender was still relatively new I guess this was the thing to do to make your series look modern? It also came with a badly fitted V8, where apparently carpet is considered acceptable for filling holes in the bulkhead.

All I done in the early days was give it a paint job, sort the tin worm out and fit LPG, and go trialing.


Jump forward 6 or so years, a second paint job to Ford tractor blue, and a stage one looking front end.


Also added were Weller 8 spokes with Colways copy of the BFG's AT, and a Ford Mondeo radiator which just fits between the wings, and between the top of the chassis and bottom of the front panel.

The V8 modified bulkhead also received some attention to repair previous bodges, and also because I'd discovered just how dam hard it was to get the the rear spark plugs and also to the bell-housing bolts


Now fully removable with captive nuts and everything in stainless steel.


It then remained like this for a few years being used as my heavy haulage car





Bit of an 80's throwback picture that.

And plenty of fun playing in the snow during the winter of 2010/2011


I added a few more gauges to the center of the dash just for the hell of it, also included in this was an Air/Fuel ratio gauge and Lambda sensor that made tuning the LPG much easier.


They glow lovely at night, plus no needles to fall off or get stuck.


Then came gearbox rebuild time, laid out Haynes manual style across my drive, it was only the simple task of new bearings, bushes, and seals


If anyone is ever in doubt as to what does what in there this may help, though I forgot to put the input shaft on when I took this pic.


And then all cleaned, checked and ready for re-assembly


More to follow

nice, makes working on a gearbox look simple

sweet looking truck good luck with the work

I like your bulkhead mods - neat and tidy and thoughtful.

Your air intake on the wing....is that a swivel out scoop you've created to get some ram air effect?

Good luck with the gearbox. What was wrong with it?

love it ,,good job mate ,i hated doing my box

The air intake scoop for the heater on the wing is a standard toilet cistern ball valve float cut into quarters. These floats fit perfectly into the heater opening and collect extra air as you drive, improving the air flow into the cab.

The gearbox was so noisy before replacing the bearings and bushes, I still can't help feeling it's got to much backlash, but at least it's quiet again now.

Like the idea re cistern ball. Might try that one.

Love threads like this!

Murtle said:

If anyone is ever in doubt as to what does what in there this may help, though I forgot to put the input shaft on when I took this pic.

Click to expand...

As a novice round here that photo is really helpful. Good luck with the work!

Very nice - so how do you get on with a series gearbox on a V8, I thought that was a big no-no but you seem to get on ok dragging plenty of weight

D

dominicbeesley said:

Very nice - so how do you get on with a series gearbox on a V8, I thought that was a big no-no but you seem to get on ok dragging plenty of weight

D

Click to expand...

(he's on a gym regime and a special diet) ...

no wait .... that's Dr Evil

Other than replacing the bearings and bushes a couple times in 14 year that's it, and it's not as though it gets an easy life. I don't think there is an issue with V8's and series boxes, just urban myth and folk law. I must have put getting on for 70K miles on it like this now.

The set-up I've got is:
Late S3 gearbox
Fairy Overdrive
Range Rover diffs

I guess what kills transmission components is trying to race away from the lights etc, this I never do, feed the power in gently and all is fine.

Anyway, whats wrong with my pie and chips diet?

So a few years ago the Landy gained yet another shade of Blue for the summer, the old paint was getting tatty, and I had two tins of white and half a tin of Ford tractor blue left over, so what do you do?


And a great time was spent that summer cruising around like this, though I was becoming aware of the ever growing rust problem again, as remember it was a long time ago I fixed the chassis up probably over 10 years.

Soon it came time to bite the bullet and properly solve all the rust at the rear, so a new rear half chassis was bought.


And here is the reason for all this, looking at some repairs from before even my ownership, I think the previous owner only had a stick welder to hand


So after producing a rear body support and encouraging all the nuts and bolts to undo I cut the rear half of the chassis off with an angle grinder.


Then placed the old and new parts on my lawn for comparison



This shows the extent of the rust, well beyond patching repairs.



The center cross member was then repaired at this point as I now had good access to both ends and the inside of this.

The replacement half chassis was rigged up in position and then followed lots of tape measure work and alignment using bits of string and spirit levels. It's also worth remembering at this point that the chassis bends a little when back under load. I used the door shut gap as a good indication.



Once I was happy, it was butt welded on as I wanted all the new metal possible and no overlap, this butt joint was then strengthened with two diamond shaped 3mm steel plates.

Great to see, thanks for sharing!

nice work, looks like the old half was well and truly gone, that light blue form mixing the blue and the white looked very smart.

Nice work `

Looks neat work. Your rear tub floor supports look substantial too - box section. Out of interest, how did these cross with the longitudal supports?

The box section floor supports are double height so fit up over the chassis and have a second part welded on that drops down and supports the floor.

The entire chassis had a good wire brush off and de-grease before painting



Some of the huge amount of new parts that I've bought for this rebuild


When the rear half chassis was removed I also had to disconnect the brake pipe to flexy joint, as I expected the copper pipe was stuck inside the mating nut and so twisted when undoing. The slave cylinder bleed nipples were also seazed and sheared off so I also needed new salve cylinders, at this point I decided to replace everything. I also added new springs, bushes, bolts, shackles, shockers etc, etc. This is the end result.




There is also a new input coupling and oil seal in the diff and a new prop. New diff pinion oil seals were not working as the face they rub on had a groove worn into it, so the input pinion coupling was also replaced.

Next job is the seat box.

Dippypud said:

(he's on a gym regime and a special diet) ...

no wait .... that's Dr Evil

Click to expand...

I is only 80kg ............and 5'8" on a good day

A lot of Britpart items there hope you are not replacing them again in a fortnight.