What to buy - basket case and new chassis, or runner? (Defender 110)

Im in two minds as to what i should do -

We want another motor, and it will be a 110 truck cab, with a 300tdi.

The two options are -

Buy something very ropy, pretty much for the book, and body panels. Say £500ish
Buy a new chassis - £2200ish
Use the 300tdi / r380 from my donor disco (i know the gearbox will need altering)
Say another £1000 for all the other bits thereafter (right off the top of my head figure, with no calculation at all!)
End up with a very nice vehicle for around £4k

Or -

Buy a runner with an mot, say £2500, and patch for ever after.


I dont have a whole load of knowledge, so option one would be very slow - but half of the benefit would be that id gain knowledge. The cost would be that it would take ages, cost more.

I have one, single, parking space (at the back of the plot). Ive got an engine crane and all that, and, whilst i dont have specific knowledge, i come from a technical background.


I guess what i should be asking is, do you think £1k is realistic to convert a ropey 110, a breaker disco, and a new chassis, into a working truck, or will i just end up leaking way more money on it? Im a skinflint, so i know how to scratch, but you always have to spend something...

As a fellow skinflint, If I had all the donor parts lying around, and the time to build a truck from scratch, thats what I would do.

It all depends on the time really. The problem with building from scratch is that you may wish to "Improve" slightly on original spec and call consumable parts (Clutch, Bushes, Dampers, Brakes) should be replaced new, which will will eat into your £1k - however you will have a truck you know inside and out, and the knowledge that all the main bits are right.

My 2p anyway

Same here, if I had that budget it'd be old ****e, new chassis, improve as you learn.

I did it the hard way, <2k 90, added bits off the Disco whilst the Landy was running still. Now, I'd try to do it as above, off the road, new chassis with all the bits ready to go on or to be made .. synopsis https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/paul-ds-1989-90.271544/ .. full build .. https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/my-new-old-defender.248534/

defo new chassis if money was there

Money isnt there - but we need another motor, so it has to be found from somewhere.

We currently have a 300tdi disco (not the breaker - another one, that's on the road) and the 101 (which is near to being back on the road - but that's a camper rather than a hauling building materials) so currently living with one car, but its too much of a liability - living in the middle of nowhere, and getting two people to work with one car...

The disco is rough. The body / chassis isnt bad, but the paint is awful, and all the little things on the inside are broken. Plan to sort it with the bits from the breaker, as my partner likes it.



So, the plan is to get the 101 sorted for backup emergency use (and for holidays etc)
Smarten up the disco, and my partner can have that as her car.
Get a 110 truck cab for hauling wood, sand etc. (as in im not fussed about it being shiny, but i want it to be sound)


We could live with the disco, and the 101 as the backup for a while, so its not like i need it sorted immediately, but, at the same time, im wanting it to be months (up to 6 maybe) rather than years. I just dont want it to be one of those ones that costs way more, and takes way longer than ever expected.

Ebay is littered with 'unfinished projects' and im not keen on adding my name to the list.

Ive been looking about for rough 110s

Considering you can get a 110 with a dubious mot (ie full 12 months, sold by a part time dealer) for a little over a grand (on the right day) off ebay, somthing like this -

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/252115071915

does not seem such a good idea (unless, i guess, the chassis and bulkhead are good - but then that begs the question as to why it was stripped!)


Can someone enlighten me as to how much of my scrap disco i could use on something like the one in the link, and how much id have to buy / acquire?
And any very very rough figures from anyone who's done this (obviously that would be very relative to the end finish, but just to give me more of an idea?

One thing I've found in Landy ownership and which directly relates to that ebay listing .. the rust you can see on the surface of a chassis is often way less than the rust inside the chassis. If you go to look at it, or consider something similar, take a small ball pein hammer and tap it sharply like hitting a drum .. all over ... the metal should 'ring', if you get dull thuds it's rusty. There is a chance it's surface rust, but the hammer ring will tell the truth.

I would go the new chassis way if I had the time and the money. Good luck finding anything, however rotten for 500 quid though.

hughesy said:

I would go the new chassis way if I had the time and the money. Good luck finding anything, however rotten for 500 quid though.

Click to expand...

+1
For £500 the body panels will have a lot of rot too. It certainly wont have a bulkhead of any use. So your £1K won't go very far. Galv bulkhead to go with your galv chassis will approx £900.

You would be really lucky to find a 110 for £500
Buy something Half decent and run it while you save at least £4-5k

I think you'll struggle to find anything much for £500. If you do, you'll struggle even more with a £1000 budget which will soon get eaten up in something like that.
I tend to buy something half decent, some mot etc, for say £2500ish. Your £1000 budget is looking better then, for parts alone that is, what you've got to bare in mind is, body panels are expensive, good ones anyway, so better to start with something half decent.
If you can weld all the better, as a cheap 90/110 will likely need some welding on either the doors/bulkhead.
It also depends how particular you are, I can't usually bring myself to bolt rusty/crappy looking shit'e back on, so is either more time cleaning and painting or money replacing.
The first 90 I rebuilt cost a smidge over £1000 on parts, but also included paint for a respray. So it can be done provided you've something reasonable to work with.
I have gotten worse build after build, every one seems to cost more than the last, but that's just me raising my own standards, even if their was nothing wrong with the last.

But yes.. The long and short of it, go down the rebuild route, saves casing your tail every year if buying something cheap, and you'll know it inside out by the time you're done.

Just to give another side of the coin.
I personally would buy a rough one and run it around around until either the mot is up or some thing goes bang in a big way.
At the end of it you will know what needs repairing or improving and can go from over time whereas if you buy a wreck you may end up ripping down axles etc as you can't tell if they will last.
Don't know if it's just me but I need to click with a landy before I spent a lot of money restoring it, mind you when I do click I tend to never sell it but luckily that's only happened once otherwise I would have barns full of them.

Has anything been bought yet?

If it was me I'd try and find something whose problems most closely match the skills and equipment I have available. For example I haven't got a welder at the moment but I do have a lot of spanners. So I'm working on mine on and off as a sort of rolling rebuild, having selected one without any holes in the chassis or bulkhead. So I'll be interested to see how you get on.