Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

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mercrocker
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by mercrocker »

cros wrote: Tue Apr 06, 2021 8:21 pm Great stuff. A warning to would be purchasers to look beyond a cars appearance.
And the "repair" bills, evidently.......
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by richardthestag »

next part of Range Rover fun

This is the original drivers door from the 1971 RR ex-bobtail project which I am now building up for a customer. The skin was wrecked and there was a hulking big dent pushing the bottom hinge rearwards quite a long way. This is the latch edge of the door shell, amazingly clean and relatively rust free.
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Alas this is the hinge edge, tadts, the door shell is a single pressing of mild steel, then there are reinforcing pieces spot welded onto the insides. LR or whoever made them for LR never saw fit to put anything at all on the bare steel before assembling. Thus you end up with this sort of mess. Even happens on the 4 doors too. Can be repaired but the door has other challenges. watch this space
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The bonnet for the Portuguese Range Rover has been painted, stored on top of another RR to keep it safe and I spotted this stamp. never seen one of these before. Not a date I believe as there is only one single country on the planet that uses the MM/DD/YY format and last time I looked there were only 12 months in a year.
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Bonnet and deck installed, Looks nice. Just need to be nice to the paint while fitting up.
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Bought a ledge and brace door from a salvage yard to replace the old interior firedoor that was disintegrating. Easy to fit and cuts another draft out of the workshop.
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Driving the red stag to check it out after MOT I found that the diff nose bearing (sits on the subframe and supports a quill shaft that joins propshaft and diff) was howling like a banshee. I spoke to the owner who had just paid a specialist quite a lot of money to rebuild the diff because of this noise. I cannot comment because I don't know how bad the diff was before. It is very nice indeed now. The flange nut was rather tight, my weight on the 4 ft scaffold bar made it shift but I was ready to lob it all in the bastard skip. While it was apart I welded a couple of reinforcing strips as it is a common-ish fracture point. New quality bearing from an EU source, rather than some fucking cheapo Chinese shit made to a cost rather than quality, was installed
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Now onto the back end of the Brown Portuguese RR, them Iberian mechanics are fucking hopeless, leaking rear cylinders, wafer thin discs, broken a-frame joint all had to be fixed. This chappie is the BOGE levelling strut, if the damper/piston can be moved it is fucked. This one was fucked.
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Next up, my customer has made up his mind about original 4 speed LT95 gearbox or LT77/BW transfer box. Having access to the 70k mile unit that was test driven by Tim the parts man prior to removing from the donor made up his mind. Right then, this lot has to come out now. Not an issue and less than an hour to get it out.
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Now onto some of the alignment issues, when the car was bobtailed the original goalpost was also hacked about so to transport it I just lobbed it together. However when I hung the rear wings on it looked like a banana.
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By bolting the new lower crossmember section to the chassis and fitting the lower tailgate to it, I had a reference post for the rear wings and inner wings. I jacked the rear body up until it lined up and then welded a couple of plates into place to hold it there.
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More to come
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by richardthestag »

I whole post about the 1971 RR ex-bobtailed jobby now

No more banana shape, that's good news eh
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The inner wing is too low at the back, compared to the outerwing which fits the B post and the d post. Just need to split a weld and it will soon line up.
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At least stuff is sort of lining up now. Something I can work with.
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This is a 1990 LT77 5 speed box and Borg Warner transfer box with automatic viscous centre diff lock. Nice box, very clean on the inside. Need to get a V8 bellhousing and sort out the chassis mounts which were a ballsacre I had yet to find out about.
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Next up, engines or boat anchors. A chap contacted me via youtube, he had 4 RV8s, two in bits and 2 runners with carbs and loads of stuff at an attractive price. Very long story cut shorter, I went to a load of effort to borrow a mates L200, get it insured and drive it 200mile round trip to see a huge pile of scrap and used engine parts. blocks with pistons seized into bores, blocks with no bearing caps, loads of alloy carbs and inlet manifolds all stored out in the open sea air. All corroded to fuck.

Massively unimpressed but what can you do. Anyway two complete engines, one seized but the other turns. Great big long diatribe, mostly bollocks about EFI cams and duplex chains, but assured that it was a runner and recently rebuilt. FFS and to try save a day I said I would go for it. Lifted it into the back of the L200 and tipped it onto the side and 5 litres of water poured out of it! I should have tied it to his house and driven the truck away. That it turned gave me some hope. Got it back to my workshop and got another 5 litres of water out of the sump followed by 4 litres of cappuccino.

Because the engine had been on it's side and I believed the shite about rebuild I opted to haul the heads off and ensure that the bores were clean and dry.

This is one side, yeah, that is sand!
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Standard 3.5" bores and OE standard 10.5:1 pistons, no sign of a rebuild. lots of heavy duty wear though
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quite a few heavy scores like these. ffs the camshaft looks fucked too.
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Flipped it over and pulled the sump off, standard crank, unmachined but with new cheapo bearings installed.

It will rebuild but not anytime soon. The heads are in good shape but pre 76, so less useful. Waterpump, front cover, block and crank are all serviceable, the rockers shafts are well worn but have some life left in them. I reckon the rest is scrap. The cam is as worn as I have ever seen, half of the hydraulic tappets have collapsed and I cannot understand how this thing every fucking ran. yet he installed a duplex chain kit for some fucking reason that I cannot fathom.

Experience is a marvellous thing. Luckily I didn't pay that much for it. Plus en route to this debacle I visited another yootoob follower who donated £hundreds worth of nos parts and special tools. You win some and you lose some
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Anyway now half my workshop bench is covered with fucked rover v8 parts. I hauled the LT95 out and fitted used old stock roof rail to get the body frame back up to full length
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And installed the LT77
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More to come
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by AutoshiteBoy »

Excellent.
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by richardthestag »

mix of RR stuff in this post

BOGE levelling strut was fitted to allow for super soft and comfy springs to be used at the back of the original "classic" Range Rover. This gave a massively comfortable ride, especially so for 1970 when the car was first launched. To be honest even in 2021 it is still pretty damned smooth when in good order.

The BOGE unit will level the back end of the car up, BUT only as the car starts to move forwards after loading. Basically The piston/RAM pivots the a-frame on the back axle and raises the chassis. Dead simple concept and works well. Beware of expensive ebay BOGE units where the piston can be compressed.

One of my used old stock, working BOGE units fitted with new balljoints and ready to refit to the car.
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Here is the 1971 heater unit stripped down prepped and painted with satin rustoleum
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This is the passenger side top rail for the bodyframe, joins the tops of the A-B and D posts. Obviously as part of the bobtail I had lost a big chunk out of mine. Rather than cut and splice I opted to replace the whole section and weld it back where the factory welded them originally. Just needed the donor parts. These came from Holland.
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I also got busy with drilling spotwelds and salvaging parts and brackets that are needed replicating or refitting to the body frame. Too cold to do out else.
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Next up I fitted the brand new DDS inner front wings, cheaper than some of the bits that fit better I had to fanny around a bit to establish exactly where the issue was. Alas this meant installing a lot of stuff which is all coming off again. But at least I know it fits. No springs are fitted to the axles still, hence the lowrider look
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Everything lines up, going to use a different passenger door to this one, although the passenger door can be repaired there is a shit load of work involved and I have a far better unit in the container that the customer bought from my personal collection.
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Worst bit about this bonnet. I have two to choose from and to be honest neither is that difficult to fix properly
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This is the gear selector from the top of the LT77 gearbox. The customer wants me to give the car a long stick look like with the original LT95 where the gearstick comes out right at the base of the dash.
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This is the inside of the box, told you it was clean! However the selector is not compatible with the defender LT77 gearstick adapter that I bought
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here it is. Luckily ashcroft transmission to an adapter that modifies the selector rod to accept this type of selector. Easy enough to fit but the reverse selector ring lock needs modification
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More to come
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by Hooli »

Ahh that's a familiar view of a LT77, I was once staring at it by the side of the road near the Dartford crossing when my Disco jammed in 5th slowing for the toll booths. I managed to get it away from the booths by pulling away in low range, then after 10-15mins looking into the box & swearing I decided to just chug home in 5th. Cue shifting to high range when flat out in low 5th, a massive bang & the box worked again.

A couple of months later it died again and turned out to be a failed bearing on the layshaft, which also explained why it'd feel like it was locking & releasing in reverse. The gears where climbing off each other & jamming.
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by richardthestag »

last part this time

I went out and bought another v8, the idea is to install a running v8 into the 1971 project and use the funds saved elsewhere on the project. This one came from parts man Tim. He paid buttons for it and I lobbed him a cheeky offer and collected it from Northest Norfolk the very next day, think I am going to buy the L200 of my chum, makes a far better work vehicle than my poor daily 1993 RR. Anyway the deal is that the EFI hotwire setup is Tim's, the rest is mine.
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Before installing it I set it up to check oil pressure and compressions. oil pressure light goes out within 2 seconds of cranking which is nice. Cam is worn but not horrendously so. No black death.
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compressions were no encouraging, but bear in mind it has sat in a dry shed for 3 + years. valve seats might not be the cleanest. The situation continued to improve the more I cranked the engine. Even came with a brand new set of spark plugs. lol. some you win
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A nice set of brand new Goodyear Wrangler 235s fitted with tubes to the steel wheels for the Portuguese car. Same as I have fitted to my daily. They are pretty good at £120 a corner (inc tube) fitted.
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Back to the 1971 RR ex-bobtail I swapped the gearbox cover for a later LT77 type but still had to cut quite aa lot of it to get it to fit properly. Then I fitted the heater box and the centre section of the dash. The Defender longstick adapter fits.
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Juggling projects, back onto the Portuguese RR I found that the lift pump was disconnected and assumed plastic fuel tank would have a submersible pump. After fucking around for 2 non-billable hours trying to fix the electric supply, I found that the in tank unit is just a pick up. That the original lift pump was fucked which is why it was disconnected. The fuel was being drawn up by the injector pump which must have been working hard to draw it all the way from the tank. Anyway after a number of aborted calls to JLR traders and being told it is no longer available I found the part number. And found that it is widely used in Italy in marine applications but also here in the UK on JCB. New unit delivered next day £60 - unobtainium my arse. and £120 cheaper than the last listed price from Land Rover parts counter.
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and back to 1971 ex bobtail - After fitting the new cam, followers, chain and gears The 20p nylon bush that the clutch release arm pivots on arrived eventually and allowed me to fit the engine to the chassis.
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Gearbox mounts had to be changed. For the 6 years or so that LR used the VM engine they had special anti vibration mounts fitted to engine and gearbox. The rubber section is now unobtainium, bastards. Don't need them for the engine but the gearbox will need something. Alas the metal bracket that bolts to the chassis and the brackets that bolt to the gearbox itself are totally fucking unique to these unobtainium mountings. Got buy with a parts manual and working with Parts man Tim managed to cobble together the parts I needed from various sources to mount the gearbox using the more common, made from fucking cheese, bobbin mounts.

Alas now the front prop is touching the gearbox cross member. This style of crossmember was only used on the LT95 installations. The LT77 and then the BW transferbox had three further iterations of crossmember. they all mount onto the same holes on the chassis. Luckily I have been able to source a suitable crossmember which I will fit
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Need to get this car finished early May... 2021

oooo

More to come, hopefully followed by a more relaxed workload.

Calendar is booked up solid to July / August which is brilliant
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by Hooli »

Sounds like the business is going great too then.
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by mercrocker »

Nice posts, not easy when you're busy...!
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Re: Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

Post by AutoshiteBoy »

Like a true Land Rover enthusiast, you have a Mitsubishi to do the hard work. I've been saying for years that this is the way forward.
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