Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

[Scruffy Bodger]

No updates from Mr Stag lately then...

[SiC]

He's still doing videos, so he is still about.

[AutoshiteBoy]

He was the only reason I visited Autoshite when they banned me.

[richardthestag]

I am around, just been full on busy which is great news. I have an absolute wedge of stuff to post here but all of it will have been through the yootoob channel already.

anyway here we go with CHC updates since the last time I posted... checks back... what the fuck happened to Jan, Feb and March?

Had another staaag in the workshop. Short list of things to fix extended as I uncovered bodge after bodge. Been off the road for quite a while. New owner pushed it back into service and then contacted me as it just wasn't right. Bodily the car is a beauty, very clean and tidy, sitting on 24+ year old tyres

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Managed to get the drivers door open when wouldn't because the door locked with the key and then the rod dropped off the latch. Oddly on these mk1 stags there is a spring required to unlock the door from this inside and this was also broken. Meant that I had to crawl in from the passengerside and remove the door trim before flicking the catch to open the door.

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The brakes were a complete shambles, a specialist local to the owner had been working on the car and to be frank it was fooking dangerous.

They had fitted new rear cylinders but not fixed them to the back plate, the rear flexi hoses were decades old - possibly not been changed since the 1980s.

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The rear auto adjusters were not set up correctly and would never have worked

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and the handbrake linkages were not working hence the crap and ineffective hand brake. New parts were fitted throughout along with new flexis throughout and some new rigid pipes. Quite why someone would fit new calipers to old flexis is beyond me. brakes bled and had a nice firm pedal. Alas on the move the pedal slowly got lower and lower unless you let go and then it would bite high again. No pumping would make the pedal behave, I could lock the wheels up but then next time I dabbed the brakes the pedal would be at the floor, accelerate and the brakes were back to normal. Turned out that the seals between the two circuits inside the master had failed and this allowed the fluid to run from one chamber to the other rather than to the corners of the car. Easy fix with a new master cylinder and a quick rebleed.

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Fuel filler wouldn't lock which was an easy fix but essential to the owner. It felt like rearranging the deckchairs on Titanic

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On both front seats the original rubber diaphragm had failed. Owner hadn't noticed, danger is that the nice seat covers would soon tear, so I replaced the rubber part before rebuilding the seat base back up again.

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The car had a world of electric niggles, Prince of Darkness and all that stuff which I worked around. Biggest problem was the nail like fuses fitted inside the fusebox. Dodgy dry joints and tired connectors were all over the place but soon fixed.

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Last main job before MOT was to rebuild the carbs and give the car a damned good tune up. Even this uncovered a catalogue of shit. Carb butterfly installed upside down, dashpot piston jammed and meter needle not attached to the adjuster! All fixed with a complete refurb and a nice £130 kit from Zenith carbs.

Then I found that the ignition timing was running at 25degree btdc because the distributor was installed incorrectly. FFS

MOT passed with no real issues

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Owner now has the car back but it would appear that there are some coolant related issues to deal with. Inlet manifold and/or water pump seals may have failed

Watch this space

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[LynehamHerc]

Nice to see you back.

[brandersnatch]

Nice update. Thanks for taking the time.

[Hooli]

Sounds like you're busy, nice to see you about though.

[cros]

Great stuff. A warning to would be purchasers to look beyond a cars appearance.

[richardthestag]

Portuguese 1990 2 door Range Rover next. You have already seen the lions share of rhd conversion work above. But the worklist was some way off completion. Still is in fact. MoT booked for this friday and hope to drive it back to the owner in an extended test drive on Monday.

My used old stock parts man recently had a VM engined 4 door car in, he doesn't always break cars up but this one was rotten, very rotten! But it had only done 70k miles. I had the dash, front seats, gearbox, props, all 4 doors and a load of other bits for this project and also the 1971. He done well out of me

this is the dash top that I bought, all very nice and tidy except for the dealer fitted alarm system sensors in the corners of the dash

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This is the remains of the Portuguese dash, happens to the hard plastics when subjected to long periods of very hot sunshine. So although the dash is good for RHD or LHD configurations this one wasn't used.

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The front seat covers from the donor VM car were used to retrim the tired 2 door seats.

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The covers and foams come off the seats as a single unit and are in pretty good shape, except for the odd mouse nest or two

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this is a common fracture point on the manually adjusted seats, be they 2 or 4 door. alas the seat base is not interchangeable between 2 and 4 door seats because of the tilt mechanism. Cleaned it up and welded..

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Passenger seat is almost done, I was so impressed that I contacted the parts man Tim to buy the drivers seat from the donor

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Scuttle panel is different for LHD/RHD installations because of the wiper holes. I had to measure 55times before committing to cutting the holes. Once done and after a trial fit it went off to Steve the Body for prep and paint. Along with the bottom tailgate and bonnet.

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The other issue with the deck panel was that the passenger side was dented/pushed down quite a lot. Reckon someone had stood on it at some point. Managed to get it back into shape

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And the donor drivers seat comes apart for the covers to be reused / upcycled into the project

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more to come

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

And 'specialists'. Wankers.

Any mechanic with a bit of pride and a feel for what's right can repair a Stag, as well as a Haynes manual and an ability to listen and learn. I used to fix Alfas 25+ years ago and it was comedy undoing the fuck ups of specialists.