Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

[richardthestag]

Next up is good old Red shed, 1971 A suffix 2 door range rover. The first one I bought.

I had a customer who was looking for a car to restore himself, this one kind of took his fancy but the deal was sealed when I was able to provide a list of previous owners and it turned out the original owner lived barely 4 miles away from his home. The original owner, a farmer, had it until 1984.

Anyway, this is what it looked like when I first bought it.

20160525_153926.jpg (745.18 KiB) Viewed 632 times

The customer wasn't keen on the Wood and Pickett wheels nor arches. I did check with W&P whether this was one of their conversions but they had binned all the records. Yeah thanks for that. Anyway swapped out the wheels for a set of early RR rostyles. Sold the wolfraces to a gent in Shetland Islands

The customer got in touch with me late last year as they were kind of scratching their head on where to go next. I agreed to spend a long weekend working on the car. In that time I would not only re align and repair the chassis but would also share this world of knowledge with my customer.

Those who work with me know that I do not bill for every minute I am on site. This takes the joy away mainly as I do not want a customer to frown if I take a 5 min breather etc. It is also impossible to do this at a fixed price because I had no idea what we might find.

By the end of the weekend we agreed that the customer had invested 18h of my time, longer than it would take me but then there was lots of me explaining how I tackle a task rather than just getting on with it. Added to this was £150 of travel and hotel.

Customer was delighted and confident that he could inch forwards.

The first thing I did, no photo sorry, was remove the remains of the front inner wings. They more fell off thanks to gravity than any real effort. We stripped down and removed the bulkhead from the chassis. Mainly because the two chassis mountings had collapsed and most of the body was sitty on the chassis rather than on the mountings. There was enough remaining of the bulkhead mounts that I could tack the new mounts back into place on the bulkhead once all the remains had been removed.

The bulkhead was then refitted to the chassis and with mounts now fitted acted as our reference point. This then allowed us to lift the body, which was still good on the rear cross member mounts but nothing else, to match the height of the bulkhead. there are a line of 5/16 bolt holes down the forward edge of the a-post which corresponded to remains of the bulkhead side panel, there is also the windscreen aperture to use.

Anyway with the bulkhead and a-post now aligned we could weld together the LH inner and outer sills and fit them on mounts to the chassis. This is aligned to the rear floor and b-post.

Pretty much sums up this photo

20230115_113208.jpg (194.24 KiB) Viewed 632 times

Here you can see the bulkhead side panel remains and just about make out 3 of the 4 bolt holes on the leading edge of the a-post. even with this much dereliction the bulkhead and windscreen aperture are pretty stable.

20230115_113217.jpg (192.36 KiB) Viewed 632 times

The bottom of the p-post, like the a-post is floating free and some distance from the sill section. However the rear floor section and the inside face of the b-post give us good reliable reference for the body frame alignment.

20230115_113224.jpg (164.64 KiB) Viewed 632 times

Gives you an impression of the scope of work, this being the passenger front footwell. You can understand why the customer might have sharted themselves and reached for the CHC hotline

20230115_113228.jpg (184.8 KiB) Viewed 632 times

The RH side is as supplied. much rather see them like this that have 19 MOT patches over the top of each other. The customer is going to do the RH side though

20230115_113244.jpg (185.28 KiB) Viewed 632 times

Here I have made up the lower section of the a-post and attached it to the sill. This now becomes the reference point so I can remove the remains on the bulkhead side panel

20230115_153903.jpg (149.1 KiB) Viewed 632 times

The bottom of the a-post was cut from a repair panel. They are not great and are designed to fit over the top of the remains of the old. Easy to chop it in half and slice it together to create a seamless repair. The rest of the a-post btw is about as good as I have seen on a project car. It was full of expanding foam though which is why we cut out a section of the forward face to push it all out

20230115_153912.jpg (154.39 KiB) Viewed 632 times

Not easy to see here but the bulkhead side has been fitted, using bolt holes from a-post to align it and then plug welded back to the bulkhead.

Next up is to bash the crap out of the footwell panels to get it to fit.

20230115_192943.jpg (157.35 KiB) Viewed 632 times

The radius at the base of the footwell repair section is different from the bulkhead side to the gearbox cover. for some reason they never fold them right but with some bravery and knowledge of what needs to happen you can get to this point.

Weldathon finished and going for a pint or 3

20230115_193841.jpg (169.83 KiB) Viewed 632 times

[richardthestag]

end of a long week.

few beers down and supper on the way

1973 B suffix project first up

Fitted up a new fuel tank, they are not massively heavy but bastards to get fitted. this is my one bloke in a shed approach to the job. Once the bolts are in then the support is removed of course

20230129_144506.jpg (187.6 KiB) Viewed 599 times

Customer asked me to fit the boot floor, no issues here but it just doesn't sit right.

20230201_164254.jpg (124.29 KiB) Viewed 599 times

FFS used a banana as a straight edge. Bugger all I can do about that without resorting to angle grinder, welding and more money. so popped on hold

20230201_164236.jpg (165.53 KiB) Viewed 599 times

Here final stages of assembly to get it running and stopping

20230204_175329.jpg (190.45 KiB) Viewed 599 times

which of course it did

20230212_135802.jpg (219.27 KiB) Viewed 599 times

not without incident though... customer supplied high pressure power steering hose exploded. Most of the fluid was around the engine bay and out in the access road. the pool outside the workshop was what dripped off after the explosion.

20230212_172805.jpg (209.75 KiB) Viewed 599 times

March this year, the snow is melting and I need to relocate the project stock back to my yard. This bastard started on the first turn of the key after 2 years. Got to love the Landy 2.25 Petrol engine

20230309_112058.jpg (193.56 KiB) Viewed 599 times

Here it is tucked out of pikey err hem harms way in my yard. Bob the 1971 ex-bobtailed RR was in for an underbody treatment. Not my favourite job but the owner is a good and gracious customer

20230311_124752.jpg (184.34 KiB) Viewed 599 times

This is a rover v8 distributor a customer bought as a working unit. seized almost solid through rust. I stripped, cleaned and reassembled it. made a monster improvement to his RR

20230414_163206.jpg (248.77 KiB) Viewed 599 times

More to come

[richardthestag]

Hot one today, fucking beautiful day. rather be a heretic than a slave to the false prophesy of MMGW

Anyway

Customer of mine is doing a lot of the build himself and is determined to powercoat every single part of the undercroft of his 2 door Range Rover. His car, his rules. Must say I have seen the rolling chassis assembled and it does look good, different but good.

Anyway his issue is that he stripped 4 axles, to build two for his car. wants ABS and with my advise chose the correct two axle casings to weld up and coat. then he came unstuck. had no idea where to go next. He sent me 2 axles and about 3cwt of rust to assemble into 2 working axles that he could bolt back up to his chassis.

Here i am working out the depth from the base of the output shaft to the top of the pinion on one of the diffs. this will help me to understand which of the 2 sets of bearings and crown wheels is right for the axle.. Luckily pinion and crown wheel are engraved with a number that does match them. Caps and bearings however are not

20230302_153630.jpg (141.76 KiB) Viewed 560 times

After a bit of jiggery pokery I was able to reunite original parts into original casings. here I am working on the backlash. on these old rover diffs there is no need for shims to do this. and it can be done quite easily when you know how

20230303_132712.jpg (140.81 KiB) Viewed 560 times

Before refitting the assembled diff, the casing for which was full of grit blast media which I spend hours cleaning out, I flucked and cleaned all the blast media out of.. Army method is right. grit blast before disassembly, paint after assembly

20230306_162822.jpg (207.89 KiB) Viewed 560 times

Here is the front axle stuff that I had to work with. another issue I had to deal with was re-cutting every single thread because it had 3 microns of powder coat on it!!! On top of all that I had to find fixings from bags of rusty fixings... I quickly gave up and fitted new stuff to oe standard as it would save the customer hours of my time..

20230307_165055.jpg (205.36 KiB) Viewed 560 times

Rear axle diff fitted to the cleaned axle

20230307_175725.jpg (216.66 KiB) Viewed 560 times

Front axle assembled and all preloads set. all those driveshafts underneath were supplied by the customer. none of them was correct for the ABS front axle. I suspect that over the years of disassembly of the 4 axles, he had acquired a shed load more stuff and lobbed it at me. No wonder he was confused. I had to work hard to get this all together

20230321_184605.jpg (207.34 KiB) Viewed 560 times

This is a happy shot of me, Easter Saturday, my brother (uncle Albert) and my nephew in the RN who was heavily involved in the Coronation events. The image is not blurred, it was my state of inebriation that caused the blur.

20230408_210554.jpg (134.68 KiB) Viewed 560 times

After Easter and back in my yard I took My dads 1972 RR back for some corrective stuff, he is selling it because his new squeeze doesn't like riding in old cars... yeah I know... anyway he and her are very happy

Anyway I took this photo for my business instagram account, "one of these car is 8 years old than the other, but which is which?"

Landy fraternity were 100% correct, will you lot be?

20230412_161931.jpg (181.91 KiB) Viewed 560 times

More to come

[richardthestag]

Back to that Lincoln Green project. I kind of want it out of the workshop but the owner is a proper solid bloke. I like him and also feel badly that had I realised how shit his car was when it arrived for a small job I just would have advised him to start again... But he is now at the point where he wants to keep it and the money he has spent outweighs the shit condition of the rear end of the body frame.

I get this a lot and work hard to explain to my customers, no matter how great it looks, it is a 30year old plus Range Rover (and mostly) which only looks great because of the plastic and paper bodges..... This car has had way more than it's share. every single area where they might rot it has, BUT then it has also rotted in places that they do not usually and this is because of the filler and newspaper bodges.. I have yet to be able to date any of the newspaper, my customer is keen to find any evidence .. some fucker done this shit on purpose to rinse someone and this chap is not someone who will take a rinsing. Like I said I get on well with him, no fucking way would I try con him.

So there is a world of stuff that build up to this, my original brief is some way in the past, John wants me to look into the seemingly ok B posts and boot floor area. well when I start digging there was fuck all but filler connecting the RH driver side piller to the sill.

Here is a repair to the inside of the d-post that I pulled away with just my hands. or Lord

20230329_181823.jpg (121.2 KiB) Viewed 556 times

Here is the back of the b-post. looks ok but for the sludge of filler

20230329_181846.jpg (199.4 KiB) Viewed 556 times

which is what prompted me to agree with my customer to cut it all out and go back to factory. It might seem a bit harsh but will ultimately save money

20230330_135434.jpg (210.61 KiB) Viewed 556 times

The b-post, now liberated of filler, was attached to the sill with steel

20230403_181720.jpg (168.32 KiB) Viewed 556 times

and welded to the inner floor rather than glued

20230403_181725.jpg (132.74 KiB) Viewed 556 times

fucking drivers door now shuts each and every time perfectly

20230403_181731.jpg (171.28 KiB) Viewed 556 times

panels are not that expensive. not as cheap as filler though

20230412_163418.jpg (170.35 KiB) Viewed 556 times

here is the LH nearside boot floor after I attacked the smooth satin black surface with a zip wheel

20230417_115324.jpg (173.12 KiB) Viewed 556 times

the outside was worse.. double skinned wheel arch

20230417_115331.jpg (184.96 KiB) Viewed 556 times

There are more horrors to come but for now the customer agrees, cut the whole fucking lot out

20230417_115334.jpg (168.3 KiB) Viewed 556 times

[Eddie Honda]

Anyway I took this photo for my business instagram account, "one of these car is 8 years old than the other, but which is which?"

Landy fraternity were 100% correct, will you lot be?


20230412_161931.jpg

Range Rover is older. Just look at the state of it with wing mirror and stainless wiper arms. Positively ancient.

[Hooli]

Anyway I took this photo for my business instagram account, "one of these car is 8 years old than the other, but which is which?"

Landy fraternity were 100% correct, will you lot be?


20230412_161931.jpg

Range Rover is older. Just look at the state of it with wing mirror and stainless wiper arms. Positively ancient.

I think the LR is a s3, so can't be older than about 1980? I forget when they came out.

[NorfolkNWeigh]

I think it’s a trick question and that Range Rover is newer than it appears, the wheels look too wide to me, which point to a Kingsley type RestoMod of a 1980’s Portuguese 2 door . Range Rovers are like 911’s, in that people will spend tens of thousands making them look old.

I’m not a rivet counter by any means, so just go on gut feeling, but is that 109 a Stage1 ? It looks very straight for an old working Land Rover. My guess S3 1981, RR 1987.

[paulplom]

Would they have had wing mirrors in '87?

[Eddie Honda]

Having mostly paid attention to this Fred, I reckon it's these two:

9b0e23_e3062b9282054f7699967a397a4371be~mv2.jpg (39.21 KiB) Viewed 480 times

[NorfolkNWeigh]

Would they have had wing mirrors in '87?

No they moved in 1976/7, but these restomod Johnnies change everything. Although fucking Rainman has proved my theory about it being a trick question wrong by conjuring up pictures from his photographic memory!