Land Rover Rustorashun and other shit

[Hooli]

I'd always thought you were running the business out of your dad's barn till now.

[richardthestag]

I'd always thought you were running the business out of your dad's barn till now.

I was but shifted to a workshop nearer my wife and home when it became available.

[NoelTidybeard]

I'd always thought you were running the business out of your dad's barn till now.

I was but shifted to a workshop nearer my wife and home under threat of death or worse.

EFA

[richardthestag]

I'd always thought you were running the business out of your dad's barn till now.

I was but shifted to a workshop nearer my wife and home under threat of death or worse.

EFA

ish, it was more about saving my liver from identifying as a solid fuel tablet

[Back_For_More]

Always in awe of you pulling shit off and putting things back together..... Is the move complete now orr still ongoing?

[richardthestag]

Always in awe of you pulling shit off and putting things back together..... Is the move complete now orr still ongoing?

all done, dad even sold his lovely home to be sure that I wasn't lured back again. Got himself a new Doris (Muther Thestag passed away over a decade ago) and the poor old sod was getting lonely. Now he has a very nice sea view appt in Woolacombe to enjoy

Anyway. I have a 10 post marathon to bring us up to date. be patient as it is going to take me a while.

[richardthestag]

right here we go, am such a lazy cunt that we have to go back to November last year, I have tried to bundle the projects into some reasonable order so that the posts flow a bit better.

This particular project is a 1973 B suffix Range Rover bought by a good customer down in Bodmin. Turned out that it was first registered on the day he was born. Suffice to say it is a keeper.

He bought the car incomplete and in many boxes from a scrapyard where the previous owners widow sent it The bodyshell was 99.9% rebuilt although every panel was fabricated. Real labour of love this one

My brief was to get it weather tight, as assembled as possible, with working mechanicals and brakes so it could be more easily moved about.


Windscreen went in, eventually. The bulkhead to a pillar alignment was out by about 1cm on each side. It was a sphincter clencher but we got there in the end. Pilkington laminated screens are rather nice too. Screen rubber was new from Britpart and somewhat unusually seemed to be a good fit

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as a quick distraction, steve the body has owned this 240 for over 15 years. the body has been completely welded up. I have a wager of one bottle of Grouse that my own car gets on the road before this one. He is confident of a victory. 7 months later and not a lot has changed in either camp

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This is kind of the start point on the inside, the transmission tunnel is out because there is a biblical amount of endfloat on the gearbox mainshaft. and the customer wants me to install an overdrive. The loom is a new autosparks jobby which I need to connect up. The heater came out because nobody has touched it in decades and I am sure that it will be seized up.

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The 2 cream coloured doors came with the car and had been grit blasted. This had uncovered the usual rot but also badly damaged the birmabrit doorskins. The skins are available but at £400 a pop. The customer had sourced a pair of "rotfree" doors, they never are. But they are a much better start point than the originals

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The bottom edge is as good as I have ever seen and yes that Bogey green was a factory colour, early 1980s. Oddly enough quite rare to find

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The hinge edge which usually goes quite bad, just after the splash guard on the a-pillar rots through and the leading edge of the door is treated to road spray. These are good, very fucking good

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This is at the tail end of the front axle refurb. Springs and shocks were already fitted. I rebuilt each steering swivel with new gaskets and seals, set the preload and then fitted new standard discs and rebuild Lockheed calipers (Biggred) The car came with vented discs from a newer Range Rover classic but getting the calliper to fit onto an early axle is a ballache so customer opted for standard brakes on the understanding that they are just as easy to lock up and you really do have to work hard to over heat them

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I swapped one of my rear wing units for the remains of the two doors, the wing supplied had been hand made and was 1cm too long somehow. Now it all lines up perfectly.

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Here is DuckVader heaterbox stripped, cleaned, reassembled with new felts and seals. Just need a working motor and it can go back in. The smiths motor was used widely throughout the 1960s and 70s. Pay over the odds for a Range Rover or a lot less for a UOS MGB item?

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End of November and the view is not much different. However a shit load of sorting stuff out has happened. There were a lot of silly things that I needed to sort, get the loom done and still thinking about that Gearbox mainstaft end float. More of that later. The brake pedal box was from a 1980s RR and caused further confusion as the servo and master cylinder supplied and both in need of rebuild didn't fit it.

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More later while I enjoy a gin after a day at work

[richardthestag]

part 2

This is mainly around the end of last year and working on the mid 1970s lincoln green car. this thing really has been bodged badly as you will see over the coming posts.

The last time I featured this car I had just rebuilt the a-pillars and doors.

The engine block came from army surplass and was designed to fit a 101FC (not the Victor, my dad had one of those in estate form, then he had an FD 2000 estate. Both amazing cars at the time when everyone else was smoking around in Dagenham dustbins. Dad sold the FD when petrol went to 50p / gallon) The engine was built up with rover sd1 timing cover and p38 4 litre 10 bolt heads. Bit of a mix of stuff though my biggest issue came with the SD1 front timing cover. SD1 PAS pumps are like rocking horse shit and I could find no way to mount the Range Rover Holburn Eaton jobby. So after discussions with customer I swapped out the SD1 front cover and crank pulley for a Range Rover item with the high level water pump etc etc. Fucking shit loads of my time pissed away trying to get the original solution to work which I just couldn't bill. I also ended up with a load of SD1 parts and brackets - the good news is that I know how the rover v8 in the SD1 was configured - both early and later examples. I will get my money back sooner or later I guess.

Anyway enough rambling this is it in final config

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Range Rover PAS pump and brackets, new water pump pulley (who knew they were different between various Rover v8 installations. Range Rover crank pulley and finally right in the middle is the remains of the later 3.9 RR alternator bracket, designed to fit on the LH side of the engine reduced and adapted to fit above and not below the SD1 bracket on the RH side of the engine. It all works and standard belts are used.

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I have a serious problem with the clutter and crap that comes with each restoration. I am working hard to clear it down but it has recently dawned on me that I need less space and less benches to accumulate the crap rather than more etc.

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The captive nuts for the main bonnet catch are supposed to go here. This is not an uncommon issue. The good news is that the inner structure of the front end of all exposed hinge bonnets is aluminium and can be relatively easily repaired. Here a couple of strip of aluminium riveted onto the inside and then drilled will make for a secure bonnet lock

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This was early Dec 2022, temp was dropping below zero for long periods of time. my propane heater is noisy and not that powerful so I though. yeah run some red through this and cushty.

Three issues! 1.Mrs thestag wasnae impressed at the business expense, 2.you cannot get Red or even heating oil in small qualities around here so it was forecourt pump diesel (still cost me £10-15 a week to run so am happy with that) 3. running for long periods of time made my eyes sting some. So was used to heat the workshop, then switched off for an hour, then back on until my eyes started to sting again. and yes I have a carbon monoxide meter that is regularly tested when I start an engine up. Overall it gets a thumbs up

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Getting ready to fire the engine up for the first time and thought I might extract the fuel pickup from the tank... err yes, think I might run it from my old go cart fuel tank

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Made up some ends for a later front bumper - designed for wrap around plastic corners - to make it look like an earlier solid item. Customer was undecided about headlight washers so I left the holes in place

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Final check before start up found that whoever installed the gearbox cover had done so without allowance for the high / low range lever to operate. easy way was to cut the cover which had been installed and sikaflex bonded into place already. ffs, also found that the transfer box was bone dry and had been filled with heavy EP oil rather than 20w/50 as specified. Customer suggested that this was a rebuilt unit

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Once all the gearbox stuff was done and the floor area dynamatted to death. You really don't need this much but the customer insisted I trial fitted the customer supplied retrimmed seats. Really fucking like these. Very comfortable too

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And here we are, first start was a success, Engine builder insisted on a 2k run in for the cam for 20 mins despite my protestation about the risk of glazing the bores. His engine build so I did as he said and videoed every second of it.

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[richardthestag]

Back to the Blue 1973 B suffix

The carbs needed to come off the engine as they needed an overhaul. while there I would often remove the tin "valley" gasket to have a gander at the camshaft and followers. Quick call to the customer "Hi Dave, think I found out why your engine is back firing through the carbs"

Need to pull the head as there is zero compression on cylinder #6, the others are pretty healthy though.

Both heads were removed and sent to machine shop for skim, new guide and recut exhaust seat from broken cylinder. I think the valve was running tight when the customer dragged the engine back into life, if tapped the piston and then never shut properly again

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While heads were off started to look at gearbox,
mainshaft endfloat was caused by someone removing the overdrive unit that was fitted and not refitting the shims to the end of the mainshaft. As I will be refitting another overdrive unit this is quite easily corrected.

Next I fitted the propshafts and checked out the centre diff lock function only to find a monumental amount of backlash in the centre diff. It was removed and found to have a broken crossshaft pin. swapped it all out for another used old stock item. The rear output shaft was also excessively worn so was replaced with a new old stock.

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Transmission is now a lot better, but cannot test it until the engine is back together. Here is the transmission hand brake drum. Access to the parts is fairly easy even with the gearbox still fitted to the car

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Solved a workshop mess issue kind of, keeping track of which bits belong to which customer when there are a number of projects ongoing needs a lot of organisation.

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Onto the back axle, this is the LH end of the axle tube. hmmm drier than a witch's tit

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Stub axle was pretty ropey. Budget is running quite tight now because of all the shite that I have had to deal with. Executive decision was to leave the diff in place, vacuum the rust out, rebuild and fill with EP. this will need to be drained after the car has done a couple of miles and assessed.

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Interior panels finally together but even this was a bastard to do. the top edge of the sills are supposed to slope upwards slightly towards the rear floor and gearbox cover. The panels fabricated by the previous owner were flat and so some adjustment was needed

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Christmas has delayed the machine shop so still waiting on the heads to come back. instead made up and welded repairs to the doors

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Rather than pay through the nose for chinesium exhaust valve replacement I found these new old stock items, bought 8 for the same cost of one chinesium. fookin bargain

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heads back on, used composite gaskets which are slightly thicker. The engine is quite low compression already 8.25:1 so should "run good on regular gasolene" carbs are set to a baseline setting that I always use. just need to refit the timing cover and should be able to start it up

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[richardthestag]

A quick one next, my car is akin to the cobblers boots. i.e. the village cobbler is so busy fixing every one else that his own boots are fucked.

My car is fucked!

It was my daily until 2 years ago. I decided then that rather than patch it through another MOT I would cut out rot and live by what I sell.

Taken me 2 years to do this!

Winter of 2022 I managed to get to a happy alignment of new arch, floor and curtain repairs, here it all is clamped up ready for a frozen me and Mr welder to get on with

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Inside I made up a right angled section 15mmx15mm ish and then used the stretcher to make it match the inner arch profile. This allowed me to connect the good bit of the curtain to connect to the new arch and floor

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A few tack welds and the outer wing refitted to get alignment better than this car has ever had! Lode Lane threw these things together

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Good mate Phil bought me a landie tin full of biscuits and also a pair of pairs of ales. this stuff always get my attention and the donor to the top of my list

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Scrapyard becons, most of this was from the back end of my own car! while i try not to patch over patches there was one section that had 3 layers of steel where once there was one

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Knowing what I was going to find I just chopped everything with rust out of the RH rear quarter. quite a lot tbh

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The floor repair panel comes with the early "low fuel filler" opening, whereas my 1993 car has the "high fuel filler" means cutting and shutting.

More to come! I love this car, I have been with it for more than a decade and owned it since it had a full service 46k mile history. It is now heading towards 220k Miles and I want to see 300k miles before the rover v8 get rebuilt.

Way greener than a fucking EV

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