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