SLROC Forum

Hello,

 back again - I had to go on holiday for a fortnight and then I had to go back to work, so time in the shed has been hard to come by   I've passed the one year mark(!), the evenings are drawing in and it'll soon be Winter again...I can't believe the Summer is basically over already

Anyway, enough of me depressing anybody reading this - here's the current state of play:

					 

1. I was playing with the idea of stripping down and galvanising the rear-wheel carrier, but that would have been a mad idea, so I just sanded it and re-sprayed it.
2. Onto rebuilding the wings, then - I'd been having problems with the alarm which stemmed from voltage-drops in the wing looms - when I looked at the loom in each wing, it was no mystery why...both looms had been cut into with cr@ppy plastic joiners everywhere and the water had got into the wires and corroded them, so a great deal of cutting out bad sections and replacing them had to be done - this picture is where I was soldering a join in somewhere...
3. Here's the latest galvanised bits - from the top, they're the inner wings, transmission-tunnel flange, rear-door flange-plate, fuel-filter cover, all four mud-flap brackets, the disassembled bonnet slam-panel and supports and the wing/radiator mounting brackets.
4. The bulkhead is separate from the transmission-tunnel flange - it mounts to it using plastic captive nuts...
5. ...like this - not difficult to do, just awkward.
6. Back to the wings - they fit to the bulkhead at these four points...

7. ...I bought these improved mounting lug-nuts from YRM...
8. ...and they fit very easily.
9. The wings have diagonal slots to hang onto the bolts in these lug-nuts...or, at least, that's how i thought it would work...it turned out to be more awkward than that.
10. As you may remember, I'd stripped the wings down to get at the radiator mounting plates, which had corroded badly and had bolts irretrievably jammed in them - now I had to put the stupid things back inside the wings.
11. Putting the plates back in was a lot harder than getting them out!  I had to strip the wings even further and then replace all the spot-welds with rivets, which involved a lot of adjusting (hammer) and aligning (mole-grips...and hammer).
12. You may have noticed I was working outside in natural daylight, which was an unaccustomed change!  When some helicopter flew over, I took a picture of it, but had left the flash on, which it presumably didn't like as, about a minute later, it came back again and flew right over me again.

13. Wing(s) reconstructed.
14. All (mostly) galvanised bonnet slam-panel built up.
15. Ah, a problem.  Things were going too well, really, and then I noticed this; one of the inner wings had warped slightly during the galvanising process...
16. ...which meant I had to elongate one of the mounting holes to compensate, although how this was going to affect the final fit was a bit of a mystery at this stage.
17. The original mounting method was the square plastic "nuts" that LR use to fit the floors in place etc.  Two problems now meant that wasn't going to work anymore - firstly, the mounting holes were badly corroded and were no longer square, meaning the nuts could twist in them and, secondly, the warped inner wing required more rather more tension on the various bolts and screws to get it to fit and the plastic nuts just weren't up to the job, so I used metal J-nuts, which I now had hundreds of spare (why buy ten when you can buy 100 off ebay!)
18. This is where the alarm siren lives.

19. Right - I'm back in the shed here and about to hang the wing on the bulkhead using the engine-hoist, hence the rope.  The wings have these brackets that go between the inners and outers - they're different each side, as the passenger side one has to allow for the heater air-intake, so don't mix them up.
20. Here are the wing mounting slots...but see how only three are slots and one is a hole?  I had to take the top mounting-bolt out of each side of the bulkhead when I realised...
21. ...and I didn't realised until I got to this point   Hanging the wings on the remaining bolts, however, proved impossible, so I just fitted the bolts one at a time, which was very awkward indeed
22. When lowering the wing into place, I had to make sure it went the right side of the various brackets and the suspension tower...
23. Getting the inner wing anywhere near the mounting points, however, proved a significant challenge, as they say...
24. By hanging the front of the wing from the engine-hoist and jacking up the back by the bulkhead...

25. ...I managed to get the bulkhead bolts to line up...
26. ...but a new problem arose - the mounting holes in the bulkhead for the wing inner upper mounting bolts were in the wrong place, so I had to mark up new holes...
27. ...drill new holes (the bigger one)...
28. ...and fit m8 rivnuts...
29. ...which was a pain, but not the worst job I've ever had to do.
30. The bottom of the wing is secured to the bulkhead with two diagonal ties - the old ones had disintegrated when I removed the old bulkhead, so I'd bought these flash new aluminium ones from YRM...

31. ...which mount like this.  You can see I've also had to reinforce the bottom of the wings with aluminium L-section, as they'd corroded quite badly.
32. There you go - that's the wings essentially on, just the front bolts and the inner-wing bolts to fit.  The wings have two bolts at the front which fix them to the chassis - now, alarm bells should have been ringing at this point, as the holes didn't line up; the front of the wings were too high (by about 5cm).  I thought this was just an effect of the warped inner-wings, so broke out the ratchet-straps and soon had the holes lined up!  You can sort of see in this picture, though, that the wing-sides are sort of bowed out...I thought they'd settle overnight, though - optimistic soul that I am...
33. Here's the other wing - also slightly bowed.
34. Can't remember what I was trying to show here, but these are the wing mounting slots against the bulkhead.
35. It's starting to look quite Land Rover-y, isn't it?
36. You can really see the bow in the wing here

37. I decided to ignore the bowed wings problem and fit the bonnet slam-panel, starting by bolting it in place at the bottom.  It's a tight old fit between the wings, though (probably because they were a bit warped out of shape at this point - see the solution below), so I used a piece of wood and a clamp to force them apart...
38. ...and raised the slam panel into place.
39.  I realised afterwards that a pair of radiator mounting plates are supposed to it between the slam-panel and the wings, but that can be done later.
40. Here's the EGR valve vacuum servo and the power-steering fluid reservoir fitted.  I've actually removed the EGR valve, but apparently the ECU throws a hissy fit if you also remove the servo, so it's easier just to keep it and plug the actuating pipes.
41. More wiring - the spot-lights need a switching feed from the high-beam and dip wires - the easiest place to break into the loom is here (rather than in the wing, where it had been done before and caused all sorts of problems).
42. A nice soldered and heat-shrink sealed connection - hopefully no corrosion getting in there!

43. I'd had a good hard think about the bowed wings and the only cause I could think of was that the bulkhead wasn't in straight.  Although this picture's sideways, you can see the dramatically bulging wing panel!
44. Yep, still bulging this side, too
45. The solution, then was to adjust the bulkhead.  First, I took any tension caused by the wings off the bulkhead with ratchet-straps, loosened all the bulkhead mounting bolts and all the inner-wing mounting bolts...
46. ...then released the first straps and pulled the bulkhead forwards with sturdier straps (there's something similar to this on the other side)...
47. ...The bulkhead mounting brackets have slotted holes to allow a fair degree of adjustment...
48. ...and taking the inner-sill sections as my datum (as it were), I adjusted the bulkhead until it was at ninety degrees to it.  I was quite pleased with the old trig method I'd used to get the bulkhead straight in the first place, but maybe I was a bit optimistic that I'd get it spot-on...oh well.

49. Now, do you remember back in history when I declared the length of the steering-shaft a mystery, as it was too short to reach between the steering-column and the steering-box?  Well, mystery solved - I had the foresight to loosen this mounting clamp before moving the bulkhead and, would you believe it, it slid back to exactly the right position...in retrospect, that should have told me something at the time...oh well
50. Are you still with me?  Bit of a long one, this one, isn't it?  Here's the O/S wing now without a bow to it...
51. ...and the same on the N/S - hooray!
52. The inner wings were still nowhere near the mounting points, though, so before tightening up the mounting bolts that fixed them to the outer-wings, I worked my way from bolt to bolt (using a jack to persuade the inner-wing into place), fitting it to the chassis brackets.  Again, these are supposed to be screws going into captive plastic nuts, but there was far too much tension on all the mounting points, so I used m8 x 20mm bolts and flanged, ridged nuts for a more secure fit...
53. ...which you can see here.
54. With that finally done, it was time to do some more wiring - the wiring behind the dash had been liberally butchered at some point in the past (not by me!), so I decided to cut, splice and solder it as required to tidy it up.
55. These are the wires from the column-switches going into the dash.
56. I don't think I've mentioned this, but I'd also decided to tidy up the additional wiring to the spot-lights, roof-lights and flood-lights etc and had got hold of a 5-relay and fuse-box off ebay, which was now wired up and mounted under the passengers seat.  Halfords have started selling these neat 4-way connectors, so I used a couple to connect the switch and power wiring to the new relay/fuse-box.
57. Battery in and essential wires connected...
58. ...the odometer came to life (and the alarm, thankfully, didn't!)...
59 ...and, better still, turning the key brought the dash to life without any smoke or the engine warning light or anything particularly nasty.  The fuel-pump spun up and even the heater-fan kicked into life...it's alive!...well, sort of...

I'm pretty pleased at getting the electrics working, I can tell you!  I can't actually go for starting the engine, yet, though, as both the radiator and the intercooler disintegrated when I tried to clean them   Once new ones have been found, bought and fitted though, it'll be engine starting time!

Exciting stuff!

Cheerio

 There should be a club award for "Tenacity in the face of Adversity". I am sure you would be the number one nominee!
 I had been worried when there had been no updates for a while.

Good effort. You have now passed me in the rebuild stakes  . (I started mine in Feb 2015!!) and have only just got to the rewire dashboard and accessories point.

Still got to reconnect the battery and do the 0% smoke test.  Therafter take to paint shop for full repaint and then start to reassemble the newly painted doors, bonnet, HT sides and windscreen.

I felt your pain with the front wings, having had my front wings stripped down, the inners cut, welded and galvanised and then reassembled with new outer wing panels and freshly galvanised bonnet landing panel.  I was not pleasantly surprised to discover that the combination of new parts and freshly galvanised old parts meant that absolutely nothing lined up with the chassis or bulkhead mounting points.  There was not much in it, but a couple of mm in every flippin' bolt hole took a fair bit of skill (ratchet straps and hammer) to get lined up in a semi square, balanced kind of way.

Keep up the good work.       

Thanks chaps   I'm still sort of enjoying it, too - all the "bolting things back together" is actually fairly straight forward...it's fitting things that were never meant to be fitted that's causing me problems:



Right - I've gone mental for pictures again and they cover half a dozen different jobs, so bear with me...

1. I think what I was trying to show here is one of the security bolts that hold the steering-lock to the steering-column.  Theses have a tapered section just under the head which shears once you torque them sufficiently, meaning you can't undo them again and, in theory, nobody else can just unbolt the steering lock and nick your Land Rover.  They're a bit of a faff to get a socket on, as there's very little clearance between the bolt heads and the steering lock bracket itself, but it's do-able.
2. Here's the switch-gear on the steering column.
3. Somebody in the past (not me!) had butchered the wiring here, but I whinged enough about that last time, so...
4. ...here's a picture of my not-so-subtle "NO SMOKING" ashtray replacement to look at, instead
5. I thought I did this ages ago, but this is the new chequer-plate with "special metals" primer on it, ready to be rollered green.
6. Here's the new radiator and intercooler - I got a good price from Inverness 4x4 and saved an absolute fortune on shipping...

7. The intercooler and radiator bolt together, but remember to keep the rubber mounting lugs from the old intercooler, or you can't fit it to the mounting brackets inside the wings - I forgot and had to go hunting through a bin-bag for mine
8. I'd previously fitted the bonnet slam-panel, but hadn't fitted the radiator mounting brackets first, so had to take it out again - it's probably not possible to fit the radiator/intercooler with it in place, anyway.
9. The instructions in the Haynes manual are pretty straight forward when it comes to re-fitting the radiator/intercooler and it's a fairly easy job.  I had to force the wings apart with my clamp/wood ensemble again, but apart from that, everything went to plan.
10.  Here's the O/S bracket...
11. ...and the N/S bracket - they take a bit of hitting with a hammer and playing with to get them exactly right.
12. There's the radiator/intercooler and bonnet slam-panel in place - not sure why this picture is all dark and moody - perhaps I was feeling artistic or something when I took it...

13. As there were various bits hanging around in the way, I decided to fit them just to tidy them up - here's the washer-reservoir going in, under the wing.  This was a massive pain to fit, it turned out, mainly because the same heavy-weight electric-men who'd broken them original seats with their @rses had also bent the wings down with their size twelve feet.  The solution (well...a solution) was to use the chain-hoist to bend the wing up a bit, so I could get enough clearance...
14. ...to belt the reservoir under the wing with a hammer
15. The reservoir then bolts through the wing.
16. When I fitted the radiator/intercooler, I also fitted all the pipes - what I'm trying to show here is that the jubilee clips have to go with the screws on the outside of the pipes (i.e. towards the outsides of the vehicle)...
17. ...because, otherwise, they don't fit against the radiator - guess how I found this out...
18. Here's a single picture that was the end-point of an entire afternoon of b*ggering about and swearing.  The air inlet pipework comes in through the O/S wing, goes across the back of the engine bay and up, onto the airbox.  The pipework has a bracket on it that should have fitted to the O/S bracket that fixes the bulkhead and the inner wing in place - this is something you should definitely, definitely fit before fitting the inner wing, as getting at it afterwards is nigh-on impossible - I managed it, but I needed help.

19. Another job done was fitting the O/S sill - I'd already fitted the N/S sill.  They bolt on with a single bolt at the rear, through the rear wing extension and a single bolt at the front, which also fixes the lower wing brace (the cool aluminium ones I got from YRM) to the bottom of the wing.  Then there are two brackets that fix the sills to the inner-sills - the trick is to make sure everything's lined up before you tighten anything...
20. ...that way, you get a tolerable fit...getting a good one is expecting a bit much from a Defender
21. Here's the start of an interesting and fairly easy job, it turned out.  I'd decided to "modernise" my Defender with an electric radiator fan - the viscous coupling on the old fan had failed, so that was my excuse.
22. Apparently, some fans are only 80W whereas this is a 220W one - I might have been taken in by marketing bumf, though
23. The new fan will get its power from this relay, under the passenger's seat...
24. ...along a cable under the passenger's floor (along with the spotlight cables and various switch wires)...

25. ...up the bulkhead and over the top of the heater...
26. ...along the inside of the N/S wing...
27. ...and behind the N/S headlight, into the engine bay.
28. To actually fit the fan, I came up with this plan - I hung it from a piece of wood, resting across the top of the wings...
29. ...by adjusting the cable-ties, I could get the centre of the new fan to line up with the drive-shaft where the viscous coupling fan would have mounted, plus I knew the fan was straight up and down.
30. Here's another view of the same thing - I must have been quite pleased with myself for thinking of this

31. Most add-on electric fans fix to the radiator using a sort of cable-tie arrangement, but they're apparently prone to snapping when they get a bit old and brittle.  This fan comes with m4 threaded rods which go through the radiator and bolt either side, with little penny-washers either side to spread the load.  That seemed a bit hard on the radiator to me, as the whole weight of the fan would be essentially hanging from four small points, relying on one or two cooling-vanes to support it.  Although it means blocking the radiator a bit, I decided to spread the load with two lengths of aluminium angle - angle, because it won't bend (as much) - I backed them with thin foam to protect the radiator, too.
32. I padded all the fan mounting points with foam...
33. ...and then hung the fan from the piece of wood, as per my earlier, genius idea   The clearance between the back of the fan motor and the engine pulley is quite close to what you might refer to as "eff-all"...it gets better as the fan bolts tigher to the radiator, though.
34. Here's one of the mounting rods on the outside of the radiator, bolted through my over-kill mounting plate with the tiniest wing-nut I've ever used!
35. Here it is on the inside, starting to compress the mounting foam.
36. I tried easing the rods through the radiator vanes to fit them, but that didn't work, so a more forceful solutions was required - hence a bradawl jammed through my radiator!

37. The fan fitted pretty easily, so the last job of the day was to finally fit the seats - I decided to fit the passenger seat first.  I'd actually been faffing and b*ggering about over this for a good fortnight; I threw away my old seats years ago, as they were completely knackered - I replaced them with heated leather seats out of some sort of Saab, but they've never really fitted very well.  I put a WANTED ad up on the forum here for standard seats, but didn't get anywhere with that, so I decided to just fit the Saab seats again.  What you can see here is my solution, four new holes drilled in the seat box to take m10 A4-80 bolts, one of the original underseat braces modified to suit the new holes and a bolt coming up through the seatbelt mount bracket under the seatbox to act as a guide for the inside rear corner mounting hole of the seat.  This seems obvious now, but it took a lot of thinking about to get there...not sure why
38.  Anyway, I discovered that one of the mounting holes was in the wrong place (I mean, how?!  I'd measured it three times, made a template, even test-fitted the seat and it was still in the f'ing wrong place) which meant that the brace was also in the wrong place, which was a pain, as I'd just drilled two holes and riveted it inside the seatbox - that'll be a pain in the @rse to change.  More annoying than that, though, was what this fairly obscure picture shows.  This is the underside of the seat and what you can see here is the seat runner hitting the strengthening bar across the front of the top of the seat box, above the transmission tunnel - the seat fails to clear it by about 3mm...  At this point, I couldn't even be bothered to swear any more, so I packed up and went home for tea...

To be honest, I never checked whether the seat would clear the seat box, so more fool me - I've moved the seats inboard by about 5cm to make use of the seatbelt mounting point, so it's my own fault for changing things without checking/measuring first.  Anyway, s*d the seats - you may have been wondering how I'm going to get the new radiator fan to switch on when needed - I have a pretty neat solution to that, so watch this space

Cheerio

Have you noticed that it's raining a lot, recently?

It's currently so wet that I found a worm climbing up my back door last night...presumably to escape the impending flood!

The barn where my 110 lives is half an inch deep in water; the fields behind it having flooded and over-flowed into the farm

...so, not much work going on in the barn at the moment - I've used my "spare" time to argue the toss with DVLA about getting my 110 back on the road...

  The problem I've encountered is with my replacement chassis not having a VIN or a V5 - it may have had a VIN, but that's now under a layer of galvanising, so I can't read it.  I didn't think, at the time, that no V5 was a problem when I bought it, but without something to identify it and give it a year of manufacture, the process proscribed by DVLA is as follows:

  Apply for/Receive a new VIN - I seem to have circumvented the process for this somehow, as DVLA just sent me a new one anyway - I had to speak to the "Kitcars and Rebuilds" office at DVLA, though.
  Complete a V627/1 "built-up vehicle report" form
  Complete an IVA application form
  Presumably, actually go to an IVA test
  Get given a Q-plate

  Now, you'd be amazed at the number of people who have said I should never have contacted DVLA and should either have just stamped the old VIN on the new chassis or kept quiet and MOT'd my 110 on the old plates with no VIN.  I can see how you'd probably get away with that, but my argument is that it only takes one idiot to rear-end me, for the police to inspect my vehicle and query the age/condition of the chassis and then who knows what...definitely void insurance...probably points...possibly police action for fraud...who knows?  Everybody says I'm paranoid...but then they would say that, wouldn't they

  Anyway...a Q plate doesn't really affect my insurance, other than it makes getting SDP with Commuting harder to find - out of interest, my best quote so far is 266.34 fully comp from Highway Insurance, on an agreed mileage of 5000 per year with no commuting...good job I've got my van   That's with no no-claims, too (as it stays on my van policy), so not a bad price, really.  Adding commuting to the policy (most insurers I've spoken to won't) pretty much triples that price

  So, no VIN and no V5 does make things trickier (I would imagine the IVA is going to be no picnic), but not impossible...

  Maybe, one day, it'll stop raining and I'll be able to get back into the barn without needing a canoe

Cheerio

Just a quick one...the shed dried out, I was able to get at the engine, so I filled the engine with coolant, filled the power steering reservoir, checked the oil and...

First Attempt --> Click Here
I was pretty surprised the battery had enough charge in it to turn it over for that long!  I decided to check the fuel-lines for leaks and for any oil under the engine, and then try again...

Second Attemp --> Click Here
This time, some smoke started coming off the turbo - I couldn't see why, but there was an oil-leak from the oil-filter which was spraying onto it...with nothing obviously wrong, I tried again...

Third Attempt --> Click Here
Bl**dy Hell, it started!  Not only that, it ran and sounded alright!  The video's a bit random, as my girlfriend was holding the camera while also clearing boxes and tools out from under the wheels, ready for me to try moving back and forth in the shed a bit...which also worked!  Afterwards, the oil-leak was a bit more obvious, as there was a puddle under the engine and, on inspection, oil dripping down the filter, but not too disastrous

Now I've just got to do the hundred and one small jobs of finishing everything else of, like fitting all the lights, the roof, the doors etc etc etc...

Cheerio

I haven't done anything lately as exciting as starting the engine - it's all been small, bits-and-pieces jobs...oh, and painting:



1. Here's how the handbrake cable fits to the handbrake lever - fascinating
2. After a lot of um'ing and ah'ing, I decided to stick with the Saab seats I had already - here they are fitted and, my God, what a pain in the @rse they were to get there...
3. Remember my cunning plan for the fan thermostat switch?  Well, here it is - this in-line housing is designed for a temperature sender - to fit a thermostat (which are all larger diameter than senders), I had to drill out the mounting hole, thread it and then fit a (Husqvarna 95'C m14) thermostat.  The wiring is switched earth, which means the thermostat closes at 95 degrees, grounds a relay under the passenger seat, which then powers the fan.
4. Here's the joy of wiring happening before your very eyes...
5. This is a pre-painting shot - I took the light-guards off next, but didn't take a photo of that.
6. Pre-painting N/S...

7. ...pre-painting O/S...
8. ...and pre-painting rear - the red is an aluminium primer.
9. And now, post-painting.  I couldn't get the same paint I'd used before to paint it green and the new paint is slightly more yellow...it'll go less shiny after a few weeks in the sun.
10. Nice...the blue thing is my steering-guard that I've yet to fit.
11. Mmm - lovely green - the green box on the floor is an ammo-box I bought at a roup and use as a toolbox/step - it has "1944" stamped into it, so it's probably a historic artefact
12. Quite pleased with the back - the new chequer plate looks pretty smart

13. Here's the paint I'm using - I went a bit mad and bought 5 litres - I think I'll use about half of that...  Allegedly this is same paint the MOD uses to make things greener than they already are...it has every warning and prognostication of doom on it you can imagine...apparently, as well as potentially burning the shed down it might give organ failure if I get it on me...that's proper paint, that is!
14. I set myself three jobs to finish this day - fit the front arches, fix the non-working reverse light and start stripping down the hard-top ready to fit a new roof...fitting the arches, however, took all day
15. The arches fit with these things - plastic rivets - about a quid fifty a piece and you need about thirty of them!  You could probably salvage your old ones, but I didn't realise that, thought they were single-fit only and knackered all my old ones getting them off...
16. It's possible to fit the arches single-handed, but it'd be a lot easier with somebody to hold it in place for you while you fitted the clips - I'd give this job a swearing-factor of about six when done on your own...
17. A while ago, I had a disagreement with a gate while reversing out a field - the gate won.  This left me with a problem in terms of getting the clip through both the arch and the wing here...
18. ...my solution was a bit brutal - I drilled two holes in the wing, screwed a loop of wire with eyelets soldered onto either end to the wing and used it to pull the wing out into position...

19. ...using this fairly professional looking rig structure...
20. ...whilst it worked, I now need to figure out how to fill the two holes...very very small grommets, maybe..?
21. Last job of this set is stripping down the hard-top, de-rusting it, replacing the leaking body-seals and fitting a new roof.  I went to Mull a couple or three weeks ago and scavenged a new roof (with alpine windows and a sun-roof - it's going to be like palace in my Defender when I'm done!) off a Defender that had rather terminally lost a foot in length one day.  The chap whose roof it was was very helpful and even put it onto the trailer for me - thanks Tom!

  Other jobs on the go are fitting of the lights, fitting the bumper (done) and fitting the windscreen plus new seals - I'll definitely be done before Christmas

Cheerio

Check it out - it looks more like a Land Rover than ever...


1. I spent a lot of evenings sanding and painting my new roof...
2. ...the hardtop sides...
3. ...and the windscreen frame - I'd had the windscreen removed, as the rubbed had perished badly.
4. Remember last time I was going to re-fit the lights?  Here's a stainless steel headlight fixing kit - very expensive, but probably worth it (the old fixings are shown for comparison).
5. Headlights, surrounds and grill fitted - I had to take the grill and N/S headlight out another four times after this for various reasons!

6. A random "paint" photo.
7. These are the various brackets etc required to fit the hardtop to the tub and the windscreen-frame to the bulkhead - as the originals had rusted away to nothing, I sprayed the new ones with cold-galv to preserve them.
8. Here's most of the brackets, gaskets and bolts needed to hold one windscreen-bracket in place...
9. ...and here's how they fit to the bulkhead - in fact, I've got the two plates in the wrong order here - the small plate goes behind the big one.
10. If you look carefully, you can see I've got the hardtop-side on!  This was a fairly easy job, as the sides are only held on with a bolt front and back, two bolts along the sides of the tub and two bolts through the rear-door frame.  You can sort of make out the windscreen-bracket fitted to the bulkhead here, too- this is the wrong way to do it, though. as the windscreen from has to be fitted first, due to the lip along it's bottom edge.

11. A better picture of the hardtop-sides in place - you can also see my girlfriend ducking down in the back, fitting the tub-side bolts.
12. I wanted to be sure that the hardtop-sides were held down properly before tightening all the bolts, hence the ratchet-strap, but I don't think this really made any difference.
13. This job, however, really was a pain in the @rse - the windscreen-frame fixes to the bulkhead via two bolts through the bulkhead itself into the aluminium bracket on the outside and one bolt through the windscreen-frame into the same bracket.  The neoprene-type gasket between the windscreen-frame and the bulkhead has to be fairly well compressed to achieve this, though, and getting it even slightly wrong stops the bolts going into the aluminium bracket.  The "solution" was to ratchet-strap down the windscreen-frame to the bulkhead, but this tended to bend the windscreen-frame over backwards, so another strap holding the windscreen-frame upright (tying it to the front of the engine-bay) was needed...
14. ...then the bolts could be fitted - I'd coated them with sikaflex to stop water coming through the bulkhead...
15. ...my girlfriend's face says it all - this "ten minute" job turned into about an hour of swearing (albeit restrained, as I had company...)

16. Luckily, when all the straps were removed, the windscreen didn't ping flat or anything, so that was a minor victory.
17. The last job of the day was to fit the roof - this was never going to be a quick, easy job, so I just planned to get it into place and bolt it on later.  The first stage in my plan was to hoist it into the air...
18. ...then lower it down onto the hardtop-sides...as plans go, not my most involved one.
19. There were a couple of seals to fit along the top of the windscreen and at the top-corners of the door-frames, but all the other seals seemed fine to me, so I left them.
20. So there you go - it looks quite Land Rover-y now

The next job is to bolt the roof to the hardtop sides and then work towards fitting the doors - I'm still pretty hopeful of being finished before the end of the year...

Cheerio

Good work so far, you are leaps ahead of me in the painting stakes.  Mine is still an assortment of primer finished panels stacked up in the rear load bed 

 

Ah, well, you're going to paint yours properly - I just spent a week in my shed with a 5 litre tin of MOD issue cover-all and a roller

I still have all the doors, flaps and the bonnet to paint yet, too...

Your 90's bodywork is looking very nice and sharp - even after this rebuild, mine's retained quite a "used" look to it

It is surprising the difference a new set of wing panels make.  Look closely you can see the riveted patches on the rear tub and the centre bulkhead, not to mention the corrugated rear panels   

Happy New Year

Again, I've been rather lazy updating this, but I haven't actually done a great deal - I caught the sort of cold people usually die from (honestly!) and took four weeks off to mope about feeling miserable...but enough of what I didn't do - here's what I did do...


1. The last thing I'd done (before the great illness) was rest the roof on the sides - so the next job was to bolt it in place...
2. ...which turned out to be a pain in the @rse, as none of the holes in the old sides matched the holes in the new roof, so every single one had to be drilled out - that was a long old job.
3. Also, I had to make sure that the roof lined up all around, otherwise bits like this seal-flange ended up out of line.
4. I'd always intended to re-fit my roof lights and flood-lights, but instead of the badly fitting, rusty old light-bar I got from Craddocks many moons ago, I'd decided to mount them all on the roof-rack itself.  The first job was to get the power in place, so this is an IP-66 junction box, mounted up above the rear O/S window - power runs through the body-cappings from under the passenger seat to get to it.  I'd used an IP-66 box in the O/S wing to join all the main spot-light wires together and it had worked quite well.
5. Here's the roof-rack with lights fitted and wiring underway - I'm using weather-proof twin-core mains cable for everything and daisy-chaining the lights together.
6. This is the O/S flood-light and the neat Chinese mounting bracket I got a job-lot of off eBay- they work well and look nice (at the moment!)

7. Here's the back of the roof spot-lights - you can see the daisy-chain wiring going from light to light.
8.This is what it looks like inside each light - I made up a load of t-joints to plug the bulb in and join on the cable to the next light, but I never thought to take a picture of one of them.
9. When I originally fitted the roof-rack, it was a right old faff with much swearing to be done - with the roof-winch, it was surprisingly easy...
10. ...and there it is - job done...well, actually, none of the mounting clamps are in place yet, as I had to sand them and re-paint them and they're all drying somewhere.
11. In other jobs, I wanted to re-fit the top guard/air-guide over the radiator, but having changed the fan, the old fan housing wouldn't fit, so the top-guard had nothing to fix to.  I decided to make up a couple of brackets - you can see one here - it's the grey thing.
12. This gives a mounting hole for the guard to fix to...

13. ...I just haven't figured out what sort of fixing to use, yet - some sort of bayonet device I've yet to invent, probably...
14. A while ago, I bought a new snorkel (having broken my old one taking it off) - allegedly "as used by the MOD".  I think that's probably spherical and in the plural, as the fixings it came with literally went rusty overnight when I left them out on the wing, so I bought all new stainless ones...
15. ...which proved nigh-on impossible to fit, but I managed it in the end...sort of - this needs re-visiting, really
16. Next job is to fit all the doors - I've got new hinges all round, but they all need painting.  I'm a bit wary of doing that at the moment, as I seem to have developed some sort of reaction to the paint (I had a migraine for three days after painting this lot - three days of throwing up into a bucket...I very much wished I was dead after day one, to be honest).

So, still getting there, but now there a a hundred and one half-finished jobs (like the bonnet release cable, the hand-brake wiring, the reverse light not working etc) that I need to sit down, figure out and attack in some sort of organised fashion...

Cheerio

What a lazy illigitimi I've been for keeping this up to date!  I had problems uploading images (again!) and every time I though "I must deal with that" I got side-tracked onto something else...

Anyway, a load of stuff has happened, but none of it particularly clever or technical - despite that, here's where I'm at (actually, this is part 1 of where I'm at - there's a part 2 pending...):


1. Because I thought it'd look cool, I fitted a ladder to the back - I climbed up onto the roof, but it wasn't as exciting s I thought it'd be...
2. O/S hinge fitted.
3. The mirrors fit through the hinges, so you have to fit them before you fit the doors...
4. ...I got some super quality Britpart mirrors, tightened the mounting screws in them and the threads stripped - top work, Britpart!
5. Here's the interior with the dynamat soundproofing fitted...
6. ...and the bonnet insulation material stuck to the cab roof - not sure how good it'll be, but I had a load of it left over from sound-proofing the bonnet.

7. This is the rear door dynamatted.
8. This is all the fun and games I had when I closed the bonnet and then the release cable snapped...
9. ...to get at the release, I had to take off one of the slam-panel supports.
10. Here's the N/S door fitted - I did this single-handed and what a pain in the *rse it was!  On the plus side, it fitted perfectly...
11. ...although I had to adjust the locking mechanism slightly - not helped by my doors being off a pre-defender 90 whilst the body is a much later Td5...
12. Hmm - the end of a ratchet strap - his can't be good...

13. ...and indeed it's not - the O/S door didn't fit even remotely...
14. ...it was miles out at the top.
15. From the inside, you can see it wa clipping the seal, which was preventing it from shutting.

I didn't take any pictures of how I resolved this one (and I've noticed that my pictures are slightly out of order here), but it involved drilling out the hinge-holes in the door, jacking up the corner of the door with it almost shut and tightening the hinge-bolts up before anything moved.  At the time, I thought the door not fitting was down to the dodgy shape of the door, which I'd had to weld a new bottom on many years hence and had ended up with a slightly out-of-shape door.  Now, though, I'm not so sure...

16. I had to replace all the read door hinges - this kit appears to be for a series...
17. ...but most of it fits my Defender.
18. If you haven't already got this, I highly recommend it - the Defender Water Ingress manual...

19. ...it recommends buying this stuff (dum dum gum)...
20. ...and fitting it anywhere there's a seam or a body-panel joint...
21. ...like here...
22. ...and here...
23. ...by squashing it into the join...
24. ...and then covering it with tape before jamming the seal over the top of it (see later).

25. You do the same thing at the front doors, too...
26. ...although, here, you can see that the upper and lower bodies haven't quite lined up - that was a job for the old spanner-and-hammer combo.
27. Here's the new seal fitted around the rear door aperture.
28. I'm not sure what's going on here, as it's too dark to see.
29. The rear seal was too long, so I cut it to fit.
30. Again, it's pretty dark, but I think this is just to prove that the rear door shuts.

31. From the inside, this is the rear door shut - this seems to be from before I tidied up the siring to the roof-lights and fitted dynamat to the door.  The only real problem with the door now is it's incredibly hard to open, but I think that'll sort itself out as the seal squashes a bit with use.
32. Now, remember when I thought the O/S door was the wrong shape?  Well, here's another mystery - the new seal was too long across the top.  I actually bought a second seal to see if it was just Britpart quality at play, but that seal was exactly the same.  Somehow, the O/S door aperture is about 2cm too short across the top - I'll be b*ggered if I can see how that's happened but, equally, I'll be b*ggered if I'm going to start adjusting the bulkhead/windscreen/steering column/roof to do anything about.  I just cut the seal and re-joined it with 2cm taken out - an engineering solution, I think you'll agree...
33. This was fitting the rear-wheel carrier...
34. ...which needs a rubber stop fitting to it to stop it closing too far and jamming the door shut.
35. I think this is probably to show the air-intake, but it's obviously out of sequence, as I've fitted the doors (I'm using "fitted" in its loosest possible sense, there).
36. This is to show the N/S seatbelt fitted - the hardest part was getting the belt to come out after it had retracted all the way...

So there you go - it's all going together with the sort of jet-fighter precision you might expect of a Defender...  The current challenge is getting a windscreen fitted and then...well...then I've got to try to figure out how to get it back on the road, which isn't looking quite as straight forward now as it did a few months ago...less said about that, the better, really...

Cheerio

 You had me worried, I thought the Beast from the East had got ya! Been so long since we had an up-date. Tenacity in the face of adversity is obviously your motto as well! Great to get another installment, don't make it so long till the great reveal/finish.

Ah yes, the Beast from the East - it blew such a gale when the snow came that it was actually snowing inside the barn!  The snow was coming in through gaps in the walls and this fine powder was settling on everything...then, only about a fortnight later, it was t-shirt weather!

Anyway, here's one of the many small jobs I've done lately that took forever to get done:



1. The side-lockers had been sitting around getting ever more rusty since I took them out and I'd been trying to decide whether to repair them or just replace them...
2. ...the tricky bit was the folded and curved lip around the edge of the front, which would be a right old pain to re-fabricate, so I just cut out all the rust and welded in new bottoms, backs and sides where necessary.
3. Then, I took a load of stuff to the galvanisers (including all these bits)...
4. ...and they came back shinier than I could possibly have imagined

5. Given where they live, I decided to give them a good coat of stone-chip...
6. ...before jamming them back in their holes and riveting them to the body...
7. ...doing an enormous amount of b*ggering about with brackets and re-drilling holes etc...
8. ...and finally getting them fitted.

9.  The doors have a sort of piano hinge along one edge which makes them fairly easy to line up and rivet back on.
10. Another job to do was to route the new aerial cable in through the roof - this was problematic, as the cable has a 20mm plug on the end of it and I didn't want to take it off, so I needed a 20mm hole despite the cable only being about 8mm - no grommet would manage that difference in size, so I fitted a cable-gland...
11. ...with a plate on the inside...
12. ...and the finished result doesn't look too bad - suitably industrial looking for a defender, really

I took it out in the sun on the weekend and drove around the farmyard to test the brakes, the power-steering and listen for any weird noises - all three were as appalling bad as I expected (but probably fairly good for a Defender) - I took some actual outside picture, but I've left them on my camera - watch this space...

Cheerio