The post should give some idea of what had happened up until now...
This is the first Landrover I bought, and currently my daily driver - Its changed a lot over time, but I rather like it...
Base vehicle was a 1972 SIII 109" 2.6 SW - quite a low chassis numbered one at that. (about no 250 IIRC)
By the time I bought it, it had had sixteen diffent owners, four coats of paint, more rust holes than a cheese, and a rather badly fitted 2.25D under the bonnet. It had been last on the road in 1997, some 4 years earlier.
I collected it, put the engine fuel injection gear back together, and managed to get a running engine and working clutch.
It got used, for some period of time on the Welsh Highland Railways Porthmadoc works like this.
I got tired of only being able to access via the rear doors, as the front ones were falling off the bulkhead side pillars, so I obtianed a new(er) bulkhead... off a 4cyl SIII. Which didn't fit propperly, but got fitted anyway.
Eventually, I deceded to get somthing done, to get the truck on the road, and so I got a 99p chassis off eBay, with a load of new repair sections, and put it back together round the remnants of my original chassis...
All the steel bits of the SW body were scrap, and it wasn't overly straight either, so a basic back tub was fitted off a IIA. This started a phaze of IIAisation, which left me with a IIA bulkhead, IIA milliary bumper, SIII wings, and plasitc grill. The bulkhead was a late one, the windscreen was an early one - four wiper conversion anyone...?
Loss of the storage site meant I went mad on geting it an MOT... A big session with Mike Buss and the brakes, and a couple of late nights (well, all night, when it went for the first test I had been up for 30hours solid)
It passed second attempt, after failing on few minor items - swivel bush, binding brakes, couple of shock bushes, exahust knocking on the chassis...
2 hours later I was on the M60 heading for Langerly Farm show, with no roof, and trusting to a good weather forecast. I do not condone the driving of totally untested vehicles long trips, but the exahust had just gone on the classic rover car, so it was scrap the show, or trust to luck and my breakdown cover...
I made it, survived all the comments about what a shed it was, and got home again...
It then got used for a couple of months, and then the engine packed up, with a burnt out pair of valves, due to a rad hose blowing, and dumping the coolant while in the center of Llandudno, with a 2 ton car trailer, and my attempting to get it out of the way. The engine died litterally 100yards from a parking bay I was heading for, on the biggest roundabout, with the trailer completely blocking the thing.
After this happy incident, I left it alone for a bit, until it was wanted, at which point an engine was won off ebay for ?5, and fitted (thanks to Twm, Mike, and Pabs) who between them got the engine from somewhare on the M1, and into the truck for no cost to myself... apart from about 6 weeks worth of (ptich dark) evenings.
As driving to work with no roof in january is a mixture of foolhardyness, and madness, I shoved a truckcab on - thanks SurferJim...
In this format she then did about 10K miles in two months, mostly on the motorway. 2.25D's are very happy being run near the red line all day, just get a good MP3 player with earphones, then shove ear defenders on top...
It was a good job I had put the roof on, while up in Glossop in Ferbuary it took to snowing hard...
One day the front wings started unbolting themselfs while driving through Matlock in the middle of the night - I noticed as the headlights were earthed through one of bolts which fell out, and I lost main beam. Result - fixed with a replacement front grill with the lights in the grill. I also had a sutable passenger wing, but not a drivers one, so it ran with three headlights for a month or so, after which I moddifed the other front one to match...
It gets used on the lanes from time to time, last big session was the North Wales Greenlaning day Jim and I organised...
One day while heading up the M67 it bunged most of a sump full of oil out of the breathers in about 10 miles, so the head was pulled, and the engine re-ringed, as they were rather suspect... I borrowed tools as I was away from home, and thanks to a dodgy pistion ring compressor, knocked a lump off no3 pistion. Thanks to Dave Hall and the OLLR squad a "new" pistion was sourced, and fitted, and normal service was resumed... the "running in" trip back to Wales was rather grim though, something to do with the fact I had set the top speed down to about 40 to stop me blowing it up...
Finally, after much prodding, I threw some blue paint over it, what a transformation...
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