Well, I have been VERY quite on this BB lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been working hard

Eventually once I am done re-sizing the images I'll be taking you through a step by step strip down and rebuild of a 1965 Land Rover Series IIA.

We were making steady progress until we found that the existing chassis of our vehicle was a write off. 6 weeks later, we now have a new chassis.

We bought the chassis from a 109 Defender and had it cut down to our required size (88"). As I type this the chassis is sitting in the garage ready for the work to begin.

We've mostly stripped the body work off the old vehicle, we now need to remove the existing engine, gearbox and transfer case, along with both differentials and all the driveshafts and running gear.

I will include more detail once the pics are up.
It's really been a mixture of fun and hardwork.

We are basically going to be creating a brand new(ish) vehicle on the new chassis.

We are building this vehicle to be a general run around for my GF's game farm in the Eastern Cape.

I am off home now.

But will resize the best photo's I have during the course of this week and will steadily post them up for those interested.

Sounds very interesting...

The first picture is a vehicle in the same year as ours.

We are building an open rear ended vehicle similar to the third picture.

We will be including some very subtle technological improvements as we go along with the rebuild.

For example, all rubber engine, gearbox and body mounts are being replaced with polyeurothane pieces, little trick I learn't from the my VW days

These will be 5x stronger than the rubber equivalents and will more than likely outlast the vehicle.
We are uprating the suspension setup slightly. All new Old Man Emu leave springs and shocks.

Additionally we're removing the 2.5L 6 Cylinder Overhead Side Valve motor (try saying that 3x faster) and replacing it with a 2.25L 4 Cylinder one. The main reason for this is that the 6 Cylinder makes roughly the same power and torque as the 4 cylinder but uses alot more fuel.

Originally the Defender 90's came with 4 Cylinder 2.25L petrol/Diesel motors anyway, they are much better suited for size of vehicle we have.

We're not going to have an ignition key on this Landy, instead, we are going to wire up a "Start/Stop" switch. Basically like the old Jeeps used to use.

I am going to run the head lights through 12V 25A relays to make them a tad brighter.

I am in the process of studying up the electrics to work out an anti theft mechanism for the vehicle. Basically and electronic and fuel cut off.

I am also going to be making up a brand new wiring harness from scratch for this vehicle, using the original as a template.

I am not recycling any of the old wiring, it's almost 50 years old after all.

We're going to strip and completely rebuild the 6 Cylinder motor and install it in the game farms barn to be used as a generator and water pump... once the barn is finished that is

So we've got alot of extra projects that will come out of this rebuild project.

More to come

That's pretty cool. I always liked the idea of having a classic car and a 4x4. Looks like you just combined the two. Good luck and let us know how it comes along

Busy phoning around for various bits and pieces today. Things are adding up at a frightening pace.

Radiator - R2000.
Raditor Cradle - R400.
Polyeurothane Spring Bushes:R30 each (4x).
Axle/Bump stops: R50 each (4x).
Engine and gearbox mounts: R50 each (4x).

Not a bad mornings shopping then 'eh?.

Still loads of things to be bought though.

Engine and gearbox are definitely coming out this week end.

Any volunteers?

As promised.






















These photo's are a brief summary of the work that's been done.

I need to resize more and load them into my Photobucket Album. Will try get the album up-to-date soon.

Enjoy for now.

Now, I must point out that most of the rust you'll see in these photo's was caused by the previous owner's reckless use and abuse of this poor vehicle.

He fitted beach tyres to this Landy and was using it to launch boats and jet ski's. Basically driving nose first into the sea.
Overtime this destroyed the chassis, firewall, radiator, diffs, leaf springs and shock absorbers.

As a result, most of THIS vehicle is being scrapped. We are only going to keep what we can, which at this point it the aluminum body panels, bull and roll over bar and the windscreen.

Amazingly, I was able to get the motor running on day one of the build, a bit of adjusting here and there, along with a trickle charge on the old battery. The motor ticked over quite nicely. I should've taken her for a drive then but we were so keen to get started that we got stuck into the tear down almost as soon as she was off loaded from the truck.

I am trying to source as many original factory items as I can to keep the car looking as original as possible.
We're ditching these terrible beach tyres for correct sized pieces, I am trying to find out where I can get the original steering wheel repaired and we will have the original bench seat completely recovered.

I need to get the other photo's up for you all to see how much work we've done.

It was a good weekend for working on the Landy

Seat bank and load bay came off the old chassis on Saturday afternoon.

We can now see just how rotten and poorly repaired that old chassis was. Glad we're scrapping it.
We now have full access to the old motor and gearbox for removal.

I am going to keep phoning around for various bit's and pieces that we will need. Looks like our new chassis will need to go back to the engineer to have somethings modified for our needs.

One of them is the fuel tank mounting arms/pillars.
The other, and this is the major change is the position of the hangers for the rear leaf springs.

As usual, I have pictures that need to be resized and posted. Will try get to them this week.

Thanks for the e-mail ruro.

WOW!!! Looks like an awesome project there bud, and a monster of a rebuild. Are there any pics of the new chassis?

Are the poly engine and gearbox mounts really that cheap? I heard that the major drawback of these mounts is that you feel all the vibrations from the engine. I guess it makes no difference since this wont be a road going vehicle.

Pity that so few people browse this forum nowadays an awesome thread like this deserves more attention.


This post has been edited by Nitro Guy: Jul 29 2009, 11:38 PM

Plenty pics mate

These ones I've posted are actually much further into the build.

I need to post up some photo's from the beginning stages and then take the readers through the process to where we are now.
There must be close to 500+ photo's to sift through though.

I have a similar thread on the Landyonline forum but I just never seem to have time to update the threads these days.
I am meeting with a Land Rover restoration expert this evening.

He will hopefully be able to answer the 1000's of questions that I have about this build.

I will try get some pics up tonight, now that they are all resized I can post them up directly here with out loading them onto photo bucket first.

If you have some free time this week end you should pull through and have a look.

We're going to buy and engine and gearbox stand in the morning, then in the afternoon, motor and gearbox must come out.

Hehe, bring old clothes to work in

ooooh. another project. Good luck! Sounds uber kewl.

Here are some pics from the very first day of the build.

She arrived on a truck trailer, infront of a lekker Kombi

Once we got her into the garage, we got stuck right in.

You will notice that the vehicle is filthy. She lived outside in the open and was used as a toy on the beach sand dunes.
As a result, she is rusty and filled with a combination of rat #### and beach sand, there will be lots of photo's of use sweeping the vehicle and around it

The doors, literally were pulled right off the vehicle. The hinges and bolts were practically non-existant.

I managed to get her started on day one of the build. She idled quite nicely for a vehicle that had never been maintained properly.
The motor in this vehicle is a 6 Cylinder 2.5L Petrol. It's called an Overhead side valve because of the offset of the valves.

You will see a number of very questionable repairs courtesy of the previous owner. Some involve metal patching, fibre glass patching and even using an engine piston as an exhaust mount.

The radiator cradle housing the original head lights is a complete write off.

The rear rocker panel was replaced with a huge metal sleeper, which we later would find is attached to a dodgy rear chassis repair.
The chassis of this vehicle is a complete write off and will be scrapped once we have a rolling chassis on the new chassis.

Unfortunately the photo's I am posting are basic summaries of what has actually been done.

If I posted every photo I'd be here all week
I will try keep things in order as much as I can.

This post has been edited by rurounikenshin: Aug 2 2009, 05:46 AM

Ok, looks like I will need to load the images into Photo Bucket first, that will allow me to paste the photo's in the correct order and explain what you are looking at.

Will get sorted this evening if I have time.

But this is a good start. Still plenty more pics for day one to post.

She here are some more pics, basically the end of work day one.

Here are some pics when we went chassis shopping.

Found an old Austin 6 which I went ballistic over! A real classic that.
Unfortunately, it wasn't for sale

Anyway, this breakers yard has a ton of old Apartheid era police and military vehicles that they are busy destroying still. Since 1994 they've been cutting them up and selling the metal as scrap.

They even have old ambulances, firetrucks, old SAA vehicles and firetrucks and even a few cranes.

Amazing place to go walk around.

Ultimately the chassis in this picture was unusable and we had to source another one.

Here we are collecting the new chassis, luckily it's not so heavy, four people can move it around with a bit of effort.

And here we have some pics of our new gearbox, transfer case and firewall as well as some work day 3 pics.
We take pics of all the guys who help us along the way

Gotta respect the guys who do good work.

On day 3 we managed to get the seatbank, sill brackets, fuel tank and load bin off the old chassis.
as always, there were some stubborn nut's and bolts along the way... liberal use of hammer, chisel, drill and angle grinder soon fixed them.

As you can see, this is really a team effort

Tomorrow, we start preparing the new chassis.

Hopefully I'll have time to take more pics.

Did quite a bit of work on the chassis yesterday.

Checked that all the datum lines are straight and level, then measured the distances of various chassis components to make sure that they are all in the right place. Measured the mounts for the engine and gearbox to make sure that everything was the correct distance apart.

Luckily everything was well with in the specs.

We leveled the chassis on it's axle stands and did our first test fit of the body.
There we found the one problem we never expected to see, turns out that this chassis was a station wagon long wheel base and not a bakkie. Which means that the bin is too high for the front mounts, we'll need to make a plan there.

Luckily most of the other parts went straight on. We will need to cut the floor panels down, because we decided to go back to the original 4 Cyl motor, the firewall, transmission tunnel and floor panels are different sizes.

The 6 Cyl firewall and transmission tunnel are taller and narrower, this is to allow the enormous gearbox bell housing to fit to the motor and then into the vehicle. Now we've changed all the dimensions going back to standard.

Shouldn't be a big issue though. I am getting very good with an angle grinder these days

I am now going to remove the guages from the dash of the old firewall. I need to test them to make sure that they are in working order. Then I'll be stripping them to clean the glass and dial faces with a very soft tooth brush and some light soapy water.

Fun fun.

I am about to order a brand new wiring harness from Autosparks.co.uk. I was going to make my own until I was directed to this site. I've seen some of their work and it's amazing, literally everything we need electrically can be bought here and shipped over.

Once it arrives we can literally drop it straight into the vehicle if we are ready to. The downside? You pay in POUNDS!

Eina!

The Project is looking good bud

Woulda loved to come through and help out where i could, although it would prob be limited to holding/carrying stuff and passing tools LOL.

I had an exam on Saturday and lecture on Sunday so couldn't make it, in fact i only saw the update today. I was off on Friday.


How much did you guys pay for the engine stand? I would like to buy one if its a reasonable price.

The Project is looking good bud

Woulda loved to come through and help out where i could, although it would prob be limited to holding/carrying stuff and passing tools LOL.

I had an exam on Saturday and lecture on Sunday so couldn't make it, in fact i only saw the update today. I was off on Friday.


How much did you guys pay for the engine stand? I would like to buy one if its a reasonable price.