Scruffy old Land Rover UPD@TE with failed Wayne Carini attempt and H&H auction chod

[Pillock]

I think all car-based recaps should end with "...and then we went to the pub".

[Jon]

I don't think my desire for one of these has lessened since my last posts and seeing those pics of 'the one that got away' has just rubbed salt into the wounds and so, masochist that I am, I took a quick look on Tradme for things I can't warrant/afford at the moment and wished I hadn't:

 

http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/used-cars/land-rover/auction-833120641.htm

 

It may well have been off the road for years but it's only £300! Or near offer! Cos yeah, 300 big ones is a bit stiff for something this undesirable.....

[Tayne]

Buy it.

 

If it proves too much for you then sling it in a container and send it back home.

You'll make your money back.

[scruff]

That is proper fit, it has "the look" and everything, 88s are nice anyway. BUY  BUY  BUY

[Jon]

It's in the wrong island, so would cost a lot more to transport home than purchase price. Any idea what it'd sell for in the UK, on the basis of looking at that single pic? At least it'd be easier to get back on the road there, what with the pre-'60 MOT rules. I'd love to get it but in reality there's so much other automotive stuff to sort before adding the burden of another car.

 

One day though!

[John F]

Jon, on 12 Jan 2015 - 7:29 PM, said:

Any idea what it'd sell for in the UK, on the basis of looking at that single pic?

 

 

Upwards of £5000, based on exhaustive research*

 

* 5 mins on eBay

[scruff]

WHS ^^^

 

I don't know an awful lot about the Holden engine swap but I believe it would be easy to revert to original if someone wanted to.

 

There's a bloke in Oz sending a number over to europe, I presume he gets four in a container plus spares.

 

[Skoze]

That's lovely Jon, really nice motor. Can't recommend you get one enough! 

I'll have a chat with Uncle Skoze about logistics, its definitely something i'm very keen on making happen this year. 

[Jon]

I took a look at the advert again and it's gone, so obviously sold, which I knew was inevitable at that price. If you're serious Skoze and I can be of any help, then count me in, as I'd love to at least give one of these a test run. I'm in the central North Island and unhelpfully many of the affordable ones seem to be in the south, though Philibusmo's due to be touring round there towards the end of the year, so maybe he'd be interested in helping out some way.

 

I'd love for 2015 to be the year of the S1 but only 2 working cars out of 4 (and a 5th car I almost deny owning) is a bit pants, really. 

[scruff]

I did fix the choke but the cable didn't last long. To keep the proper S1 choke knob and warning light requires a new cable & knob assembly at twenty bastard quid plus postage.

 

Frustrated, I did a proper rural "fix".

 

Our baler is so old it uses wire instead of string.... Hmm...

 

 

Sorted, that will do until I chance on a secondhand one. 

[scruff]

I've got an old ex Southern Electric tool trailer that has been kicking around for a while. A friend has some trees that need lopping and I decided in my wisdom that the shite trailer would be just the ticket for dragging down to Hampshire and bringing back a load of wood to store for next winter. 

 

The first job was to free off the brakes. The screws holding the brake drums on did not succumb to my impact driver so I stripped the whole hub off. 

 

 

Freeing off the linkages with plusgas and Duck Oil did the trick and I put it back together with fresh grease in the hubs and a new split pin.

 

It's got a ring hitch so I swapped the tow ball on the Landy for this OMG RARE MoD towing pin.

 

 

Rather happily it rolls ok and the brakes work well enough for a old trailer. I've bolted on the tailgate before it got dark and have rigged up the lighting board. The tyres are fucked though so tomorrow's job is to try and find a pair that will do, then we'll pick a date to head darn sarf.

 

[Rusty Pelican]

I need a multiple " like " button so i can hit it all night long 

[HMC]

Nice recomissioning work mr s. The two hitched up look great, I love the patina on them, how a land rover should look!

 

Edit- what do you put on the paint- if anything? I had an old 80 myself with similar paintwork and the former owner said he used to wipe it down with duck

Oil every so often.

[scruff]

The last time I wiped it down with a paraffin and oil mix I'd been using on the steamers, lasted ages!! 

[scruff]

Recently I helped my mate Paul find a soft top SWB Land Rover, he ended up with this 1956 86" from a friend in the steam engine fraternity. It's really rather mega and has a 3.5 rover V8 shoehorned in very neatly. It sounds great and goes like stink!

 

 

Anyway after bombing around in this and fetching it home from Northampton, my truck cab wasn't cutting it anymore so I decided to sell it and refit the soft top. Listed the cab on ebay and was very pleased when it pissed past the reserve to end at £167!! Woo hoo, spent it already on a radiator recore but there you go.

 

A new canvas top is outside my meagre budget so I excavated our holed tilt and set Mrs Scruff on the job. The sewing machine is a industrial spec thing which weighs a ton.

 

 

With a big patch from an old army tent sown on, I fitted some new ropes and popped it on. Instantly much better!! Warmer, quieter, lighter. Needs a waterproofing session I suspect and still a few little holes here and there but it will do until I win the lottery or whatever and get a new one.

 

 

This weekend we went GREENLANING for a pal's birthday, the other motors in this cast of wallies are a 1966 ex military 109 ambulance which is now a double cab pickup with Disco engine and Defender gearbox, a 1969 88 with a disco donk and Defender gearbox, and a 1971 109 with a Nissan Patrol 3.3 straight six diesel and box and axles from one of them Northern Irish armoured jobs!! Which makes mine the most original there, COUNT MY RIVETS...!!

 

 

 

OLLI etc

 

 

 

 

[mat_the_cat]

That last picture - clearly it's not just me who love splashing through a ford. Maybe it's a sign of never really having grown out of the stage of puddle jumping as a child...

[HMC]

Great pics! I love that profile shot of PHT showing off its patina.

[skattrd]

That looks like fun, I've tentatively organised a little green-laning for myself down in Norfolk around Easter.

[scruff]

I've been doing a few more miles than is usual with this lately which showed up the dampers and bushes were totally borked. Fortunately I had a set "in stock" along with bushes so I changed them the other day:

 

 

 

S H I N Y

 

Shit what a difference, vastly improved!! It's still an old cart sprung farm hack so hardly up there with a Citroen but all the crashing and banging has gone and speed humps are no longer a literal headache. 

 

I have also now run out of decent excuses to keep ignoring the presence of my other Solihull shitbox. Today I didn't really have anything booked in that couldn't be put off so SWMBO and I went and extracted it from the nettles, blew the tyres up and gave it a good steam clean:

 

 

 

 

 

It needs a new engine, which I have, but to be quite honest I spent a massive chunk of my teens pulling the engines in and out of Range Rovers and I really can't be fucked. I don't mind working on the Series 1 as it's so simple and piss easy but I just have no enthusiasm to fight this one, I just want to drive it. Plus this one isn't a real RR, its a Tdi which is a bit more of a pain in the arse to extract. A LR garage owning mate has said he will put my spare engine in with a new cambelt and water pump, plus do a few little bits for £250. I'm just going to let him do it - waiting for a empty run down south in the lorry so i can drop it all off with him. 

 

[brickwall]

Shame it's a TDi., the rest looks nice.

[scruff]

If it was a 3.9 it would be the perfect RR!! The diesel's alright really especially with the pump tweaked a bit. 

[Tayne]

Is it on air or coils?

[scruff]

Coils

[scruff]

Here's the problem with old Range Rover Classics: 

 

 

 

 

All done now with lots of lovely new steel, thanks to me old china Jon, and freshly MoT'd. Picked it up yesterday while on a job in Hampshire. 

 

 

Needs a massive clean now...

 

 

[ruffgeezer]

You are so hard to keep track of with all these name changes, good to see you are keeping busy though.

 

Trouble is every time you post I'm reminded of how much I miss Trev...

[skattrd]

I remember a mates RRC that looked pretty good needing a bit of welding behind the headlamp ... metal good enough to weld to was found after the bulkhead.

[cros]

Heres another series 1 offering, this time an 88" from 1957. I bought it in 2009 for about £1400, and 5 miles into the journey home it broke down. The distributor had seized so there was little prospect of a roadside fix and I was relayed home. It looked like this:

Plenty of mirrors, the galvanising painted and just about everything else painted in green Hammerite. I revived the engine with a borrowed distributor; it was noisy and after investigating the cost of a rebuild (a lot just for parts) I decided that it wasn't the thing for me.

My wife and I set to with lots of paint stripper and tidied it all up a bit. A new hood went on and we used it for 3 years like this:

 I'm aware that Landrovers are very uncomfortable and a flawed means of transport. The plus side is that there are lots of ways to make them better without spending much, this is what I've done to mine. At least I haven't covered it with checker plate.

She made seat covers and they went onto a new base with better foam than you get with aftermarket seats. This is not saying much, but it was all I could find without buying new, very expensive stuff. She also cut up old carpet, cheap car mats and odd bits of soundproofing and glued it under the bonnet and on both sides of the bulkhead. We've tried most methods of shutting these noisy bastards up, but this has been the most successful. The doors have padded cards glued onto the inside and the roof has foam lining. The last two have made the biggest improvement.

 

 

The hardtop was picked up for £50 and in true Landrover tradition had been peppered with holes to mount all sorts of shit. Sadly this didn't leave a very flat surface to put the lining onto, but never mind.

  The biggest improvement has been under the bonnet. Most folk prefer a 200tdi but I put a 300tdi engine in because they are cheaper. (200 quid) and a tiny bit quieter. I ditched the turbo and oil cooler which let me to use the standard 88 exhaust system and bolt the engine straight onto the existing chassis mounts- you have to alter the offside one for a 200. The engine bolts more or less straight onto the gearbox after you've switched to a later bellhousing

 

A 90's Landrover engine complete with its turbo pushes a series 1 along very well. I've driven several and its always a pleasure, but the big downside is that if you use the power the layshaft will break eventually. I've busted 3 Landrover gearbox layshafts in my lifetime and each time limped home in 4th gear and carried out the long job of replacing them. I don't want to do another. One bloke out there claims to have busted 13 with the 200 tdi.

  More later.

[scruff]

Nice!! I put a 200 in my old Series 2a. Loads of guts but as you say a gearbox murderer!! A few chums have fitted LT77s which take the power alright, but they now drive like a rather shit Defender which kind of defeats the object of having a Series LR really.

[cros]

∆∆ Exactly. I looked at using a stronger gearbox but there seems to be no easy way without making lots of other changes to get anything else in.

I have 3.54 diff's and an overdrive which with the standard transfer gears puts the overall ratio a lot lower than, say, a Discovery. Surprisingly, the engine manages to pull this gearing and manages more than 40 mpg, better than Ive had on prima or Transit engined Landrovers in the past. I don't like the added complication and fragility of an overdrive; mine is very early Fairey one which has a different type of lever arrangement I've not seen before. So far it has remained quiet and works well; the most worrying aspect of all this is that its the vehicle's eighth lot of oil to change/check/piss out.

[Jim Bell]

Just read this front to back. Smashing threading.