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Land Rover resto - new project and Sandy p25


richardthestag

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Another afternoon in the barn, too much curry and brown beer last night to comprehend attacking the angle grinder before midday. Then I knocked off at 4:30 to watch the Rugby and wished I hadn't

 

Still I managed to get the lower B Post, wheel arch extension in and the closing panel cut, and prepped ready to weld in. 

 

This is the captive nut and reinforcing panel for the rear seat back side catch. I salvaged it from the old side curtain that I cut out. It responded well to de rusting

 

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So zinc primed him up ready to weld on tomorrow

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Then quadruple checked the fit and alignment for my lower b-post repair panel

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Weather is a bit shit today

almost like a good Scottish summer

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Tacked the repair in

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the lined up the wheel arch extension

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and welded in, The n/s is bolted in to allow access for the fuel pump. I welded the o/s though

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Tomorrow

1. Fill in that gap ^^ between wheel arch ext and B Post

2. Fit seat back side catch "captive nut" panel

3. Make up and fit rear seat base support

4. fit rear seat and check alignment

5. go ome and see Mrs thestag and the saucepans

 

 

 

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Need to have a bit of a clear up in the lock up. I lot of this is going back onto the car but not for a few months. want to have a go at fixing the door shells before handing over to the bodyshop man to prep and paint the birmabright panels

 

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Here is the remains of the sIIA rear silencer that went bang so loudly that North Devon Police mobilised their armed response team 4 days later

 

Garage art now

 

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feeling shit today so I thought that I might post up activities from last Sunday :D

 

While I do have a sheet metal bender it is a tinsey affair that would struggle with much more than tinfoil. Using a metal vice, length of angle iron, g clamps and a nylon faced hammer I have improvised and am getting more and more pleased with the results I get

 

Measure up first, then plan on paper, then cut then bend

 

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then use the hammer to sharpen the edge

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If the flange (snigger) is too wide to allow the vice to clamp I normally use a block of wood, but here you can see the hammer improvising

 

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After measuring up 4 times, transferring to paper and then checking measurements again before cutting and bending this is genuinely the first trial fit, well chuffed with that

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measured up and made a reinforcing plate for the captive nuts

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next bit is to weld the seat mount to the floor, side curtain

 

the gap here is normal? I dont know really, it would be covered up by the wheel arch extension on the other side

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But I choose to cut a length of heavy duty angle

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and weld it in for extra strength

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Holes punched for plug weldage

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welded and flatted out

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By the way just how much cutting disc should you leave on the grinder?

 

Reckon this should have a little more left in it but the grinder wont let it get any closer to the work-piece

 

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Next bit is the lower curtain, that boxes in the side of the car from the back of the b-post to the lower inner wheel arch

 

Cut a lump of steel out and with not a load of drama trimmed it up to fit. couple of gentle bends to get it flush

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Weldage 

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zinc paint protection to the bare steel, no idea when I will blast this all back to bare metal for proper treatment

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Flatted back the b-post weld 

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thought i did more pics but the seat back captive nut plate is now welded in place

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Happy for now

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Having a weekend off welding :D

 

Mainly because the car is 180 miles away from where i am, so I decided to get on with sorting out a pair of cylinder heads

 

Sealey head stands work nicely and give a nice stable platform to do stuff like removing valves. I bought them to work with the Stag heads which are OHC and thus always have valves in varying states of openness

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All nicely OCD :D

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Valves are in good shape, no wear on the guides, the seats look good, light clean and lap is all that is going to be required here

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After 15 mins in the blast cabinet - which I had to spend 30 mins fixing - the glass media was all stuck together. emptied it out. shook the media about a bit and then dumped it back in again

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Had a go with engine degreaser and a wire cup wheel to get them looking nice, dont know whether I will point the outside faces or roughly polish and then laquer. the jury is currently out

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Pleased with this one, probably 90 mins work and it is all ready to go back together. no bits needed

 

Still need to inspect the rocker gear, maybe tomorrow :D

 

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While I was messing with the head I lobbed a load of used nut and bolts into my vibrating tumbler

 

These is my ancient nut and bolt box

 

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this is the tumbler without the lid on it

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This is the same stuff after 3hours being tumbled with some coarse walnut shell

 

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Can now see what might back into the reuse pile and what is rubbish now. 

 

Can have a go a sorting into metric, UNC and UNF as there is a bit of everything in there

 

Just have another 15kg of rusty nuts and bolts to go now

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Another little job that I did last night. My daily has had a squeaky heater blower motor for years. I occasionally jet a load of wd40 into the motor housing but recently there are some nasty burney electricy smells filling the car. I have a spare heater unit in my shed from a Rangie I broke for spares a decade ago. That motor was fooked also but you can but them from Land Rover Traders

 

The idea is to fit new motor to this heater unit, check the rest of it over, matrix and flaps and then on a sunny day spend a day swapping them over. First step is to get the old unit apart.

 

Nothing that nasty to be honest, lots of clips and screws hold the two halfs together, here I have taken the drivers side end plate off

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on the other end is a load of vacuum gubbins for the fresh air flap

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With the two end caps off you can see the state of the motor, nice

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it slides into a plastic cradle that fors part of the left side of the heater unit case, sadly you cannot push it out without seperating to two heater halfs. so motor replacement is defo a heater out of the car jobby

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This is the front of the unit, the heater controls are in the middle of the pic. just above them you can see 4 pop rivets, drill the two out on the left side of the casing :D

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The fresh air flap on the back of the unit prevents the two halves coming apart. after a load of fucking about i positioned the flap in the closed position and then cut a tinsy slit on the right half of the case inside to allow the flap to slide past and stay with the left half of the casing

 

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Happy days

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This is the carrier for the motor which I had just tapped out with the hadle of a hammer

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here is the noisy fucker

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Verdict, it is fucked, new motor needed, matrix is fine though so only need to buy motor before rebuilding this and then a day to fit it on the car

 

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Being a bit odd in the head like I pondered why it is that folk replace valve springs. How do they know they old uns is fucked?

 

i did a bit of goog-ha-ling and found that race folk are mega anal about spring loads etc and spend many hundreds of $ on machines that tell them how good their shit is.

 

Me thinks well I could check mine, I made up a very simples press. The only thing I need is a new spring to set the baseline :D

 

The testing location of the spring is fixed by a nicely located cup washer. makes little odds where it is so long as all springs are tested at the same location

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measurement is from a spring balance. I pull on it until the top bar touches the end of the bottom bar and record the findings

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Clamping it to the bench made it a one handed operation

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results were with 250g of each other

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Verdict - no idea really but it cost me fuck all to make except the cost of the spring scale - £3.58

 

I will buy a new valve spring and expect it to read the same else I replace all the springs etc

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next up sort out the rocker cover and reassemble the head

 

Rocker cover was jizer'd and then bead blasted in the cabinet, before being thoroughly cleaned. Came up nice for the internals. Externals needs the remains of the old grey paint sanding back before repainting

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Head stand take the head either way up, ftw

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valve heads were de carboned using a dremel flap disk

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here is the valvee as removed

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a drill powered valve lapper is new to me, I normally use the old bit of wood with a sucker on the end. fookin luxury this for me

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does the same job with ever so slightly less effort. Had the Draper lapper not landed in my lap for nowt then I would still be doing it the old manual way

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Everything lapped and cleaned up ready for reassembly

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#1

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9 mins later. have a beer now

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Today made a call that I want to SPL the body frame, mean that it needs to be dipped and then prepped. This will help it stave off the ferrous oxide for a year or too.

 

I am sick of welding now anyway and the core strength is back into it.

 

Tidying up the store and I turned and liked this scene for some reason 

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It all bolts together so I started removing loose fitted bonnet and front inner wings

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then the roof panel which was very loose bolted up anyway - :/

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Windscreen header rail is held on by 4 bolts

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rear "goalpost" is connected by 2 mounts and 12 bolts to the side frames, had to drill through a couple of welds but nowt serious

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All out of the way

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nearside side frame is held on by two mounts and 2 screws / 4 bolts holding it to the bulkhead

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almost there

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The plan now is to load all the inner frame panels, two side, rear "goalposts", bulkhead and front inner wings into a van and ferry them to the best (yet to be chosen) firm to dip and protect.

 

I can finish the welding and paint :D

 

Nice bare chassis in process of being stripped down, I will lift engine and box and grit blast it before painting and rebuilding

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Store is looking a bit busy again. need to be a bit careful of denting stuff

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Found this penny stuck to the gearbox crossmemer, this is after I had cleaned it to check the date. It might be stuck back here again after. lucky bugger?!?

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Props and exhaust removed, the exhaust turns out to have stainless boxes!!! need to clean back the pipes which look rusty but are sound. 

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Two loops of the o/s/r spring are missing, this is all I could find. 

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Tomorrow going to lift engine and box off. Oh and the gearbox is 8000th ish off the line. so chassis, both axles and box are all date matched.

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slight change of plan today, decided not to remove the engine and box largely because I have nowhere to put them and sitting on a rolling chassis is pretty ideal for now.

 

What i did do is get it stripped right down so that only the 4 mounts need to be removed to lift it.

 

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I still want to get the front cover and inlet manifold off to protect bits that might get broken

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Removed the gearbox crossmember and was pleased at the lack of holes behind it

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Next was to strip down the axles ready for blasting, discs and pads are unused, the callipers look to have stainless pistons installed but the unions and nipples are in a state. lots of gentle heat and careful removal on the bench mefinks

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Swivels look gr9. still getting stripped right down and then rebuilt.

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rear callipers look to have been rebuilt, discs have loads of life left in them

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run out of time for this weekend. next time i plan to finish stripping down the rear axle, get driveshafts and diff out and then do the front, lift the engine and if I get time fire up the old bead blaster.

 

I want the rolling chassis stripped and painted before I do the body frame dipping, Then it can all start to go back together.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nice weather this weekend so finished two jobs while at home.

 

Daily Driver heater unit first, this is the unit I am rebuilding to do a straight swap for the Banshee screaming unit I have in the car.

 

Pressure testing the matrix was the first thing. Luckily I have a load of old hoses, clips and expansion tanks to righ up this. Help 20lb pressure for an hour so that is hopefully going to remain leak free

 

post-3439-0-38015600-1491914738_thumb.jpg

 

Installed it into the heater box

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I bought a brand spanking new heater motor from a trader on evilbay, www.mcdonald4x4.co.uk is his website, slightly cheaper than any of the other online guys and never used before

 

The only issue with it was slight difference in the wiring, shorter wires etc. 

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easy enough to cut

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n shut

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installed into the housing

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AND after a lot of fiddling getting flaps in the right place, swearing at them does help, it was all together

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On the shelf waiting for a day in my calendar to be free so I can fit it

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In other news, I chose home time to rebuild a pair of rocker shafts from the Rover v8.

 

Consists of steel shaft with alloy rockers. the oil feed is up one of the rocker pillars that bolts it down to the head. Oil then flows along the shaft and dribbles down onto the inside of the rocker to ensure lubrication.

 

The ridges and sludge on this shows just how bad things can get, I know none of the history of these rocker shafts.

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The only bits that I can salvage from the old shaft is the pillars, the springs and the washers from the ends. To reuse the rockers even though they seem a reasonable fit on a new shaft is a false economy! think fitting used brake pads to a new disc. one will wear the other and you know the disc will suffer.

 

The posts were lobbed into the ultrasonic cheapo cleaner I bought off the bay, tapwater, washing up liquid, 200ml of vinegar and salt cleans stuff up nicely in 15 mins. This is the before

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here are the salvaged bits with new shaft, the second rocker setup is here also for comparison. shiny things

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Assembly is very therapeutic, the oil holes point downwards and towards the pushrod end of the rocker. The rockers have a specific way to go on. Looking at the valve end, the dot should be furthest from the shaft pillars

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All done

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New split pin on each end holds it all together. So much fun I am glad I have another to do. These are now wrapped up in plastic ready for the rebuilt engine

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While I was at it I checked the rebuilt head valve seats. Get it level and pour pez (i used 2 stroke so I can see it) into the combustion chambers. None leaked thus good seats

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I also measured how much goes into here so Along with piston crown and head gasket thickness I can calculate compression ratio

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Stripped down the 2nd head ready for blasting and although someone has gone to great effort grinding in valves and facing the head all 4 inlet valve guides are tired. 

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Looking to get modern valve guides installed so I can fit stem oil seals and cut oil consumption a little

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Both heads now stripped and ready to go to my local engineering shop

 

 

 

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Interesting stuff! I went through pretty much the same as you did recently, but I was lucky enough to fin a set of good second hand shafts & rockers in the garage. They weren't perfect but only had a polished area on the underside rather than a wear ridge. I'd read of people who'd had problems with excess oil flow using pattern rockers, flooding the top end and reducing oil pressure; hence why I was reluctant to replace with new (and I couldn't afford OE!)

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  • 2 weeks later...

been down in Devon since Thursday noight. boring paid work on friday and then beers in the evening

 

Sa TURD ay filled my 20 gallon sand blaster and had a play with it on teh chassis. Instructions were useless but I found that by slowing the gravity feed of grit out of the bottom of the pressurised tank It was pretty effective at shifting everything from soft underseal to crunchy rust leaving a very pleasing bare steel surface. It is however a fiendishly messy business. oh and quite slow. I recon on a full day to get the chassis back to bare metal. I plan to revisit and finish the job in a couple of weeks. Will need loads of tarp, a staple gun, my old garage bagless vacuum cleaner and a kitchen sieve. More of that in a couple of weeks.

 

Today I decided to have a go at tidying up welds on the bulkhead section of the body frame. I had securely tagged the various bits together but wanted to grind it back and seam weld where I felt it was needed. also stripped all the bits off the bulkhead that I wanted to keep before it and the rest of the frame goes off to SPL for dipping

 

Chassis makes a useful rolling workbench

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nice fun seam welds ready to be ground back

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inside and out

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welded small plates over holes cut into repair panels that I will not need, these are hidden behind body work on the outside and trim on the inside

 

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the two rough round holes were for the previous owners rubber duck, what it almost certainly did though was allow rain water that found its way through the scuttle vents to drip into the car. Now welded up. but run out of welding gas

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Tidy Orse waiting patiently for an apple

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Dads series IIa has had a problem with binding brakes when cold for a while now. never really had a chance to have a look at it. found that it was the back axle that was binding. 

 

post-3439-0-44480300-1493586555_thumb.jpg

 

that aint right! 

 

update, the shoe springs are correctly fitted, the trailing shoe should flap about like that, read on for ongoing brake saga

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the slave cylinder has two pistons, the brake shoes pivot from the bottom of the backplate and are each pushed out by their own piston. There obviously should be a spring to pull the shoes back together again. It was there but wasnt installed right. I had to do both sides. then free off the manual adjusters which are predictably rounded off. when I get gas (snigger) I will weld a nut onto the rounded stub of each adjuster to make life a little easier.

 

Anyway all back together and no binding brakes no more. 

 

BUT the pedal now sinks to the floor, it can be pumped up and the brakes work then but obviousment needs bleedage. will do next time I is down here, 

 

Going home tomorrow morn to fix that stag

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Who built those brakes last to leave the springs out then?

 

isnt that the springs were left out but that they were not connecting both shoes at the top. for some reason the forward shoe was connecting to a post on the back plate. Doesnt make sense at all. There are many many different brake setups for the series landies and I can only assume that the backplate is the same for all those with 10" drums

 

Last time I was here was during the chassis rebuild in 2010. shall have to ask Fathathastag if he had the garage fiddle for an MOT etc :D

 

update, the shoe springs are correctly fitted, the trailing shoe should flap about like that, read on for ongoing brake saga

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just found a pile of pics from April/May 2016 when I rebuilt a Rover V8 inlet manifold.

 

Damn good therapy for dep and high levels of stress. well for me it is anyway :D briefly :(

 

Anyway, stole them from ebay, I stalk shite like this and when badly advertised I pounce. Picked these up years ago for £35 + £8 p&p

 

Of the two projects I have going one has an Edelbrock and 4 barrel which will possibly stay. The other has a Range Rover manifold but stubby SUs.

 

The plan maybe to install correct Stromberg laden inlet manifold to the rebuilt engine...

 

Anyway on with this piccies

 

As bought, looks like it has been under a work bench for a very long time. lots of bits are still attached which is useful

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Once the manifold was stripped down, I blasted it with glass bead in my cabinet and then painted it. not into mirror finish alloy stuff on engines. too high maintenance.

 

I originally planned to paint it battleship grey but this seems to only have been for saloon car installations. Range Rovers seem to have been painted silver or left as bare alloy 

post-3439-0-93448000-1494150465_thumb.jpg

 

these toothy fellers were found inbetween the carb and the inlet manifold. never seen them like this before

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stripped and cleaned one carb at the time. while the body is NOT handed all the bits and unions are. saves on a load of confusion later in reassembly

 

Carb body was cleaned in ultrasonic cleaning tank, proved effective. body then painted with HT aluminium paint 

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For many of the fittings I lobbed them into the tumbling vibrator for 24h. gentle massage with walnut shells takes just about anything back to clean

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first carb body done and back on the manifold

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