Tales from the Sherpa Shed

[Heavyspanners]

What do you do when your Land Rover conks out?

You buy a Freight Rover, of course.

For the last several years I've been using my 1967 Land Rover Series 2a as an all-purpose daily driver/load shifter, knowing that the engine - a previous-owner creation with various Series 2 externals on a Series 3 block - was approximately a million miles overdue for a rebuild, or replacement. It was using about a litre of oil every 100 miles, although I have no idea where that oil was going. There was no blue smoke, and for a massively worn, million-mile engine, it actually ran quite well. But it was pretty clear that sooner or later something big would break.

The photo below is not a posed shot. Well, it is, in a way, in that I didn't have to stop right there and take a photo. But this is what I was doing with my Land Rover: using it to ferry building materials, car parts, and me from my home in west London to my semi-derelict garage in Wales, which is gradually becoming less derelict, but it's a long job. There's a thread about it on the blue forum if you'd like to know more, in which the Sherpa makes guest appearances. But this thread is going to be all Sherpa (well, it will be, once I've got the Land Rover out of the way).

Old Land Rovers and motorways don't get on very well, so I worked out a more Land Rover-friendly route which avoided the M4 in favour of minor roads and country lanes, including this one, on top of the Cotswolds. You can just about see I've got a transparent roofing sheet in the back, sticking up over the cab, which didn't do much for the performance. Unfortunately the load space is to small to lay the sheet flat. The trouble with short wheelbase Land Rovers is that they're short.

The nearside headlight is way out of adjustment, but Land Rovers of this age have infuriatingly fiddly headlight adjusters which rely on bespoke parts rather than the standard Lucas bowl/screws/springs, and the bespoke parts tend to break, and are now unavailable, so that was the best I could do at the time. This will be sorted out as soon as everything else is sorted out, because... 



...last year, the million-mile engine finally quit.

Cylinder no. 3 lost most of its compression, and although the engine still runs (with an interestingly clumpy rhythm) it's not really driveable for any distance. So for the time being, the Land Rover is taking a holiday for the sake of its health - and I had to find a replacement vehicle for all my shunting and shifting.



Now, I could have gone out and bought a nearly-new Transit, or something like that. But I don't get on with modern motor vehicles, and especially not with modern vans. I've rented a few, and they always seem so fragile, so delicate, so prone to falling apart.

Not so long ago, driving along in a rented Transit, a pheasant walked out in front of me and head-butted the van - and the entire front end fell off. I kid you not. It turns out the front end of a Transit van is a plastic nose-cone clipped in place with little plastic tabs, which fit into slots - like an Easy-Click model kit. And one pheasant-impact is all it takes to break the tabs. Fortunately, I've made a few model kits in my time, so I was able to reassemble the Transit at the side of the road, and the rental company never noticed the extra-wide panel gaps where the tabs had snapped like dry twigs. But the idea of actually owning a van like that - it would be like driving around in a motorised Fabergé egg.

I wanted something old, tough, and basic. I considered another Land Rover. It was doable. Prices have gone down a bit from the ludicrous levels they reached when the Defender went out of production amid much publicity, and people who had never previously given Land Rovers a moment's thought suddenly rushed out and bought one as some kind of souvenir. There was a genuinely weird Land Rover frenzy going on for a while, which drove prices up into the silly-money zone. I sometimes wonder what those people thought when they found out what Land Rovers are really like. I'm sure many of them had the vague idea that a Land Rover was a modern SUV with trendy retro styling, rather than something which has more in common with a 1930s lorry.

But I thought it would be nice to have a vehicle with a bit more load space, a slightly more normal driving position, and a turning circle which doesn't require three English counties to do a U-ie. Maybe some half-decent fuel consumption, too. And anyway, I know Land Rovers fairly well - I've owned one since 2008. That, to me, was a reason not to buy another one. I was up for a change. Maybe even a challenge. Now that's dangerous thinking!

So I spent a lot of time on the parts of the internet where old cars are sold...

And, eventually, this happened:

 

For the avoidance of doubt - the vehicle I bought is the small blue one. Not the big white one.

That's a 1985 Freight Rover Sherpa 255 chassis cab, straight off a farm in Northern Ireland. And yes, this did mean that I bought it without going to look at it first, which is not the recommended way of buying old vehicles. Never do it! But the wheel arches looked rust-free in the pictures on the advert, so that's a good sign, right?

Then I had to get it transported across the Irish Sea. I can recommend this company, who are based just down the road from the Sherpa's farm.

Interestingly enough, the transport company took it to Dublin, then to Holyhead, rather than going via Belfast as I had assumed they would. This means my Sherpa went into the EU and out again. I would have thought there would be all sorts of fees and paperwork for doing this, but I didn't have to deal with anything like that. Possibly the transport company did it all. Or maybe, as part of the Windsor Framework, Sherpas get an exemption.

In a way this was a bit like taking coals to Newcastle. You'd think there would be plenty of Sherpas available on the UK mainland, but at the time I was looking, this was the only one that wasn't a camper van. And it does have my favourite front end: square headlights (the round headlight versions look as if they're wearing a surprised expression to me), Range Rover style grille, one-piece steel bumper with no indicators in it (a one model year only feature).



I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, hang on. It's on a transporter. So it doesn't run, then?

Of course it runs! And it drives. It even stops. Some of the lights work. There's very little rust - the photos didn't lie. The wheel arches really are rust-free, a rare thing on a Sherpa. It does need work, because it's been in a barn for a few years, and before that it was a farm truck, and before that, it was a British Telecom box van. So it's had two lives already, and probably quite hard lives, too. But there's more life in it yet.

Here it is, running and driving:

Now it's safely stashed in the Sherpa Shed, ready for recommissioning, which is still going on. At the same time, I'm trying to rebuild the Sherpa shed, which would be a lot easier if it didn't have a Sherpa in it. So things aren't moving ahead very fast - but they're moving.



We'll give the Sherpa a good coat of looking at in the next episode, and I'll start the inevitable process of Taking Stuff To Bits.

[Jenson Velcro]

Excellent start. I’ve been following your progress on the blue and am really pleased that you’re now posting on here as well. The work you’ve done on the building has been great, and I’m sure people would be interested in that project also.

[Matty]

Remember 200s and 400s (albeit LDV badged) with great fondness from when I started out on the world of work. Driven many for jobs and enjoyed them all. Following with interest 👍 

[Tickman]

Welcome, as above I've been following your tale elsewhere.

[Asimo]

Excited! Has it got plastic springs and an O-series?

[High Jetter]

Strong contender for farthest away garage award, London to Wales! Following with interest.

[Heavyspanners]

2 hours ago, Asimo said:

Excited! Has it got plastic springs and an O-series?

It does have a O Series engine, but it's one year too old to have the carbon fibre springs.

It's a very odd spec in some ways - because it was a one-year transition model, some of it is old-school Leyland Sherpa, and some of it is Freight Rover 200 Series. And I'm sure it's got some bespoke BT-only features. BT bought Sherpas by the thousand at the time, and they pretty much specified the vehicles the way they wanted them.

[Heavyspanners]

51 minutes ago, High Jetter said:

Strong contender for farthest away garage award, London to Wales! Following with interest.

I do tend to say to my wife, "I'm just popping out to the garage. Back in a couple of days!"

At the moment, because I seem to have no motor vehicles fit for use on the King's highway, I'm commuting by train. Which is surprisingly doable, and not too expensive (well, not compared to the amount of petrol a Series Land Rover would guzzle on the journey).

I've certainly put in the miles on Class 150 diesel multiple units. Thundering along on a non-airconditioned train with with 14 litres of Cummins NT855-R5 roaring away under the floor is proper rail travel.



Transport for Wales is getting rid of its 150s, now that it has shiny new trains (with appalling ride quality, don't get me started) taking over. They're for sale at £35,000 each, which is ridiculously cheap for an entire train in drive-away condition. I wonder what sort of discount you'd get if you offered to buy the whole fleet...?

[eddyramrod]

You know you want to!

[junkyarddog]

I've very much enjoyed your RR thread on the Welsh garage refurbishment.

Hopefully you will also post about it here.

[TMP_319]

The 150s are the Sherpas of British Rail - slow, square, loud, and past it.

Look forward to seeing the progress on your Freight Rover.

[grogee]

7 hours ago, Heavyspanners said:

Thundering along on a non-airconditioned train with with 14 litres of Cummins NT855-R5 roaring away under the floor is proper misery

FTFY 

[Heavyspanners]

There are many myths and legends about the Sherpa. Myth no. 1 is that they never really changed. Oh, they had a few facelifts along the way, but even an LDV Pilot is basically a BMC J4 with a nose job, right?



Well...not so, not really.  Sherpas changed a lot. Some of the changes were obvious and visible, but many of them were obscure, and lurk in waiting to trap unwary Sherpa owners who think everything's going to be easy because it's all just a big BL parts bin special. I know this because I am that Sherpa owner.

If you've got a Land Rover, you can find out the exact spec any particular vehicle should have, with every last production change meticulously  noted. You can zero in to the month, or even the exact day the change happened. Sometimes you can look up the chassis number of the first vehicle to have the new spec. It takes a lot of research to put together something like this - but people out there have done it. 

Unfortunately, nobody has ever done it for the Sherpa. You can't even get a heritage certificate - I've tried, but apparently factory records vanished years ago. My Sherpa doesn't have any MOT history. The DVLA thinks it's overdue for its first MOT in 1988. I'm not sure what's going on there. Were BT vans MOT exempt? Or Did British Telecom test its vehicles in-house? Surely there should be something in the records post-1994, when it was sold into civvy street?

The first thing the keen new Sherpa owner learns is that you're on your own with this one, matey.

And you can't assume anything.  In particular, you should never assume it's just the dear old J4 with a nose job.

However, I think we can safely say the headlights work...

I took this photo shortly after the Sherpa had arrived in its shed. It's still a bit grubby from its career as a farm truck - I hadn't washed it at this stage. The first thing I do when I buy a new motor vehicle is to wash it, which might seem a little strange, but it is a good way of getting to know your new motor (and very often also a good way to  find rust you didn't know about before). Whatever work needs to be done (and there's plenty on this Sherpa), it's always encouraging to start off with a superficially shiny vehicle.



I've been trying to find out as much as I can about Sherpas in general, and my Sherpa in particular. In the absence of much real info, sometimes this comes down to looking at pictures of Sherpas on Flickr, and trying to figure out from the registration dates of various vehicles when this or that change happened.  Of course, this only works for stuff that's visible to the naked eye. For example, I can tell you when the front bumper changed (there were four different types), but I can't tell you when the propshaft changed (there were three different types).

Engines! Leaving aside electric Sherpas (there were electric Sherpas, and I seriously want one), the Sherpa had six different engines. Or nine, if you count capacities separately. Possibly more than nine - I don't know offhand if the B Series diesel came in different capacities.  Apart from the Perkins Prima, which was basically a diesel O Series engine although never referred to as such, the O Series engines fitted to the Sherpa came in four different flavours. They were all 'Commercial' versions of the engine, not the same as the O Series engines fitted to cars. The main source for info on the O Series engine is the AROnline article, but this doesn't even mention that there were commercial versions.

Here's my Sherpa's engine - photo taken when I was in the middle of giving it what I suspect was its first service since 1994, so one or two bits are missing.  It's a 1.7 O Series Commercial, which means it's low compression, achieved by the use of dished pistons.

Low compression also means low power - a heady 61 bhp. I think I've bought the only motor vehicle which is slower than a Series Land Rover. Theoretically, putting in car-spec pistons would raise the compression and give more power, but I bet it's not as simple as that. And anyway, where do you get O Series pistons from these days?



The AROnline article on the O Series engine gives the impression that the B Series crankshaft was used in the O Series, which it wasn't, not quite. Apparently the dimensions of the bearing journals are the same, which on the face of it should make bearings interchangeable - although, mindful of the 'Don't assume anything' rule, I'm not counting on it. Still, since my Sherpa has only done 50-odd thousand miles, the bottom end of the engine should be in fine fettle, so I'm not thinking about crankshafts and bearings at this stage.

Aside from those similarities of the crank,  the B Series and O Series engines are not related. The O Series is not the B Series with an OHV head - that's a myth all of its own!

My Sherpa is a pickup now, but it was originally a British Telecom box van, like this one. This photo is here on the forum, on this 2015 thread - good stuff there if you're interested in BT vehicles.



With my Sherpa geek's head on (it's a permanent fixture now) I would say that's one of the very last metal-bumper Sherpas. It's the same model as mine: a one model year (1984 - 1985) variant, essentially an interim update on the 1982 K2 reworking of the original Leyland Sherpa.  That should mean this model is the K3, although I've never seen anything official to say that designation was used. At some point in the C-reg period the Sherpa got another, bigger, update (the K4?) which made 1986-on Sherpas very different to earlier ones, although externally the  differences were limited to impact-absorbing bumpers and new rear light clusters on the vans.

Incidentally, one other thing I've never seen is any explanation of why the first big redesign of the Sherpa was called K2 - and not Mark 2, or Series 2.  Personally, I’ve always thought it was a reference to the mountain known as K2, the second-highest mountain in the world. The mountain is called K2 because – slightly oddly – it doesn’t have a name. It’s one of two prominent peaks in the Karakoram range, which are known as K1 and K2.

K1, apparently, does have a proper name. It's known as Masherbrum, which sounds like something that happens when you go to a Wetherspoons in Birmingham. But K2 is just K2. So we can deduce that the first big revision of the Sherpa was called K2 because K2 is a mountain, and Sherpas climb mountains. Clever stuff!

BT Sherpas had extra-long mirror stalks from the military 'Wolf' Land Rover, so the driver could see around the massive BT box. On the Land Rover they were fitted so the driver could see around the spare wheel:



Here's one of my Sherpa's military-spec mirror stalks. They're so long that folding them back places the mirror awkwardly behind the driver's sightline, so I've got them folded forward, which is better, and also gives the Sherpa a trendy 'sports mirror' look.



The Land Rover photo comes from here, and looking at the interior pictures I see that military Land Rovers had the same door grab handles as my Sherpa. This means that my Sherpa has GENUINE MILITARY KIT.

BT bought Sherpas by the thousand, and when you're buying vehicles in that kind of quantity, you can pretty much write your own specification. In 1985, BT bought 2,290 Sherpas (info from here) - mine must have been one of them. By 1985 Sherpas were fitted with the LT77 gearbox from the Range Rover, and I assumed mine would have this box. I was rather worried when I couldn't get it into 5th gear. Was there something expensive wrong with it?

Erm, no. It doesn't have a 5th gear. It doesn't have the LT77 gearbox.

It's got the old 4-speed box, without even an overdrive. Well, it's a relief to know there's no problem, but a bit of a let-down to find I only have four measly gears. Surely that must have been a BT-specific feature. BT wasn't going to waste money giving its vans hi-speed cruising ability when they'd just be chugging from one telegraph pole to the next. I can't find anything to confirm this, but the 4-speed box should have been well and truly obsolete by the time my Sherpa was made, so something was definitely going on.
 


More Sherpa shed shenanigans will follow shortly...



...I'm just working on the anti-gravity systems at the moment.

[Dan302]

Loving this thread! Can't remember the last time a saw an LDV in the metal let alone a Sherpa 

[Landy Mann]

Looking good,  on the MOT thing being in NI it would have been tested at a government testing station (unless BT did have there own test station but pretty sure that isn't a thing over there). The NI MOT records are only available from ?2018? online. I assume this is around the time their system started integrating a bit better in with the system in Swansea. So my be why you can't see any. 

I remember reading in one of the local papers,  most likely the so called Impartial Reporter, about all the classic farm vehicle enthusiasts being upset when the local offices closed around a similar time. 

[jonathan_dyane]

My dad had a Sherpa of that period and this brings back good memories. His was B reg with the 1.8 B series and 4 speed gearbox. He brought it from a local milkman who had retained the float body and my dad had the tipper body fitted from his old (1980) Sherpa. 

It was a good pick-up in the end but he had to have the engine rebuilt, happily he managed to find someone who worked in the GPO workshop who was able to do it as a 'homer'

[Matty]

This thread is bloody brilliant. Laughing my arse off at seeing MOWOG on  a gearbox fitted to an 80s van 😆

 

Edit. Now I've seen @jonathan_dyanes post above saying his dad had an 84/85 with a Bseries in it maybe I shouldn't be laughing.

[High Jetter]

This is the level of madness detail we need. Who knew there were that many variants? Next instalment, please.

[jonathan_dyane]

Before me dad had the B series dizzler rebuilt it was a pig to start in the cold to the point where if it had been proper sun zero it would need a tow to start.

When this was the case he would get a tow off a neighbour who had a D reg ex gas board Freight Rover 350 twin wheeler. This was truly special, the gas board box had been discarded and replaced with a rudimentary flatbed and it had lost it's original (Land Rover derived) 2.5 diesel engine undoubtedly to a Land rover because under the bonnet it must have been perhaps the only Sherpa to have a Land Rover 2 1/4 petrol engine...

[Asimo]

New engines available...

https://cabmasters.com/product/bl-o-series-engine/

[N19]

Did it start life with British Telecom over in NI? Or did it move there when it was deboxed and bought by the farmer? Either way, it won't have had a mainland UK after 2005 which is when they were digitised.

[Heavyspanners]

9 hours ago, N19 said:

Did it start life with British Telecom over in NI? Or did it move there when it was deboxed and bought by the farmer? Either way, it won't have had a mainland UK after 2005 which is when they were digitised.

I think its BT career might be the reason the MOT record is blank. It was bought straight out of the factory by BT as a bare chassis-cab, then probably transported (not driven) to the BT workshops in Belfast, where the box body was fitted and it was finally registered. It spent all its life in Northern Ireland - with BT up to 1994, then after it was sold off, on a farm.

After a few years as an all-purpose farm truck it came off the road and was just used on the farm land only. Then in its last few years it went into the barn and wasn't used at all. So it's quite likely that it hasn't been near an MOT station since before 2005. The first time it came to the attention of the authorities was when I bought it and put it on Sorn. That's the one piece of info the records have on it.

The odd thing is, I think it's quite likely that it has never been on the road in England. Northern Ireland, yes, and now Wales - but not England. If it left the factory with other Sherpas on a transporter (which I think is likely because BT were buying lots of Sherpas at the time) it would never have got its wheels on an English road.

One day I'll take it to England and show it the sights!

[Snipes]

Why did BT have boxes on the back? Were they little mobile workshops (I'm guessing they needed standing room)?

[Heavyspanners]

9 hours ago, Asimo said:

New engines available...

https://cabmasters.com/product/bl-o-series-engine/

I like that...but they can't tell if it's a 1.7 or a 2.0 because the engine number has been changed. It's a gamble - if you're lucky, it'll be a 2.0 high-compression engine. If your luck's out, it'll be a 1.7 Commercial!

It's definitely a rebuilt engine. It looks like it's been painted with silver Hammerite, even over the alloy cam cover, and that's not a factory finish.

There aren't any external differences between the different types of O Series engines (the 2.0 has bigger bores), but all the same you'd think there would be some mark on the outside to show what's going on inside, if only to make it easier to find out the spec without squinting at the engine number.  At the factory it would have been necessary to identify the engines before they'd even been issued with a number. Perhaps the ID mark is under the Hammerite.

That bit about the 2.0 engines being unleaded-compatible, but the 1.7 engines aren't, is  wrong. That's another myth - one of many. Both engines used the same head. I know where they got it from: it's on Wikipedia, without any kind of reference. It doesn't even say 'citation needed'. Someone just made that up, stuck it on Wikipedia, and now it's a 'fact'.

 

[Heavyspanners]

12 hours ago, jonathan_dyane said:

My dad had a Sherpa of that period and this brings back good memories. His was B reg with the 1.8 B series and 4 speed gearbox. He brought it from a local milkman who had retained the float body and my dad had the tipper body fitted from his old (1980) Sherpa. 

It was a good pick-up in the end but he had to have the engine rebuilt, happily he managed to find someone who worked in the GPO workshop who was able to do it as a 'homer'

That one must have had an engine swap - the Sherpa got the O Series engine in 1978.

Apparently it's quite easy to swap engines on the pre-LT77 Sherpas, and there are advantages in using the B Series - much better spares availability, and lots of tuning options. I should think B Series engines were (and maybe still are?) quite cheap to buy, too. There are certainly plenty of them about.

[Coprolalia]

Just another voice chiming in to say thoroughly enjoying reading this, followed the tales on the blue and glad to see you over here!

[Heavyspanners]

15 minutes ago, Snipes said:

Why did BT have boxes on the back? Were they little mobile workshops (I'm guessing they needed standing room)?

Yes, they were workshops, and some were fitted out as site offices.

BT's idea was to have lots of work/storage space on one vehicle, so they could get away from the old set-up of a Morris Minor van towing a trailer....



...and also have a compact vehicle with almost as much load space as the older big trucks.
 

The boxes were demountable, and could be jacked off the chassis and transferred to another vehicle. This meant they didn't have to be unloaded if the vehicle went in for servicing. You'd just swap the box and send the engineer straight out again with the same box on a shiny new Sherpa.



BT expected each of its Sherpas to be in service for 8 years (mine did 9 years, although it may have been stored awaiting disposal for its last year), but the boxes were expected to last 16 years. 

I wonder how long Openreach keeps its present fleet of white Transits before moving them on? I bet they don't do 8 years!

Lots of stuff about BT vehicles here and here and here, if you fancy going down a few rabbit holes...

[ETCHY]

Brilliant thread.  Really enjoyed reading this. I look forward to updates. I always found the Sherpa interesting wheras the Transit in all its guises somehow never appealed to the same degree.

Any chance of some interior shots?

[Stinkwheel]

I havent logged into the blue for years, but i've just read your full thread over there. A really epic of a journey through it all. As a fellow west wales inhabitant I hope all continues to plan and we get to see much more sterling work in and around the little garage that could 

[Heavyspanners]

25 minutes ago, ETCHY said:

Brilliant thread.  Really enjoyed reading this. I look forward to updates. I always found the Sherpa interesting wheras the Transit in all its guises somehow never appealed to the same degree.

Any chance of some interior shots?

I've just stripped out the interior - not that there was much to strip out, because it was very much BT Basic spec. There'll be a few photos along soon, but here's one to be going on with. I found lots of Northern Ireland mud under the rubber matting...



The weird pile of white stuff, bottom-left, by the wheelarch trim, is bi-metallic corrosion. The floor mats had alloy edge trim, and where they had come into contact with wet steel they'd generated a strange powdery substance.

The small box with its lid open, on the right, is the first aid box. Just above it is a hooded ventilation outlet, which was linked via a flexible duct to the box (the duct can be seen in the photo of the Sherpa with the box being jacked off - erm, if you see what I mean). Presumably the box itself had vents, thus creating flo-thru ventilation for both cab and box.

The bracket, standing upright to the left of the seat belt buckle, fixes the passenger seat in position. BT Basic Sherpas didn't have an adjustable passenger seat!