paime

Things have slowed to a crawl recently, mostly due to the excruciatingly difficult time I'm having trying to get my doors to fit properly. I'm having a bit of a strange issue. On a TD5 there is a fixed chassis/body bolt which is non adjustable and sits at the front of the seat box. Currently the body sits too far forward by about 10mm according to that bolt. The body, however, is lined up perfectly along the top of the rear cross member at point A and the seatbelt brackets on the tubular cross member at point B are fine as well. Meanwhile, at the front end, the wing mounts at point C are all the way forward. My door gap at point D is larger than E which is what's preventing the door closing properly. I need to make B-D wider then increase the width at E as well but I can't because A is perfectly lined up and I can't move the wings of bulkhead forward. Also, the footwell to chassis bracket is also too far forward. Ideally I'd move everything back but I can't because then the body will overhang the rear cross member. Help!

@landroversforever the first round had some gems but the second round seems to be a bit more hit and miss from what I can see. The job lots have some bargains but also a lot of tat! @Junglie you have yourself a deal. I have a 90 so if this is for a 110 then I'll be getting shot of it. That's on the basis I actually manage to buy it, of course.

It's a bit dark but you can just about make it out here. I've got some 2nd hand side steps here in Aberdeen which i'd happily get rid of, just let me know.

I had the same setup as snagger on my 90 and it worked well. What kind of rock sliders do you currently have?

It look like there are 6 horizontal bars with this design and only 5 with the one for sale. The brackets are also right on the corner so I'm guessing 1 bar along the body capping, 1 over the alpine window then 1 in the middle of the roof. I can't find that design anywhere though. Some more pics:

Does anyone know what this roll cage fits? It's being sold by an auctioneer and is labelled as "Land rover heavy duty external roll cage." I've been trying to identify it by counting the number of braces but I'm stumped.

Those copper ones come with the ABS but there's another collar which fits into the axle flange on an interference fit. It just looks like a steel tube to me but I don't understand ABS so don't know if it makes much of a difference!

Does anyone know if these bushes are expensive for a reason? https://www.paddockspares.com/ftc1384-sensor-bush.html The old copper bushes were seized into the bushes in the link and things went a bit downhill. I've got some steel pipe that luckily has the same OD/ID as the FTC1384 bush so I can bodge something but does it need to be a certain type of metal or anything like that?

I like the overall look of that thing but this specific example is maybe too far gone. Everything seems to have holes in it where holes shouldn't be.

Sounds like I'll be jump starting her again tomorrow then! I can't drive it around to properly charge the battery so I'll have to hook the trickle charger up to it for a while. Tonight I managed to get the front end assembled with the grill back on and slam panel etc. Also got the bottom bolt on the front damper after what seemed like an eternity. Whoever invented the bottom bolt system on defender dampers needs to have a word with themselves.

Any idea what might be causing this in the video? The battery was totally drained and I managed to jump start it over the weekend. Left it running for a couple of hours to charge the battery and now it sounds like the starter isn't engaging properly. 20210208_205555.mp4

The amount of force i had to use to get the old metalastic ones out was insane so i've gone for poly bushes instead. They're all fully pressed home and i can't see any lateral movement even when i've got the crowbar on there to wiggle it around. The a-frame ball joint is done up tight but not torqued up yet so maybe that's causing the slight offset as well.

Ah sorry, with you now. My chassis is the one with the bolt-on crows feet. I did notice when i was under there the other day that there was a couple mm more of the bushes showing on the LHS bracket than the right so maybe it will even itself out after i've driven about a bit.

Mine has the adjustable rear tub mount. It needed some fettling to get it centred to begin with but i've measured and re-measured and it's definitely centered. The issue seems to be with the axle being centered on the chassis from what i can tell and it also looks like my springs aren't perfectly vertical between the axle seat and the chassis top mount. I also have an unexplained 10mm difference between how far forward my front wings protrude which has me totally baffled as the bulkhead is plumb. I'm hoping this will settle everything down. It's difficult to get everything to line up without the weight of the body on the chassis but then it's difficult to do anything once the weight of the body is on the chassis! Catch 22!

Progress, progress and more progress! Managed to get the engine started today which feels like quite a large step forward given how much has happened to get to this stage. There's an intermittent start fault where the starter motor just rapidly clicks rather than turns but I think it might be a loose connection on the solenoid. I noticed today that my rear axle isn't centred by about an inch to the drivers side. I've measured the body and all looks fine there and measured the distance from chassis rail to outside tyre wall and that's definitely where the discrepancy lies. Can you adjust the A frame to resolve this sort of thing? It was put on last after the weight of the body was on so I suspect its not quite true.

Can you post some pics of your coolant alarm when it's done? I saw the British Canadian chap install one on a square header tank but was wondering how it would work on the round TD5 tank.

I think I might have been chasing a ghost with the alignment issues. First pic is the old chassis and second is the new one. The new chassis doesn't have the protrusion which measures about 10mm and it just so happens that the gap I'm trying to bridge is a shade over that. I think I'm going to try and use some stout tubing and washers rather than packing it full of just washers. I've lost about a fortnight trying to sort this and feeling a bit daft!

i replace mine to jubilees whenever i get the chance! Those spring clips are horrible things, particularly if they're in an awkward place to get the grips on. No harm at all in changing them out.

Can't advise on the brands but I did mine last year and I remember the drive belt tensioner being very, very stiffly sprung. If your power steering pump is old you might as well replace it at the same time, same goes for the belt. Otherwise it's just a few bolts and fairly straight forward.

Here's a TD5 coming out through the front to give you an idea of how high it has to go. That was done with a 1.5t crane and was fairly straight forward once it was away from the gearbox.

This is the advice I was secretly hoping for!

Do you know how much of a gap you had between bulkhead and outrigger? I've had the chassis bulkhead brackets unbolted for all of the adjustment so far and if anything they could probably do with pushing the bulkhead back even further. Its as if I need to stretch everything out a bit but I can't see how that could happen.

I've got the correct spacers for those bits so hopefully it should bolts together OK tomorrow. What I still don't understand is how I would elongate or shorten the door gap and keep it parallel. The bulkhead is attached to the rear tub via the sills and the floor pans so I can't see how I would alter it. I can alter the pitch of the bulkhead to make it more or less parallel to the B post but that's all? It was definitely on the outside previously but probably wouldn't make much difference anyway.

Mine is a 2001MY and the tabs are on the outside of the tub - at least they were on the old chassis so i'm assuming that's the factory setup, it's anyone's guess though!

2 steps forward, one steps back with this body alignment. I (ahem) 'remodelled' the corner of the battery tray under the seat box to get me past the bracket which as helped a huge amount. I've now got a lot more flexibilty to shift the body about on the chassis so set about trying to get the bulkhead closer to the outriggers. After an evening of swearing i succeeded and almost cracked open the champagne before realising that the rear tub was too far forward so had about an inch step in from the top of the crossmember, the middle crossmember top brackets were about an inch away from the rear of the seatbox fixings, the rear tubular outriggers were an inch away from the seatbelt mounts and the front wings and bulkhead-chassis were also too far forward. Essentially the bulkhead-front outriggers were the only thing aligned . I've now gone the other way around and got everything else to line up but i've got a big gap at the bulkhead. The doors open and close fine and i can't see any twisting in the body, do i just pack it full of spacers and forget the gap exists? The rock slider will cover it up anyway....