JeffR

I have a couple, but both vehicles not roadworthy, does that count

I'm friendly with the local community crime prevention/wildlife protection (its Northumberland, they multi task) Officer who leases with the vehicle crime dept on adverts such as this, there are more scams than actual deals on Faceache these days

Now that I'm allowed to play with heavy things again.....Door fitted and gapped. Opens and closes really nice, only took about a day to adjust hinges, locks and wheel carrier. Wheel carrier needs some tlc and some nice slippy (got a chunk of bronze bar that should do the job, assuming I can unearth it from its "safe" storage place) shims to get it parallel. Then on to assembling dash, persuading handbrake to, well, brake (may have been a good idea to do that before the seat box was screwed n glued in place). Un-seizing rear brakes and sorting out the electrics for the fuel tank and rear lights - someone butchered the chassis loom (not me ) so there are no connectors. Only connector left is for the tow bar electrics. Oh and the fuel tank needs to come out to be de-silted and a new sender (300 tdi) unit fitted. But really need to get rid of the straggly little nettles that proliferate underneath the damn thing. I hate nettles, why on earth did God invent nettles

if you want a real giggle, tell them you will pay cash on collection. Then sit back and watch the myriad of excuses they come up with ... Yes I know I'm a sad individual for doing this, but if they are going to waste my time, I'm gonna waste theirs in spades.

They last about half an hour in dry weather, 15mins in wet. Pay more and get something that will last longer than the time it took to fit....

In my distant youth I was a student mining engineer at a local colliery, in the big machine shop there was a (redundant by then) lath used for fettling coal wagon wheels, directly opposite at a height of 30ft or so was a 4 jaw chuck key embedded in the breeze blocks handle end first. The machinist supervisor remembered its escape bid from when he was an apprentice.

I find that Aldi dishwasher tabs to be the best for cleaning bits. They brought the V8 cylinder heads up like new. Warning, wife was not amused. Neither was she amused when I warmed up some freshly painted parts in the oven to speed up drying...

I wasted nearly 25 hours of my life (at my age.......) attempting to rectify the same problem earlier on this year. Wings on, wings off, bonnet on , bonnet off, slam panels been on and off more than a lady of the nights underwear, reduced the gap ever so slightly, then decided , bugger it, the gap will increase under bonnet airflow/cooling, so I'm going to live with it. Life is simply too short...

I have two of the buggers, one in a 200tdi 110 which has done well in excess of 200K miles and never missed a beat. used it a lot in low range when i was ecologist on M6 toll road. Standard sump and ATF, love the damn thing. The other lived in my previous 110 V8 for best part of a decade, vehicle was driven like it was stolen relatively enthusiastically and by my wife (quote of the century from her after a 200 mile journey on her own "what does the little oil can on the dash mean, its only been on for 80 miles"), again ATF and standard sump. Only one problem with it in that time and that was the speed sensor unplugging itself. It included driving from Penrith to Honiton in overdrive low range cos it got jammed in low range and I couldn't face trying to sort it out on the camp site.

ANL 940K used to redline at 8K, bugger reved like a sowing machine, a mate ran an imp engined Davrian that redlined at 13k. my mini averaged 7mpg on a stage, 10-12 on a run. thank god it had twin tanks.

Wait till you see what my next project is. My Golf has finally expired, snuffed it, shuffled off its mortal coil etc, actually my MOT man suggested I'd be lucky to get home alive in it....Anyway, it has a pair of heated leather recaros that, with a faeces load of frame modifications, will be taking up residence in the Defender.....

In my dim and distant youth I used to run an eight port 1558 mini , complete with comp clutch, lightened , beam axle, all the dogs dangly bits. My dad borrowed it to go to work. When he got home he complains that he couldn't get it to go faster than 70........ He'd been looking at the rev counter.

I had, briefly, well very briefly, a lightened (OK so it was so rusty a lace curtain was more structurally rigid) Maxi like that...... Thieves used to leave tenners on the windscreen with notes saying "you poor bugger, buy something worth stealing"......

So do I mate, so do I...

Took a break from this for a while as, according to my cardiologist, having a stent or two shoved in my coronary arteries was somewhat more important. So the door progresses had to move inside as rain and mig do not make good bedfellows... Cannot use garage due to very angry swallows nesting. Chicks are fine, they'll take mealworms from my fingers, parents are just thugs. anyway, plug welded new one piece skin to door frame after repairing/replacing most of the rot (way too many plug welds, but I borrowed an 8mm hole punch and got carried away, what can i say it was fun) hours of grinding later and a gallon of paint stripper. . A couple of coats of my favourite rust killer and frame officially done. Note, cleco clamps are worth their weight in gold when plug welding edges. Got to admit to cheating a wee bit, there were a couple of small rust holes in the bottom frame, so rather than cut em out and weld chunks in, I enlarged them and they now identify as drain holes. Some subjective observations on safari door frame. The way LR do em, using multiple pieces is ok, but leave way too many gaps for water ingress. Also the frame flexes quite badly at these joints. In the interests of scientific observation I (before I removed the LR applied multiple bits of tin) I put the door on the ground and raised the bottom left corner, frame flexed by a good half inch. Tried it again after welding one piece skin on and flex was not measurable. So a one piece replacement has increased the the torsional rigidity of the frame, can't wait to see how difficult its gonna be bending the door to fit the hole... on to skinning the bugger.... Now I could have simply deleted the door skins, the door looks , well, like a door. But I thought to myself, lets see if I can flatten the skins I carefully removed (lets be honest here, it took bloody ages to get em off relatively intact, warped to buggery and back is a more accurate description. So out with a hammer and numerous bits of scrap metal (panel men call them dollies). Lots of hammering finger nails and their attendant digits later (still not got a huge amount of control over what my arms do, makes life interesting to say the least) and we have this In terms of time, it would have been significantly cheaper to use new skins (£60 or so from fleabay) but as I'd spent so much time taking the old ones off and hammering them flat(er)....add that I'm kinda bloody minded and you can see where this is going. Everything got a couple of coats of Neutrarust, and I mean everything. Its probably a carp barrier for bimetallic corrosion, but what the hell , like I said before, I live dangerously... So back to applying skins. Bottom skin first of course. Was in a bit of a quandary, here. Ally skin is not truly flat, neither is the frame, also its a big flat (ish) bit of flappy metal thats gonna drum and vibrate and generally become a work hardened pain in the ventral orifice. Out with the Tiger seal....... Half a tube of pu goop and 4 pop rivets later , bottom skin more or less attached. I spread the pu thinly using a wallpaper scraper, then using every clamp I could beg steal or borrow and numerous bits of wood, compressed the living bejesus out of everything. Lets see that bugger separate.... The two little side pieces treated the same oh and one of the cats (Nougat) decided to help (gotta cut tiger seal out of cat fur) Just need to fit top bit, sand old paint and prime. So was it worth it? A new door shell is a couple of hundred quid, I've used about 40 hours of my life and all it cost, financially, was £17 for a tube of tiger seal. Metal was free, yeah I didn't cost in mig consumables and electrickery, but I learned a lot, it was fun (once the battered finger nails grow back and the cats fur grows back)) and I have a door that will outlast me. Would I do it again? NO Buy a bloody door....

Never used rubber protection, thats why I have 4 children.....I'll get me coat and not let the door hit me as I leave.

Cant comment on paint longevity other than to make a couple of observations on modern paints. Hammerite (smooth and hammered) is a total waste of space these days. One will spend more time applying the stuff than it will stay put on whatever you put it on. Cheap paint in aerosols from the pound shop lasts longer (really!). What I can comment on is rust converters, cos I get thro a lot : Corroless is not as good as it thinks it is, tried it and abandoned it when rust came back after less than a year... Hammerite rust killer , great for indoor stuff, not good for outdoor stuff, rust returned in less that 6 months, bloody expensive too. Hammerite No1 Rustbeater primer stuff, yeah , don't bother, seems to promote rust if left outside for more than half an hour without a top coat. Phosphoric acid sort of works, forget to rinse off the excess and everything goes sticky and goopy, cheap tho. What I do use and recommend is Neutrarust 661. Stuff does what it says on the tin: The bulkhead bracket was done with corroless a couple or three years ago and needs re-done, the steering box lock plates and that big brackety thing were done at the same time with Neutrarust and still show no rust creeping thro after a couple of years outside. Also seems to stop aluminium corrosion (instructions do not mention using on aluminium, but I'm a rebel.....). Primers seem to stick to it quite well and, if one forgets the primer, so do topcoats. Sadly it aint cheap, but as it seems to work.......

My V8 suffered from the dreaded wobble (adrenaline really is brown and smelly), replaced both steering uj's, drop arm ball joint, track rot ends, well nearly everything. Was still wobbling, only got rid of it by replacing the lower shaft (RTC4783), could find nothing obviously wrong with the old one, but if one swapped it back in, the wobble came back.

Well, having fully welded the door frame, I am amazed at the difference. The frame is so much stiffer and less floppy. Just got a few pigeon droppings welds to dress, a few dinky patches to make, internal box sections to paint, drain holes to recreate/make, half a million plug welds to do and door skins to dolly flat and fix back on. The absence of photos is due to finding out that if one leaves a samsung phone outing the monsoon that identifies as spring in Northumberland, it ceases to function, waiting for second eldest child to come home and extract said photos....

That would require me to be computer literate.... I tend to work on the principle of "if you can't make it fit/fix it by hitting it with increasingly large hammers, its permanently broken".....

Sealey also stock a very comprehensive range of spares for their kit, I killed a little CP1201 drill (don't drive over them, just saying) a couple or three years ago, its guts were fine, but the casing was terminal. Phoned Sealey and parts were dispatched same day. These days before I buy anything, I check the availability of spares. No spares backup, no purchase. Mind you, what really boils my urine is the price of replacement batteries for cordless tools, I have a box full of (admittedly cheap) cordless carp with dead batteries which are just not worth it as new batteries cost significantly more than what the tool cost.

I suspect the rot (pun very much intended) set in circa 1988 when BAe acquired Rover grp and set out out to maximise profits at any expense, this was exacerbated in the BMW/Ford years that followed

The 1981 Mini in my garage still has the original doors and they were really badly made.... The area in which I live, Northern England, still has a surprising number of 70's/80's vehicles that are in regular daily use The mid 80's 110 door I dissected was made of much thicker material AND was painted inside and out. The newer door is made of 20% thinner material and only painted/primed where the paint could be seen. Weld penetration on the corners was non existent on the newer door (can still see where it was cut (bandsaw). It was , deliberately, made cheaper. There were no drain holes either, hence the natural drain holes that are present... Given that it was a Genuine Parts door, the quality and workmanship is absolutely shocking.

So job stopped for a day or two, neighbours had a sense of humour failure about after about 150 spot welds were drilled out and ground down. Mind you the rain, hail, snow and sleet didn't help...Must clear the garage this weekend. Never mind, deconstructing the door frame has been an education, they are sooooooo poorly made. Frame top hat sections measure out at 1mm thick metal, the "closing" panels measure out at 0.9mm....Not intended to last very long, clearly. I have some YRM repair sections (bought for another door) so measured them. All made of 1.2mm steel, rather than the tinfoil Landrover seem to prefer. Also measured some bits of 1985 safari door, guess what, all the steel in them was (cue drum roll and fanfare) 1.2mm. There are a surprising number of small, and not so small, rust holes that appeared when frame cleaned up with angle grinder and knotted wheel. The nastiest bits are all around the door lock aperture. Mind you I did find out why the door skin used to deform when the hinge screws were tightened down, the anti-crush tubes sit a couple of mill below the frame... So plan is to plug weld the pin holes (yes I know I should cut the rot out and weld in patches) and patch the bigger holes before welding on the one piece closing panel thats replacing the myriad of bits that Landrover used. But got some work to finish first. Oh and I cannot find any 1.2mm plate locally so waiting for that to arrive (when did sheet metal get so bloody expensive?)

Can anyone guess where I'm going with this idea.....Why have loads of bits welded together when one can have a single bit. RIP double width filing cabinet, you will live on in my memories. This may be getting out of hand a wee bit......