JeffR

"I'm not sure, but wouldnt the lower revs caused by the OD confuse the auto box?" That was my main concern, guess the only way to find out is to give it a go next summer!

Now the bloody Mini has joined in. F*ck it and the horse it rode in on. Swapping a pair of mini discs, piece of cake, not. caliper bolts have decided that they like it where they are and are not gonna come loose, odd squeek (as described by her indoors) turns out to be a trashed knuckle joint and top arm, ball joints are buggered (well might reshim) and then to add insult to injury I stripped the thread on a trck rod end. And the landrover? well thats has gone into a terminal sulk and refuses to start. Got fuel, got air, got a big fat spark (incidently, just cos the blurb in the advert for your super dooper insulated spark plug pliers says the insulation can cope with the entire output from Selafield, it ain't necessarily so. Mind you, the fact that it was raining hard enough to warrant building an Ark...), yet the bugger will still not start. I am beginning to think that it feels the need to sit this winter out.

Lying in my garden is transfer box/R380/Bellhousing and overdrive (don't ask......), now I have this weird compunction to convert my 110 V8 to a slush box next year (arthur and his best mate ritis are getting worse in my left leg) and I was wondereing... Now some of the old RR ran an auto box and overdrive, could I fix a GKN overdrive to an auto box and make it work?

Only trouble with cubby boxes (got a MSS one ) is they rapidly become a repository for carp useful stuff. The centre seat was next to useless once my kids grew legs, once tried to fit an adult in there and , well, you have got to be VERY good freinds to select low ratio/difflock, very good friends indeed....

If I took the wheels and roof off my 110, and 22 inches out of the wheel base it would fit comfortably in the garage!

Well, here we go again, as I said earlier, the exhaust is sound gorgeous IF you ignore the fact that it hits the fuel tank and rear anti roll bar.... Easy fix you say, NOT. Standard LR exhaust hangers don't help (Have you seen how much them buggers cost?), so now I've got to fabricate something to hold the exhuast up, oh and can I find someone who stocks 3 inch exhaust clamps locally, can I buggery. So I am gonna change the brake discs on the wfes 1981 Mini, thats therapeutic

I used to use Wildcats, they did what they said on the box, but you can't buy em anymore cos they're made from "dirty oil". The replacements are twice the price and wear out in half the time! Thank you politicians.

As i work as an ecologist, that would not happen!

Finally sorted out the rear light hissy fit! Only took 4 days.... What was it I hear you all cry? Easy, when drilling a new hole for the earth, I'd drilled through the wiring loom......

The key to my roof box opened all the locks on my Landrover! Funny thing was it had the same impressed number as the original Landrover key.

I would honestly prefer NOT to keep it coming, but this vehicle and I are at odds with each other.

If any more wildlife (excluding wife and kids) takes up residence, I'm thinking of getting it designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest

Landrover only sell them in packs of 3000 and they cannot split a pack

Now the bloody rear lights, in general, are having a serious hissy fit!!!!!!!

Maverik, you are forgetting that at least you can get NHS therapy for drug and alcohol abuse.....

Normally the missus flatly refuses point blank to give me a hand doing anything with the landrover as she lacks the ability to understand that the very bad language that issues is aimed at the vehicle, not the assistant! Oh and she has the mechanical sympathy of a rock ape on acid. My pet hate is that she cannot get her head around how the choke works. She refuses to accept that, yes, you start the vehicle on full choke , let it tick over for a moment or two then slowly push the choke back in till you find the sweet spot. Nope its all or nothing, you can tell when shes using the laenveloped in a cloud of black smoke, I mean the economy of a V8 ain't good at the best of times.... The local traffic plod told me one night in the pub that he could follow her in his volvo and use the echaust fumes from the V8 as a fuel source! But then she redeems herself with a flash of inspiration, what can you do , thats why I am convinced that all landrovers are of the female gender!!!!!

don't know but I'm not sure they know what they are doing....

it gets worse, after a couple of hours sleep I renewed all the tail light earths (sorting out future probles, ha, proactive maintenance), switches lights on and yes you've guessed it no offside brake or tail light. An hour and a half with the trusty multimeter tells me there is nothing bloody wrong. Continuity test says both bulb filaments are intact, got voltage at contacts everyting is fine except the light don't bloody work. Wife suggests I try a new bulb, I quickly veto that as the bulb that is in is new. She nags me into submission. Finds old bulb in tool box and it bloody works. It looks like the filaments in the other bulb are broken but not when the bulb is cold (ie off) it is making contact, but as soon as current passes thro the filament expands and breaks contact!!!!!!!!! I tell you, you couldn't make this up if you tried, this vehicle hates me with a bloody passion and just to add insult to injury there are three Blue Tits using it a night time roost and they've crapped all over the seats and dashboard and eaten all the spiders ...........

Well it's nearly half three in the morning and I've just crawled out from underneath my bloody land rover, again,. In September, cos the weather was kinda nice, I replaced the body cappings and thought "wheel arch boxes are looking tatty and got more than a few holes in em, lets fettle them as well", so I did. And I rebuilt the battery box which the previous owners had put in the nearside wheel arch box. Then I removed the carpets and found more bloody holes, so rebuilt the entire floor, that's top hat sections, floor,seat belt mounts, the whole kit and caboodle.Proper job, well nearly. Fitted the floor plate with lots of isolated button head screws, and fifty or so pop rivets and two tubes of Tiger seal. Buggers not coming out in a hurry, I can tell you. Whilst it was all out even painted bits of chassis that hadn't seen daylight since the vehicle left the assembly line. Happy as a sand boy. Then I couldn't find the chuck key for the power drill, or the dinky little quarter drive ratchet that I'm kinda emotionally attached to.... Turns garage and tool chests upside down and inside out, but the buggers is gone. Wife suggests that I have put them somewhere safe, gets a gobfull. Spends night in spare bedroom. Gets up feeling refreshed and confident and full of busy. Still can't find chuck key or ratchet, have nagging doubt in the back of my mind that I may have done something very silly and produced a heart attack inspiring rattle from the back of my landrover. Spends another day removing the bloody floor - for the love of God but Tiger seal is f*ckin hard to split. The nice new floor pan is looking very second hand when I get it out, and yes I did find the chuck key and ratchet nestling in the middle of the centre top hat section. Throws floor pan into the woods behind the house and sulks for a day or two. Looks at bank balance and recovers floor pan from woods behind the house. Two days of panel beating and it was almost ready to refit. Got really bored and moved onto the next job. Then I refitted the swingaway and the new door. Now the door was still covered in plack primer (see previous posts) so flats it back primes it, removes a few dead flies and gives it its first top coat. Went more wrinkly than you could imagine. Strips it all off and starts again. After two top coats it was looking good, very good. i'm chuffed to bits. Gives it one more coat and leaves it overnight, forgot to switch the bloody garage light off didn't I. Next morning door has somewhere in the region of 2000 dead Psychodid flies stuck IN the bloody paint. Now that type of fly has lots of scales on its wings which drop off when yopu kill em (the entomologist in me is coming out now....). my formally pristine Alpine White door now looks like it has a severe dose of measles combined with smallpox and chicken pox. I am a seriously unhappy bunny. Tries flatting it back, but these little buggers just will not sand out. Strips door back to bare metal and starts again. tries to fit the NEW door card i had lying round in the attic, no bloody way will it fit without putting the old round wiper motor back on, but as that needs rewiring.... Bugger it. We'll live without a door card for a while. Moves on to the next job. A nice pallet of bits had just arrived, new exhaust manifolds down pipes and y piece (and an entire transmission). So I thought lets do the exhaust as the old manifolds were cracked and sounded a little bit like a Hurricane taking off..... Now tubular manifolds are a first class barsteward to get on and off. And the exhaust wrap itches like a bugger. And the stainless steel cable ties are actually razor blades in disguise. Never mind got the buggers off to find that the nice aluminium 3/8th UNC threads were still firmly attached to a couple of manifold bolts. Buys Helicoil kit. Now a useless bit of info for you all, no matter how hard you bloody try you CANNOT get a power drill to fit between the body work and the exhaust manifold bolt holes. Honest. But you can get a tap wrench in. So there it is children, with a lot of patience you can drill out stripped threads with a tap wrench. You won't get the bloody hole square, but what the hell. Saves having to take the head off. and the attendant buggerance that goes with that process. Fits helicoils. Now the fact that two manifold bolt holes are , well, kinda scew wiff is a wee bit of a problem when it comes to putting the new manifolds on cos the holes thro which the bolts go are now, technically, too small.... Easy buy a larger diameter cobalt drill and make the holes bigger. That worked. Now clamping down the manifolds with scew wiff bolts is actually not that much of a problem if you make up matching scew wiff washers..... Never mind another two days lost unbuggering up a buggered up job. But for the first time ever there were absolutely no leaks from the manifold or system. I'd forgot just how genuinely quiet a V8 is at tick over, apart from the ominous squeek coming from the water pump... Which turned out to be a slipping fan belt. Breathes huge sigh of relief and retires to the pub. Next day the bloody thing will not start, nothing, nada, sweet FA. Engine turns over at a vast rate of knots but there ain't no electrickery getting to the spark plugs. I'm about fit to bust at this point so does some real work. Next day has another go and the bloody thing starts first turn of the key.....then dies. Checks all the connections, new dizzy cap and rotor arm (I have a lot of them as spares, don't ask why...) . Still bugger all electrickery. Tries old coil that lives in the cubby box and the engine fires but runs as rough as a badgers bum. Thats why the coil was in the cubby box. Buys new coil. Fits new coil, car still wont bloody start. Starts hunting around for a gallon of petrol and a box of matches.... Wife takes matches and fag lighters off me and gives me a couple of bottles of electric soup to cheer me up. That works. Sleeps off the effects and its dark when I wake up. Goes outside and tries to start the wretched machine; all I could see in the engine bay were sparks flying every where AHHH theres a short somewhere thinks I. Turned out to be a broken insulated Lucas connector on the amplifier pack, mind you it killed the amplifier pack and coil, but I had a spares of them. result was a sweet sounding, smooth running engine. Job done, I'm back to being a moderatley happy bunny. Next job on the list was to fit the transfer box/overdrive/R380 thatwere lying on a pallet in the garden (getting really tired of landrovers and have work coming out of my ears, oh and the MOTs expired). Removes seat box and floor pans , puts trolley jack underneath takes the weight and starts unbolting things. Hey, it went as easy as it could possibly go. Every nut undid as it should, this is gonna be doddle. Well they say pride comes before a fall. And it does. I kinda forgot to remove the exhaust I'd just fitted. The trolley jack crapped out and the trans hit the exhaust y piece and totalled it, along with my patience. Bought a new y piece. And gave up in disgust. So at 8am yesterday I started putting the old trans back in, why? Because the bloody thing will not come out from underneath the bloody landrover as I forgot to put it on flamin axle stands. By 4pm its was all back together so I started the thing up to turn around so as the rain wasn't soaking me and found I had absolutley no drive whatsof*cking ever. Nothing, zilch, just some horrible noises. Has a cup of coffee and a think. Gets the inspection light out and crawls underneath to find the clutch release bearing lying in the gravel. How the bloody hell I'd knocked that off I honestly do not know. I am now convinced that this bloody vehicle is possessed, either that or the sock pixies have turned nasty. Never mind, drops the lot again (getting good at this removing of transfer boxes and allied carp) and puts the release bearing back in it's proper place and at 3am this morning turned the landrover around in it's parking place. Another two or three days and it should be ready for it's MOT.

No ramps, gearbox jack and gravel drive! Guess its gonna be done in bits.......

Trying to decide which is easier to do. Yesterday my old transfer box/overdrive and R380 for my 110 V8 arrived on a pallet. I really only need the overdrive, but the transfer box that is on the vehicle has more oil leaks than the exon Valdez and the gearbox is a wee bit bad tempered at times. Short term the idea was just to stick the overdrive/transfer box in and do the rest next year, but I am considering just swapping the whole lot. So my question is which will be easier, given that I have to do this on my tod!

can't remember where I spotted them, but last year I came across a site that sold hardened steel caps that could be hammered into the socket of allen/torx bolts. Mind you would be a bugger to replace the hinges (which is why I didn't buy any)...

I hate mine cos the one day "minor" job is now on its second MONTH

you have got recovery cover, haven't you.....

Bloody women drivers.....