SLROC Forum

Well now - what are these things...?



...Holy F'ing S!  It's the missing galvanised suspension parts!

Right, better crack on, then...


1. I was last seen putting the rear axle back together - here's the disk and hub back on one end...
2. ...and its sexy blue splash-shield...
3. ...which is so good, I too two picture of it.
4. Same story on the other end (the plastic bag was to cover the disk when I touched up a bit of black spray-paint)
5. Wheels on, the axle is now mobile again and finally off the engine-hoist - hoo-bl**dy-ray!

6. Here's the galvanised parts again, sent to me all the way from near York by Land Rover Refurb - very helpful bunch of blokes who even made some of the brackets or me, because you can't actually buy them (non-Land Rover, although the Special Vehicles dept. must have fabricated them at some point...).  Here, you can see suspension seats front and rear, front suspension top-rings, rear inner suspension seats (for HD springs), a Td5 tank-strap and some side-locker brackets (the only galvanised set of these on Earth, surely!?)  Also shown is my latest "cunning plan" - I've printed out and laminated all the suspension/axle diagrams from the allbrit.de website to supplement the Haynes manual...they've worked out quite handy so far.
7. Here are the new galvanised lower spring seats bolted to the front axle - probably worth mentioning here that all the nuts and bolts I'm using for the suspension are stainless steel A4-80 high-tensile - expensive, but better than an axle shearing off one day...
8. The galvanised rings have threaded studs on them which the suspension turrets fix to - unfortunately, these were clarted with zinc from the galvenising process.  Equally unfortunately, these studs are 5/16 UNF 24 pitch for reasons unknown (probably the shallower thread pitch than an equivalent M8 stud), but I was able to borrow a die-nut and cleaned them up.
9. I decided to fix the new front dampers (terra-firma - nice, eh?) into the new turrets (see how they used to be red but I've painted the outsides blue?  Pretty pointless when you think they'll be hidden, mostly behind the inner-arches...but I'll know they're blue!)
10. The front axle was moved into position under the front of the chassis (the blue thing on top of it is a diff-guard mounting plate - hope I don't scratch it!)

11. Then the damper and turret were lowered through the chassis and bolted to the mounting ring - I realise I've left both the lower mounting bushes on the lower end of the damper, but it's not fixed in place yet.
12. The same the other side and then it was time to fit the springs.
13. Although I'm following the sequence in the Haynes manual to refit the front axle, this next bit isn't in the book.  The right way to do this is to compress the springs and lower the axle to fit them in - my way was to hoist the chassis up in the air and fit the springs over the end of the dampers - much easier, although it did take the help of my girlfriend again to guide the dampers back into place while I lowered the hoist arm.
14. There you go, dampers and springs fitted - I referred to the Haynes manual to find out what torque the damper nuts should be tightened to and it says "...tighten them to the securely."...er, fair enough then.

The plans, then, is what it says on page 9-11, section 7:
a) Refit the nuts securing the shock absorbers to the axle - done!
b) Connect the anti roll-bar...
c) Connect the drag-link from the swivel-pin housing
d) Refit the track-rod
e) Refit the panhard rod
f) Refit both radius arms

I have to say, I'm really glad I've gone for all new nuts and bolts, despite the money involved...

Right, watch this space

Cheerio

Hi Paul, thanks for the updates, you're getting there well done so far, all looking good, I think you need to arrange a topping out celebration when you fit the body back on, invites?.....bring a can or bottle... brilliant
Cheers
Jock

That sounds like an idea   I'll give that some thought

All the best,

Paul

Work continues apace - I've broken into the new bolts and the poly bushes...here's the result:


1. I decided to fit the new tracking rod as per the list in the Haynes manual - I've set the length to 1230mm pin centre to centre as per some website somewhere...
2. But...I knew from having already done this backwards that the radius arms won't fit onto the axle with the tracking rod in place, so I decided to fit them first, instead.  Actually, if you go to the section in the HM about refitting the radius arms, it says to disconnect the tracking rod - that'd be pretty annoying if you'd just fitted it - thanks, Haynes!
3. Having greased the bush holes in the radius arms, I then realised that fitting the new bushes into them was going to need more than the tools I had with me, so I turned my attention to the front anti-roll bar.
4. It was a bit tricky to tell where the mounting bushes/brackets had to go, but I positioned them close enough...
5. ...broke into a packet of new bolts...
6. ...and bolted them in place.  New drop-links are on order, so that's as far as I can go on this bit for the time being.

7. For something to do, I decided to refit the power steering box - it's very heavy and very awkward, so I hung it from my engine hoist...
8. ...and then bolted it in place - pretty easy job, really.
9. Back to the radius arm axle bushes...
10. ...the plan was to press them in with a g-clamp, but this very much doesn't work, as you just can't get the bushes to go in straight...
11. ...so a change of tactics - I pressed the bushes in by hand without the metal insert...
12. ...and then used a handy vice to press the insert into the bushes...

13. ...this worked brilliantly well, so I did all the bushes like this...
14. including the ones in the panhard (anti-sway) rod...
15. ...there you go - job done.
16. Back in the shed - another bag of new bolts got opened.
17. Here's all the bolts and things arranged ready for fitting.
18. I had to dig about a bit to find the cup-washers for the chassis end of the radius arms - I also fitted the new poly bushes, but obviously didn't take a picture of that for some reason...

19. I balanced the radius arm in the chassis-mount with a nut on the end to stop it slipping out...
20. ...then jacked the radius arm up under the axle.
21. The diagrams in the HM and on allbrit show the radius arm bolts going through from both sides, but I decided to insert them from the outside of the vehicle towards the centre - this kept the longer threaded end away from the wheel hub.
22. Now - this is where it all started go ubera elevatum as they might have said in ancient Rome - as expected, the radius arm bolt holes didn't line up perfectly...
23. The angle of the front axle should be set by the front prop-shaft, but that's not fitted yet, so I'm setting the angle with the engine hoist on the drive-flange.
24. Hoisting it up until the bolt fitted worked fine...

25. ...although I changed my mind which side I wanted to put the bolt in from - quite annoying.
26. But rotating the axle had slipped the springs off their seats...
27. ...and despite jumping up and down on the chassis, hoisting it in the air and dropping it and kicking it, it bl**dy wouldn't twist back again.

So I've hit a bit of a problem - I can't get the other radius arm holes to line up because the axle is too far back in relation to the chassis on the other side.  I can't un-twist the axle and I can't see why it's twisted, when the N/S radius arm is bolted at both the axle and chassis ends - it should be all lined up!  I can't see what's gone wrong and on my fifteenth lap of the chassis, muttering and swearing at it, I decided to pack up and go and have a coffee, a sit down and a think - it's not helped so far, though

I'm confident I shall prevail, however...although, if I've fitted the front springs upside down or back to front (which I'm starting to think I might have done) I may have to start prevailing after getting a considerable amount of expleting out of the way, first...

Cheerio

Well, after some internetting and some advice from the helpful people on this forum, I've decided that my radius arms and dampers look as weirdly out of  true as Land Rover intended, so I'm not worrying about it anymore - I'm just bolting more things on;


1. The last thing I'd done previously was fit the front anti-roll bar - my drop-links had turned up, so I thought I'd bolt it loosely in place.  I'd also put the tracking rod through the hub-mounts, although I hadn't tightened the nuts...
2. ...which was a good job, as you can't get the anti-roll bar up past it, so I had to take the tracking rod off again.
3. Remember me saying that the HM and the diagrams from allbrit show the radius-arm bolts mounted either way - turns out they don't fit this way round, because they get in the way of the drop-links...
4. ...so I had to knock them back through and re-fit them the other way round - easy this side but a pain the other side, as the bolt is much tighter in the radius arm for some (probably no) reason.
5. The bolts had turned up for this thing, too - panhard rod steering box mounting bracket?

6. I was going to go on and fit the panhard rod and the steering rod, but realised I'd lost the panhard rod bolts(!), so decided to fit these instead - a special sort of Defender soap...
7. Oh alright, not really - they're poly bump-stops...
8. ...and they're a bit awkward to fit, as there's only a single mounting point on the chassis at either end, so you have to balance them with one hand and feed bolts through holes with the other, all while holding a spanner...
9. The last job of the night was fitting the front diff-guard - not because it particularly needed doing...I just wanted to see if it looked cool - success there, really
10. It's the next day; I've braved the snow to start removing the rear axle that came with the chassis (and I'm wearing three sets of overalls to keep warm!)

11. The rear section of the exhaust is just too awkward to get out of the way, so I lifted it up, clear of the rear axle on stands.
12. I was thinking the other day, "bl**dy hell, I've been doing this for ages - why is it taking so long?" - well, because of things like this:  The salisbury axle I'm going to fit is currently the wrong end of the shed, but weighs half a ton...
13. ...the only way to get it to the right end is with the engine hoist, but that means moving everything out of the way to get it there...
14. ...and here it is, ready to be fitted - these three pictures represent half an hour of b*ggering about - it's just a slow old job, this...
15. Anyway, enough of me whinging about how hard my life is inside my enormous barn (before somebody doing this on their drive in the snow comes round and throttles me) - I decided to lift the rear of the chassis clear of the rear axle (and springs) - ratchet straps always say not to use them for this, but I've not died yet

16. The springs TWANGED out of the mounts...
17. ...and I set about disconnecting the bottom link from the axle - I'd hoped I could roll the axle out with these attached, but they're too well jammed in their chassis mounts.
18. There you have it, then - axle out, new (old) one ready to go in.
19. I thought I'd better check whether the bottom links were the same both sides...
20. ...and they're not, but they're very nearly the same, so I don't think it matters if I forget which is which and swap them over.  The next job will be to press the old bushes out, which is always a sod of a job, even with a hydraulic press...

My plan for the rest of the day was to get the salisbury axle in place and sit the chassis on the springs, but I realised there were bits of the chassis I'd missed with the underseal gun now that the axle was out of the way, so I got all that kit out and started on that.  Turns out undersealing really doesn't work when there's snow on the ground - even with a bucket of hot water to sit the spray-can in, it kept blocking after about ten seconds of spraying and every time I then unscrewed it to poke it with a stick to unblock it, I got more and more covered in underseal...through sheer bl**dy mindedness, though, I got the job done.

Assuming it's not even more arctic tomorrow and there's not wolves and stuff, I'm hoping to get the axle in, sitting on its springs - watch this space

Cheerio

Good work so far - sort of!

On a pedantic, know all (sort of  ) point. It is considered 'good engineering practice' to fit bolts with the heads 'outwards and upwards'.

I noted with much sadness that you fitted the front anti roll bar to the chassis brackets with the bolts quite clearly pointing upwards  . Likewise with the bump stops. On my Ninety and Disco, the bump stop brackets on the chassis have slots for the bolts to slide into which allows them to 'hang' while you offer up the bump stop and add the washers and nuts fingers tight.

The front radius arm bolts are the obvious exception to the 'heads outwards' though.

However, despite having the Ninety parked in a dry garage next to the house, I have only managed to paint and underseal the rear crossmember during the past fortnight, so perhaps I should stop criticising your efforts and get my overalls on. Or mebbe have another wee dram and turn the heating up a tad  .

Ah, now, strange as it might seem, I'm glad somebody brought this up.

I've been debating (with myself, obviously...it's not the sort of debate "normal" people can be persuaded to have) which way around bolts should be fitted.  My rationale for fitting them with the studs "in-most" (as it were) is that the stud doesn't protrude into areas where other stuff is likely to be, e.g. pipes and other fittings.  However...the bump-stop bolts are hard up against the chassis the way round I've fitted them so, even though the bolts protrude towards the axle further the other way around, I'm planning to reverse them (because the OCD is keeping me awake at night).

  The same rationale ended up with me fitting the anti-roll bar brackets with the bolts head down - the studs are tucked up, out of the way...

  Had I realised there was a "good engineering practice" to follow, I'd have been on it like a whippet up a drain-pipe (or something), so thanks for pointing it out to me - it actually makes life easier, as now I don't have to agonise over which way round each bolt should go

  Many thanks for your kind sharing of knowledge, master

Quite a long one this time - my image host is starting to whinge about the number of images I've uploaded


I've hit a few annoying problems recently...

1. These are the rear lower-link bushes and mounting brackets...
2. ...that fit together nice and easily like this.
3. This is one of the rear damper upper mounts...
4. ...and it bolts on like this - a bit awkward to do, but not too bad.
5. These are the rear axle upper-link chassis-brackets...
6. ...and you really need somebody else to hold them while you bolt them in place, as they're heavy and awkard.

7. Rear bump-stop fitted (note the bolts the right way round!)
8. Time to roll the axle into place - I've got the lower spring-seat in place, but not bolted down, yet...
9. From this picture, you can see that I've got the chassis hanging from my engine-hoist so that the axle could fit under the tank-guard...
10. ...and I could get the springs in.
11. Quite a lot has happened here that I didn't take any pictures of - my Defender has inner springs at the rear - these sit on inner lower seats that fit over the top of the outer-spring tie-down bars and then the two fixing bolts go through the whole lot.  You need a very long extension to get at them once the springs are fitted.  The galvanised thing in the middle of the upper-mount here is the inner-spring retainer.
12. So, there we go - not a brilliant picture, but there's the chassis sitting on the axle springs - hooray!

13. This is just a picture of the chassis taken for no real reason, really...
14. ...er, so's this - not sure what I was taking these for...
15. Oh, right, here we go - this is the rear anti-roll bar with the galvanised mounts and poly-bushes fitted.  unfortunately, I discovered that the chassis mounts had galvanising in the holes and I didn't have a big enough drill-bit with me to clean them out, so I had to think of something else to do...
16. ...so I fitted the engine mounts, as the bolts had turned up.
17. Very easy to fit - the red stuff is masking tape left over from painting them.
18. Also turning up in the post that day were poly-bushes for the drop-links - for some reason, my super-poly-kit didn't include these.

19. Here are the rear-axle lower-links painted and ready to fit...
20. ...while they were drying, I decided to fit the fuel-filter backing plate - his did not go well...there are four bushes that, it turned out, needed to be threaded to M8x1.25 - easy enough, except for the last one (why is it always the last one?) where I found somebody had got there before me and had left a snapped off M8x1.25 tap - brilliant!  This turned out to be a total nightmare to drill out and I still haven't sorted it out...
21. Anyway, I then went to fit the lower-links and discovered that they didn't fit into the poly-bush inner-tubes.  That vernier-gauge says the bush inner diameter is about 19.6mm...
22. ...and here it's saying that the lower-link outer diameter is about 20mm - problematic, to say the least.
23. Luckily, I hadn't worn out my ability to swear, so got a bit of that done and then fitted the rear anti-roll bar to the newly drilled out and painted chassis brackets.
24. I'm getting quite near the bottom of my pile of brackets etc now and found these seatbelt mounts hadn't been sanded/painted, so I did that to pass the time.

25. Check it out!  Actual proper engineering being done before my very eyes!  This is the lower-link bush tube being bored out by about 0.6mm - the fit is still pretty tight, but at least they fit now!
26. Fitting the lower-link is fairly straight forward - I found the best way was to insert the threaded end into the mount-hole with only one side of the bush on it and then jack the axle-end up into its mount.  The trick is to keep the link square to the axle, hence the metal plate on the jack.  With this end in and pinned by the bolt...
27. ...the other end is now pretty tight against the chassis mount...
28. ...and the other half of the bush, the uber-washer, the small washer and the fixing nut can all be added.
29. In fact, I had to tighten just the nut and the smaller washer onto the thread first to pull the lower-link through the bush a bit, then take the nut and the washer back off again and fit the uber-washer, the smaller washer and the nut all over again.

30. Here's the lower-link on the other side fitted.
31. The last job of this particular night was to fit the chassis cross-member, which I knew was going to be a bit awkward.  You can see not only a jack forcing it up into position, but also a ratchet-strap forcing it forward - I bl**dy laughed when I found that one of the bolts was missing from my stainless pack!
32. Here it is fitted anyway - 3x 30mm bolts and 1x80mm because that's all I had laying around - that'll annoy future me when I go to take it out again for some reason - I don't envy that guy (as Homer said...)
33. Next job is to fit the upper-link to the rear axle.  While my friend at work was lathing the lower-link bushes, he also made me a stepped drift to push the old bushes out with, which worked brilliantly...now I just need to clean up the holes and fit the poly-bushes...oh, and fit the axle-ball-joint-mount...and the upper-link itself - I'm sure it'll all go swimmingly

Right, that's where I'm at - I've bought so many nuts and bolts now, I've genuinely forgotten why I bought some of them...hopefully their requirement will become apparent as work progresses.

Cheerio

Quite a big moment, really - engine back on its mounts...


1. Last time, I was finishing off connecting up the rear suspension - here's the N/S drop-link in place...
2. ...and the one the other side with the poly-bushes in and the anti-roll bar against them.
3. The bolts went through very easily and, although I didn't take any pictures, I did the other side too and that was that.
4. Next job was to bolt the upper-link ball-joint bracket to the axle - you only get this with a Salisbury axle.
5. The four bolts are all double-hex, which is a pain, as they just won't torque up to 130lb.ft as required without slipping in the socket - I'll have to come back to these...

6. This is the panhard rod fitted to the axle...
7. ...but without any weight on the front suspension, the other end is some distance from the bracket on the chassis...
8. ...it's also twisted relative to the bracket, as the front suspension is over-extended.  It'd be possible to jack and winch it into place, but the poor old bolt wouldn't thank me for it when the ratchet-straps came off, so I just cable-tied it up for the time being.
9. To finish off this day, I cleaned up the fuel-filter rivnut hole that I'd had to drill out - all the oil used during drilling had dissolved the underseal!
10. Because they were sitting around, the last job of the day was to fit the chassis brackets that fix to the front end of the tub (Bracket Mounting Body - NRC6951 to give them their full, interesting title) - these are from YRM again, plus the underside mounting plates.

11. They're still mounted loose here, to allow for a bit of b*ggering about hen the tub comes back into play...
12. So here's the exciting job - it sort of looks like the engine/gearbox has crash-landed onto my trailer, here...
13. A combination of chain-winch and engine-hoist had the engine up, off the trailer.
14. To clear the front of the chassis and the steering box, the engine/gearbox has to be lifted quite high...
15. ...then the chassis can be rolled under it - this was the first time the chassis had moved on the axles since I rolled it in, back in August! That's a blanket over the steering box to avoid any damaging coming togethers...

16. The engine and gearbox only fix at four points, this is the N/S gearbox-mount...
17. ...this is the O/S gearbox-mount...
18. ...and this is the N/S engine-mount with hand of girlfriend getting the nut in place - notice I've missed off the engine-mount heat shield - how we laughed when we ealised we'd have to lift the bl**dy engine back off again to get it in...
19. With the weight of the engine on the front of the chassis, the suspension compressed down enough so that (with a bit of persuasion) the chassis-end of the panhard rod could be fixed.
20. Ah yes...the N/S engine-mount heat-shield...mutter...grumble...explete

  Getting the engine down onto its mounts is actually fairly straight forward as long as you do it gradually - the engine/gearbox has to be pretty much exactly level for all four mounts to meet their respective studs/holes.  I put the studs into the gearbox-mounts to guide them into the holes in the chassis, then got the engine-mount nuts on first and pulled/pushed the gearbox as I lowered it onto the chassis.

  I've done a few other bits and pieces since I took this set of pictures, so keep watching for more...

Cheerio

Painting and various small jobs:


1. A problem I've had for a while is this EGR tube - I took out the EGR valve when I thought it was causing the engine to cut out - it turned out the problem was a bad earth to the ECU - the EGR removal kit I bought came with a blanking plate, but the bolts holding the EGR pipe to the manifold were too well rusted in to remove, so I just bent the tube over - seemed logical, but it didn't work and the whole engine bay has been covered in oily cr*p ever since...
2. The only way to get the EGR pipe off the manifold is to drill out the bolts, so I needed to get the manifold off the engine - a fairly easy job, as all the nuts are easy-ish to get at.  The only real problem is the turbo, which I couldn't remove from the manifold...
3. ...so the only option was to remove the two oil lines - here's the top one...
4. ...and here's the bottom one - they come off fairly easily.
5. The manifold comes away from the head quite easily - there are two metal gaskets on my engine, but I suspect there's only supposed to be one - somebody's sheared a manifold stud in the past, so maybe two gaskets stops it leaking too badly...

6. Manifold off - time to do something else...
7. I fitted the steering-rod/drag-link, having set the length to 940mm (I think...better check that!)
8. The steering-box end has a bracket that the steering-damper fits to...
9. ...while the other end fits through the hub - everything is loose-fitted at the point.
10. I've been going mad with the blue paint in between jobs - the engines got a real maritime look to it, now

11. Last job of the day - replace the rivnut I had to drill out...
12. ...although my old rivnut tool has seen better days, it still works...
13. ...and I was actually dead pleased with how well the replacement rivnut fitted.
14. Fuel-filter and mounting-plate fitted - another job done...only about a thousand left to do!

Cheerio

Three jobs that were quite awkward...


1. The first awkward job was getting the loom back inside the chassis.
2. I tried bits of wite, bits of pipe and even my pneumatic air line, but none of them would thread through the chassis, so I had to buy a cable-guide tool and here it is, going into the chassis under the front outrigger.
3. It comes out just forward of the rear cross-member...
4. ...and then it's just a case of hauling the loom through (not with the guide tool, but with a rope I fed through the chassis)...
5. ...until it comes out of the front - it needs quite a meaningful pull to get it through.
6. Here's the start of an easy job - I'd bought a new fuel-filter bracket etc and had to fit the pipe unions - they felt a bit loose, so I wrapped them in PTFE before screwing them in.
7. When fitting them, though, make sure you do the inner ones first, as you can't get a spanner on them, otherwise (guess how I figured that out...)

8. I'd already pressed out the old upper-link bushes, so in went the new poly-bushes.
9. With some manipulation, I got the upper-link in on top of the axle, but getting it to line up with the mounting brackets proved quite tricky - this was the start of the secong awkward job...
10. As you can see, I've got cargo-straps all over the place, either supporting the upper-link (which weighs about 20kg I reckon)...
11. ...or pulling it backwards to try to line it up with the mounting brackets.
12. After a great deal of b*ggering about, I managed to get the first bolt in (it looks a long way out of true here, but that's mostly because the other side isn't lined up yet - interestingly, these bolts are 3/4" by 4" UNF - you can't get stainless ones of these anywhere, so these are from LR themselves.  Amusingly, you can get the bolts singly, but the nuts only come in packs of ten...even though no Land Rover needs more than two...really, LR?)
13. Here's the other side after some serious hauling and stretching with the cargo-straps, but there was no lining it up with the bracket holes...
14. ...so I came back the next day with a bottle-jack. braced it against a piece of disassemble tractor (Claas green, in case you're wondering - not sure what it was, but there are bits of it everywhere, so I can only assume it exploded one day)...

15. ...and pushed the top-link into position.
16. Unfortunately, as the top-link moved backwards, it also moved down, so I had to get a second jack and push it up, back into position...
17. ...like this.  The bolt then knocked in quite easily, but you have to be carefully not to knock them through too far before you put the nuts on, as they sit almost against the chassis, so there's no space to get the nuts onto the bolts (again, guess how I found that out...)
18. The last awkward job, although I made this one awkward myself...now the rear axle had all its links attached, I could fit the dampers - I was a bit worried it might make getting the links connected a bit difficult - I needn't have worried...they were going to be awkward no matter what I did!
19. The problem here was that the damper bottom bushes didn't fit in the axle mounts - the cup-washers that came fitted to the dampers were too wide.
20. So I had a think, looked in the box for the other damper and...er...found a sheet of instructions that says something to the effect of "don't fit the cup-washers to the damper mounts"...
21. ...so I did just that and the dampers fit into the axle mounts perfectly.  The more eagle-eyed reader might notice that I've missed off the upper-mount washers - they're soaking in petrol, as they're filthy, but they'll be going on next - hopefully I can get the dampers back off the upper-mounts to do this...if I have to disconnect the bottom mounts again, I may have to explete at great and imaginative length...

Since then, I gone through my logbook of what nuts/bolts I've fitted and torqued most of them as per the HM - next job will be to torque up all the ball-joints (you only get one go at those, so I want to  make sure everything's right first - I've already had to take the front anti-roll-bar brackets off again because I missed out two winch-PTO brackets) and then fit the steering damper.  I'm also in the middle of re-fitting the exhaust manifold (I've sheared a stud...@rse) and fitting the fuel-lines.

Cheerio

.....21. ...so I did just that and the dampers fit into the axle mounts perfectly.  The more eagle-eyed reader might notice that I've missed off the upper-mount washers - they're soaking in petrol, as they're filthy, but they'll be going on next - hopefully I can get the dampers back off the upper-mounts to do this...if I have to disconnect the bottom mounts again, I may have to explete at great and imaginative length...

Good work so far, take a deep breath now. If you are hoping to remove the top of the rear shocks from the chassis mount without undoing the bottom mounts you may well struggle due to the top mount pin being angled upwards. It is near impossible on an old shock with knackered bushes and will probably be expletive inducing with new shocks and bushes.

FWIW I have been busy too, got the Disco MOT'd (only took a year!! and am refitting the rear tub to my Ninety at the mo)  No doubt you will have rebuilt yours by the time I am back to a 2 x Landy family again  .

Oh B*gger

Well, you live and learn, I suppose...or you should...maybe you more sort of live and swear and live a bit more and then swear a bit more and then learn...?

If you're already fitting the tub, I think you'll beat me onto the road!  I'm still contemplating my new brake lines et al...

It must have been very pleasing to get an MOT - well done!

All the best,

Paul

......
If you're already fitting the tub, I think you'll beat me onto the road.....

It must have been very pleasing to get an MOT - well done!

Even managed to get the seat box fitted tonight   

Given that my planned 2 month refurb of the Ninety has taken two years and has still to be reassembled and painted, I suspect that you may beat me to the road.

The Disco MOT was a doddle. It sailed through last years test, only failing on the CO2 level. 12 months, 40 miles and much tesing of sensors and intake systems and Hey Presto, she passed again     

Two years!  I planned to be done by Easter...maybe by the Summer...?

There's an exciting end to this set of pictures...


...blimey - it's all been a bit busy recently!

1. First job was to fit the bulkhead/chassis brackets - just loose initially.
2. I'd cleaned up all the fuel-line clips and re-organised the fuel-lines as best as I could - they were a very complicated when I took them off!
3. As I work my way down through the piles of stuff taken off previously, I keep finding things that need sorting out - this is the steering shaft and it had seized
4. Here's the fuel-tank about to go in - I seem to have taken no more pictures of this job!  The tank fitted easily, but the strap across the top of it was a sod to fit...
5. Here's a job that looks like it went well, but didn't really - I cleaned up the exhaust manifold face...
6. ...fitted the new gaskets...

7. ...fitted the manifold...
8. ...and fitted the nuts.  Three of the studs then stripped their threads in the head, which is a problem I'll need to come back to
9. Back to the brakes - the front calipers are all cleaned up and refitted...
10. ...including the disk-shield.
11. Seeing as I was up the front, I started fitting the new steering-damper...
12. ...which was pretty easy...

13. ...although the mounting-nut/rubbers seemed to need a lot of tightening.
14. Them to the rear calipers, which are awkward to line up and fit, but go on with a bit of perseverance...
15. ...I was going to overhaul the calipers by replacing the pistons, but I'm starting to worry about how long this is all taking, so that's a job for the future, now.
15. Right - here's the "main event", as it were...fitting the bulkhead!
16. Getting the bulkhead roughly into place is fairly easy with the engine-hoist.
17. The bulkhead bolts go through from the front - I had to clean out a bit of galvanising first, though.

18. This picture entirely fails to show the problem here - with the O/S bolt fitted, the N/S bolt is about 5mm too far towards the O/S to fit through the bulkhead...
19. ...but I was expecting that, so I had a bottle-jack ready to lever the bulkhead into place...unfortunately, it turned out my bottle-jack wouldn't work on it's side, so it turned out to be a job for ratchet-straps...
20. ...one to the barn wall, hauling the bulkhead sideways and one to the front wheel, keeping the bulkhead tight against the outrigger.
21. With the bottom bolts fitted (loose), the next was to make sure the bulkhead was dead-upright.  get this wrong and (I've been told) the doors just won't fit or close.  This was clearly a job for trigger-nometry - helpful old Pythagoras told me that the distance from the edge of the uppermost hinge bolt-hole to the back of the mid-out-rigger was 1258mm, so I marked this out with a piece of green wire.
22. Using ratchet-straps, I pulled the bulkhead into position...
23. ...and then fixed the chassis/bulkhead brackets to the chassis and put bolts through the foot-wells and into the brackets (loose).

24. When I picked up the bulkhead, the chaps at LR Refurb gave me these packing plates - they reckoned the bulkheads were built new by Land Rover with a 15mm tolerance, so the fit after galvanising (warping etc) is never going to be brilliant...
25. The O/S needed 1 packing plate to get the distance to 1258mm - the N/S needed three(!) plates, but the bulkhead's about as upright relative to the chassis as I can get it.
26. So here it is fitted...
27. ...upright and solid...
28. ...I was genuinely surprised by how well the whole fitting process went!
29. So, bulkhead fitted, I can practically drive it around now!...well, maybe not drive it around, but certainly sit where the seat could be...well, I might fall through the chassis if I tried that, but another job done, only 999 left to do, now

Next job is to fit the brake-pedal/master-cylinder and then fit the new brake-lines, which should be much easier with start and end points (calipers and master-cylinders)...well, hopefully.

Cheerio