SLROC Forum

Well, it's taken a while, but I've finally stumbled across the most difficult, frustrating, time-consuming job of the whole build (...all right, so far) - fitting s*dding brake-lines!

I've also run out of room on my image-hosting site, so I've had to jump ship as 'twere and the pictures below might be a bit weird, format-wise:


1. One job left to do was torque up all the suspension bolts - I'd left them all loose in case I needed to take anything off again...I mean...as if!
2. Tightening up the top-link ball-joint nut was made easier by lifting the weight of the chassis off the axle, allowing better access to the nut and forcing it backwards slightly in its mounting (so I could get a socket onto it).
3. Another job I'd left was fixing the knackered clutch slave cylinder pipe(s).
4. I got them off (eventually!), but had to cut through the metal link pipe - of course, had I known that this little four-inch long pipe costs 120.00 to replace, I might have put more effort into getting it off in one piece (actually, L.R.Series will sell me one for a tenner, but check these links out for mad LR pricing: Rimmer Bros vs L.R.Series

5. This is the t-piece that sits on top of the rear axle and sends brake-fluid to the rear brakes.  I've started fitting the O/S brake-line here.
6. Here's the problem - look at the convoluted shape of the brake line!  I bought an Automec brake-line "kit", so I have all the different lengths of brake-line needed (with ends flared and connectors fitted), but I have to bend them all myself.
7. Things have got a bit out of sequence here - this is the t-piece before I'd removed the old brake-lines...
8. ...I was trying to record exactly how the two brake-lines fitted to it...

9. ...little did I know that the threads in the t-piece were knackered and, when I went to fit the new brake-lines, it knackered them, too...b*gger
10. Anyway, here's the new brake-line bent as close as I could get it to the original.
11. Here's the brake-line running from front to back of the chassis - it runs along the top of the chassis until just ahead of the top-link chassis cross-member...
12. ...and then bends under it to a bracket where it meets the flexi-hose to the rear axle.

13. The brake-lines run along the top of the chassis quite neatly...
14. ...better than the fuel-lines, which just don't look right
15. So, 15 quid later, here's the new t-piece with non-knackered threads and the new brake-lines fitted (although I had to buy a brake-line flaring kit for 30 odd quid...oh, and a brake-line cutter for another tenner - pain in the *rse)
16. I decided to fit the brake master cylinder, so I knew where all the brake-lines were aiming for - it became obvious that I needed a great number of clips, though, so an evening hunting through the diagrams on the allbrit site and then trying to find somewhere that sold all the clips required (L.R.Series again) beckoned and now I'm waiting for a parcel of more, obscure land rover parts to turn up...

I've fitted the clutch-pedal since then and the next job is to fit the steel clutch-line (which I bought ages ago, pre-bent thank God!), which can then be used as a guide for the N/S/F brake-line, as the two are clipped together as they travel across the bulkhead.

The thing I've discovered I really hate about bending and fitting brake-lines is the result is always, at best, passable - I just can't do a neat job of it   Oh well - less OCD based misery and more bolting things together, I suppose...

Cheerio

I'm actually fitting ancillaries - look!


1. This is the upper-steering-shaft upper-bracket.  Having already fitted the brake and clutch pedals, I then decided to fit the steering shaft, as I realised that some of the brackets that the brake lines clip to are fixed to the brackets for that, too (if that makes sense!)
2. This is the upper-steering-shaft lower-bracket - nice and blue, eh?  You can also see a patch I've welded over a hole in the brake-pedal box - quite pleased with that
3. It was obvious that fitting the steering shaft with the brake pedal in the way wasn't going to be possible, so I removed it (again!)
4. At this point, I also realised that you have to fit the steering-shaft through the upper bracket before bolting it to the bulkhead, so I had to take that off again...this is the sponge pad that seals the upper-bracket to the bulkhead.
5. Getting the upper-shaft splines into the lower-shaft is tricky - I tried all sorts of ways of levering the lower-shaft female union apart, but in the end, just smacking the end of the upper-shaft with a rubber mallet proved to be the most effective solution...

6. However, here was a puzzle - the bottom-bracket was about 10mm out - in fact, the whole upper-shaft was 10mm too far forward.
7. When I compared this new steering box and bottom-shaft to the old one, I discovered that this bottom-shaft was 10mm further into the lower UJ than the old one.  So, I loosened it and shifted it out by 10mm, but the mystery is how it came to be wrong?  I would have thought that all Defender's, 110 or otherwise, all have the same length steering shafts, so why is this one 10mm shorter?  Who knows..?
8. Anyway, the upper-shaft it fixed to the upper-bracket with this, blue bracket - you have to fit an "anti-rattle" strip around it, so I cut up an old heater-seal to make on.
9. Then tighten up all the bottom-bracket nuts and that's the steering shaft fitted...
10. ...so I re-fitted the brake-pedal (again...)

11. Seeing as I was fitting steering parts and I had all the power-steering pipes lying around, I decided to fit them next, starting with a new power-steering return pipe (the silver one here).
12. It runs across the front cross-member (down behind it, not on top of it like it is here), held on with these two rusty clips.
13. The chassis already had blind inserts fitted for the clip bolts - I should have threaded them before I fitted the engine, but fitting the engine was all a bit of a rush and there were quite a few things I didn't manage to do beforehand.  Imagine how much I laughed when the insert came away from the chassis with the tap jammed in it.  I managed to pull the tap out of the insert with mole-grips and a lump-hammer, but the insert was now lost inside the front cross-member.  Luckily, I'd bought a telescopic grabber when I lost a stainless bolt inside the chassis a while ago, so after barely twenty minutes of blind fishing around, I managed to get it back out...ah, fun times.
14. Also luckily, I had some M6 rivnuts and the holes in the chassis were about 9mm, so I was able to put new, better, working, threaded inserts into the holes.
15. So, there you go - two M6 nuts in their inserts...

16. ...the cleaned up and galv-sprayed clips in place...
17. ...and the pipes fitted - if you look carefully, you can see the black, low-pressure feed-line below the silver high-pressure line - you might also see I've fitted some foam padding to the clips, to protect the pipes and ensure they don't rattle, as the clips are a bit thinner than they used to be (before rust and wire-brushing got at them).
18. Here's the power-steering-fluid reservoir just hanging around...
19. ...and here's the other end of the low-pressure pipe fitting to the power-steering-pump.
20. With the high-pressure pipe clamped tight, I could bend the flexible end round to meet the pump-union.  I'm not sure why the flexible pipe is so long, but the farmer reckons it might have some sort of shock/vibration-damping effect on the steering - like the mysteriously long steering-shaft...who knows..?

The next job is to get back to the brake-lines - hopefully all my clips will turn up next week...

Cheerio

Brake-pipes.

If I never have to look at another brake-pipe again, I'll die a happy man.

As it is, brake-pipes are currently having a detrimental effect on my life


1. As I'm getting (or, at least, I thought I was) close to putting the tub onto the chassis, I decided to dig it out from the back of the shed and lift it...
2. ...onto a trailer to take it away and jet-wash it.
3. Here it is back and clean(ish) and I started sanding off the rust...
4. ...but it became obvious that things were not well with the supports - they'd come away from the floor runners...
5. ...in fact, every single rivet going into the runners had rotted away...
6. ...mmm - galvanic corrosion - nice

7. The runners are held onto the tub floor with two rivets at either end (so four in total) and fairly random spot-welding along their length, which can be broken away by hammering a screwdriver between the runner and the floor.  A long, loud and tedious job not helped by some optimistic soul jamming the runners full of vaseline ( or something similar) in the past, presumably to prevent corrosion - that didn't work, but it did get itself smeared all over my screwdriver and my drill...
8. Here are the old, knackered runners - new ones can be got from YRM for 17.00 a go.
9. There's the floor for the time being - sanded and cleaned, ready for new runners and then the plan is to spray the whole thing with stone-chip to protect it.
10. Right - brake-pipes...here's the front N/S pipe being bent, ready to feed across the bulkhead - it looks like a nightmare of 3D bending, but it's actually not too bad once you've done it ten or twenty times...
11. The F/N/S pipe comes up from the chassis, alongside the clutch-pipe..
12. ...across the top of the bulkhead, still following the clutch-pipe (it's dropped a bit here, but clips will bring it back up into line)...

13. ...and then down, to the base of the master-cylinder bracket.  You can see the other two brake lines (the rear one and the O/S/F) join it at this point, too.  At this point, I discovered that the O/S/F pipe is about 40cm too short - I've whinged to Automec, but they've not replied yet...
14. Between the solid brake-pipes and the calipers (on the front) or the t-joint (on the rear axle), there are flexible hoses - I didn't have a rear hose, so I decided to buy all new, braided hoses from Terra Firma.  The rear hose fixes to this bracket, by pressing through a splined hole.  I couldn't find any mention of how to achieve this anywhere, so after several failed attempts with g-clamps and mole-grips, I used an R-clip as a spacer and then wound the hose-end through the hole with its own nut.
15. Here's the hose jammed in the bracket hole...
16. ...it's held in place with this spring-clip...
17. ...which I tapped into place with a hammer and a drift.
18. Now...like an idiot, I'd second-guessed myself as to whether the hoses would have male or female ends - the originals were female, so I'd already cut the ends off all the solid pipes and replaced them with male ends.  The new hoses, however, came with male ends, so I had to cut the bl**dy ends off again and replace them, only this time it didn't go well.  I'd bought a cheap flaring tool from Halfords (I knew I was onto a winner the first time I used it and broke one of the wing-nuts you tighten it up with...) and every now and then I get an acceptable flare out of it - this time, after three attempts (having to trim the pipe back each time!), the flaring tool not only mangled the pipe end, but sheared itself off inside the pipe - I now intend to bury it in a hole, b*st*rd, b*st*rd thing...

Ho hum...on the plus side, I've taken a load of brackets and "bits" to Highland Galvanisers, so they should be nice and shiny when I get them back...

Cheerio

You are having lots of fun with that.

When I replaced the floor on my Ninety many moons ago, I opted to replace the 'cr4p trap' top hat section runners with some 19mm x 19mm 'U' section channel (self cleaning idea!!) initially glued to the floor and then made secure with many pop rivets fitted from the top.

Hi Sandy,

  daft question, but presumably you attached the u-channels with their open end facing downwards - did you attach them to the cross-members somehow?

Thanks

yes, the channels (from B&Q I think) were fitted with the open end downwards.  I contemplated 'boxing' the parts where they met the cross members, but decided it was too much of a faff besides which the original top hat sections had rotted away at that point with no apparent overall loss of strength.

I reckoned that having the load bearing down on the two clean, dry, corrosion free vertical parts of the channel was better than the load bearing on the flat, crud infested top hat section.  10 years later it is still holding up despite many loads of brick, slabs, gearboxes etc, etc bouncing around in the back.   

Ah - cheers for that.

I wondered what the effect of not riveting the channels to the cross-supports would be but, like you say, the rivets have obviously rotted away on mine years ago...

All the best

......I wondered what the effect of not riveting the channels to the cross-supports would be but, like you say, the rivets have obviously rotted away on mine years ago...
....

I reckon the channels are simply to reinforce the thin ally floor panel in the gaps between the cross members. The majority of the down force from the floor panel should be taken by the horizontal faces of the cross-supports. The recesses in the cross-supports are simply to make space for the channel sections.  I wasn't aware of any rivets/welds/fixings between the channel sections and the cross-supports on my Ninety. 

Dunno how this stacks up against your plans, budget etc, etc .....

https://www.metals4u.co.uk/aluminium/c1/channel/c14/19.05mmx19.05mmx3.2mm-(34x34x18)/p7506

Ach well...in the end, I went for new supports from YRM - it was the easiest solution:

A fairly random set of jobs done lately...it's all feeling a bit slow going
1. Here's the new flexible clutch hose fitted...
2. ...and the new solid clutch-pipe - but, as you can see, it's the wrong part and doesn't line up with the bracket...b*gger.
3. By far the easiest and cheapest solution was to make new bracket out of some box-section that was knocking about...
4. ...here it is cut out...
5. ...here it is painted...

6. ...here it is fitted to the slave-cylinder...
7. ...and here's the flexible-hose joined to the solid pipe - job done.
8. Back to the tub, then - here are all the nice, newly-galvanised supports just resting on top of each other to check the fit.
9. The first job was to get the aluminium supports in place...
10. ...which meant tucking them under these angle-brackets at one end of the tub.

11. Largely ignoring H&S or common-sense, I then hung the tub from the (new!) chain-winch and the engine-hoist, went under it with my drill and rivetter...
12. ...and spent a deafening hour popping rivets into the supports...
13. ...each one looked like this - fascinating, eh?..I think I may be losing perspective on what makes an interesting photo...
14. I then sprayed the whole underside of the tub with gravigard (stone chip)...
15. ...and then did a similar trick with the hoists to get under the tub to rivet the cross-supports in place - the tub's practically ready to fit onto the chassis, now.

16. In other news...here's my final solution to getting the rear brake-hose to fit properly - I made it in two parts and joined it with a...er...joiner.
17. I've also bought a load of adhesive sound-proofing (fatmat) and stuck it to the bulkhead.
18. I've stripped and cleaned the handbrake.
19. But, most excitingly (honest!), I've fitted the bulkhead loom through the holes in the bulkhead...
20. ...ready to join to the various connections etc around the engine.

The next jobs are to finish plumbing in the brakes, fit all new brake-pads, fill and bleed the brake-system(!), fit the prop-shafts and then fit the rear tub!

I'll definitely have this finished by Christmas!

Cheerio

It's been slow going recently - quite a lot of finding obscure part numbers (or finding numbers for obscure parts, anyway) and ordering weird plastic clips and things...


1. Brake lines fitted to the master cylinder with weird plastic clips.
2. Wires coming out of the bulkhead on the O/S - not sure why I took this one...
3. Cable connectors near their bracket on the O/S transmission tunnel - the galvanising means they won't fit on the bracket any more, so a "solution" had to be devised (see the second to last picture below)
4. Three cable connectors clipped onto the clutch pedal bracket.
5. Wiring laid across the top of the gearbox, waiting for me to remember how it actually fitted - also, lots of weird plastic clips in brackets all over the gearbox casing.

6. Rear prop-shaft fitted.
7. Here was a conundrum - later Defenders, it turns out, have a swivel-joint grease filling plug, but no drain-plug.  As I'd accidentally partially drained one of my housings, I wanted to get rid of all the old grease on both sides and re-fill them with new grease.  The solution was this vacuum-pump, bought off Amazon for about 15.00 - it worked brilliantly!
8. New grease from Britpart - it'll probably turn to cheese or something inside a thousand miles
9. New front pads...
10. ...fitted with copper grease on the backs of them...
12. ...and held in place with new fixing pins.

13. I went "fitting things mad" and fitted the expansion tank.
14. The bracket inside my turbo heat-shield had broken in half, so I made a new one...
15. ...and rivetted it on - I really like rivetting, even if Chrome apparently thinks I can't spell it...
16. Heat-shield fitted.
17. I decided to attack the seatbox with a wire brush and quickly realised things were not good
18. A close-up of "not good"...there's no fixing this really, so I had to shell out for a replacement off eBay, which is currently in the back of a van somewhere between me and York...

19. When I removed the wipers from the old bulkhead, I had to cut through the drive-shafts, so new wiper "wheel-boxes" had to be bought and fitted...
20. ...like this - a pretty easy job.
21. However, a trial fit showed the wiper drive-shaft tube fouled a bracket in the centre of the bulkhead...
22. ...and the bolt holding the steering-shaft to the bulkhead.
23. A look back through my many, many photos revealed that my original bulkhead only had a half-height central bracket...
24. ...so I marked it up...

25. ...cut it off, and sprayed galv-spray all over the cut ends.
26. The wiper tube thing now fitted...
27. So I tightened up the mounting nuts on the outside of the bulkhead.
28. These were a bit of a find - I unfortunately had to cut through the three original rubber mounts that held the airbox to the bulkhead, only finding out later that they cost twenty five quid a piece   These are EGR valve mounts for a Disco, I think, and can be had off eBay for five pounds a pair...
29. ...they're practically identical to the original mounts, but I need to trim the threaded rods slightly - still, that's saved me about fifty quid!
30. Last job here is me fitting the new rear calipers - I tried to salvage the old ones, but they were more rust than caliper and new ones were only about 30.00 each.  In this picture, you can see that you have to use a UJ to get a torque-wrench on the upper caliper bolt, as the rear spring is in the way.  On the other side, my spring is slightly further twisted round and there's no way of getting the toque-wrench on it, so it was long spanner and best-guess that side

Since then, I persuaded my girlfriend what fun bleeding the brakes and clutch would be and, by the time she found out that I may have exaggerated the "fun" aspect, we'd done it.  Next job must surely be to check that everything's tight and fit the tub!

I'm optimistic of being finished inside the one-year mark!

Cheerio

Another milestone reached - check it out as my "chassis" becomes a "Land Rover"...well...sort of:


1. The three alternative part-number air-box mounts, all with their threaded studs cut down to size and fitted to the bulkhead...
2. ...and the airbox mounting plate fitted to them - the airbox itself sits well above the mounting studs, so they don't need shortening this side.
3. The wiper-motor fits to the bulkhead inside a metal strap - it was really loose, though and then I remembered about the rubber thing I'm holding here, which goes between the motor and the bulkhead...
4. ...which I then fitted - I like to maintain my pattern of fit --> swear --> take apart --> swear --> refit properly...
5. Annoyingly, the new bulkhead has "most" of the mounting holes drilled in it - the ones for the dashboard sub-frame (or plate-assembly-front according to landroverworkshop.com) weren't included.  Looking back at old photos, the mounting tabs had to be hard up against the upper bulkhead edges like this, so marking them and drilling them was relatively easy.
6. These are the plastic mounts that hold the lower dash fascia to the bulkhead - the square holes they fit into all had galvanising in them, so had to be filed square again - that was a fun job...

7. The lower dash fascia mostly screws to the bulkhead, but also has two bolts towards its middle, at the top.  These holes also weren't included , so I had to mark them up, drill them, treat the hole edges to some paint and then fit 2x m6 rivnuts - unfortunately, I broke my m6 mandrel on the first one, so this turned into a longer job than I was hoping
8. Here's the plate-assembly-front fitted (with self-tapping no.8 screws), the windscreen air-vents and all the various plastic mounts and rivnuts for the low dash fascia.  I've lifted all the cabling up to make it easier to get the lower fascia in place, too.
9. Fitting the lower fascia is a bit of a faff, getting all the holes to line up, but it went on easily enough (although I'd forgotten to fit the sponge seal around the heater air-inlet, which goes between the lower fascia and the bulkhead - how I laughed when I realised...)
10. After some time spent arranging wires, everything looks a bit tidier - I'm test-fitting the instrument binnacle shroud  here, too.
11. These are the plastic nuts that go into the larger square holes all over the place to secure the floor, the transmission tunnel and the transmission tunnel shroud...
12. ...they also secure the dashboard upper trim - this is actually called the "pad fascia crash-assembly" in the parts diagrams which seems optimistic in terms of the protection it'd offer.

13. Right - onto job number 2, which started with fitting these freshly galvanised seat-belt mounts to the front of the tub.
14. The camera missed much of the excitement that got us to this stage - the tub had to be hoisted up on end, flipped over and lowered down onto two tyres (or anything to keep the sides clear of the ground).  There was much excitement as the knackered old ropes I'd been using for months creaked and strained and I had to keep going under the suspended tub to adjust the tyres and ropes...  Here, my girlfriend (who'd been press-ganged into helping again) is replacing the ropes with better, non-snapping ones, ready to lift the tub back up into the air again.
15. Wahay!  Flying tub!
16. We had to hoist it up high enough to roll the chassis under it...
17. ...and then lower it down, making sure all the various rubber mounting-pads matched, no pipes got squashed and no wires got trapped - sorry this picture's sideways and sorry also that the tub and the chassis do a good job of framing my prodigious stomach... 
18. Same as above, just from the other side.

19. So far, so good...
20. These are the various brackets the tub fits to and sits on at the front end - some of these brackets are for the side-lockers, though.
21. The two shiney things are the mid out-rigger mounting brackets (from YRM)...the tub fits with these on the inside.
22. At the back, the tub lowers down over an angle bracket that sits along the top of the rear cross-member.
23. With careful lowering, the tub fitted over both ends with no disasters...
24. ...except the holes in the tub at the rear didn't line up with the threaded holes in the bracket - the tub was sitting slightly too high.  Although I attempted to resolve this issue via the technical expedient of climbing in the back and jumping up and down, this didn't solve anything, so I'm going to loosen the bracket bolts and raise the bracket slightly to meet the tub holes, then tighten it all back down again.  Given that I had to replace all the tub-floor stringers and cross-supports, I'm not that surprised that it's apparently a bit out of true...

25. At the front, these two brackets lined up perfectly (they weren't tight to the outrigger, so there was some leeway to play with).  The diagonal brace fits onto one of the seat-belt mount bracket bolts - I'd already fitted nuts to these, so it was a bit of a faff to undo them and screw them into the captive nut on the bracket, but not too hard...
26. The same the other side.
27. There's the tub pretty much mounted...
28. ...and I was so pleased, I took a picture of it again.
29. From the back, it looks just like a Defender, now

The next jobs, then, are routing the cabling across the top of the gearbox (which I still haven't really figure out), fitting the inner-sills, then fitting the seat-box and plumbing in the relays, fuse-boxes and ECU - that was a massive pain in the RR to take apart, but I expect it'll be dead easy to put together again...no, really, I do...

Cheerio

I've had the week off, so I've managed to get a few jobs done:

   
1. After a bit of pondering, I tidied all the wires across the gearbox like this - I've unfortunately routed the battery cables to the driver-side here, so had to un-cable-tie them later.
2. The original battery earth cable had an intermediate connection so it could go from the gearbox to the chassis to the battery, but I opted for a slightly different solution.
3. Next job before fitting the seat-box was to fit the front prop-shaft.
4. The front exhaust section had to be fitted - I'd left this, as I thought it would be an easy job and it would have got in the way when I was painting the engine/gearbox in-situ...
5. ...but it was a massive pain in the @rse, as you have to remove the gearbox cross-member and unbolt the anti-roll-bar from the chassis to get it in.  Twenty minutes to unbolt them, an hour and a half to get them back in again...

6. The new seatbox, cleaned up, sanded and painted with stonechip.
7. The new seatbox is from a Tdci and comes with these plastic protective under-trays, which are pretty cool.
8. The seatbox in position, ready for lowering into place.
9. I pulled the ECU cables up through the centre hole...
10. ...but the seatbox jammed on the seatbelt brackets...

11. ...which was because the new seatbox has two strengthening braces underneath it which aren't present in the old seatbox - presumably, the Tdci seatbelt brackets are different...
12. ...but, as the bracing is only attached with a couple of rivets, it came off easily.
13. I started bolting it in along the back edge, remembering to attach the under-seat panel retainer strips.
14. All the back bolts fitted except the very end ones.
15. A bolt each side holds the seatbox down against a chassis bracket.

16. There it is in place - note Land Rover Tool no.1 on the edge of the seatbox there...
17. At about this point, I discovered a problem - here's the old seatbox, which has two 59mm diameter holes for the cabling to the ECU and under-seat fuse-box...
18. ...but Land Rover have changed that with the Tdci, so I need to drill two really big holes...I should probably have checked this before I bolted the seatbox in, but there you go
19. Next job was to fit the inner-sills, which was a bit of a faff - jacking the sill up into position before tightening the bolts helped...
20. ...the two front bolts fit into the bottom of the bulkhead - I'm using flanged anti-vibration nuts, which are a great help.

21. The same trick at the back - first jack up the inner sill into position...
22. ...and the bolt through the seatbox, rear-tub and inner-sill.  I'm using thin adhesive foam between the steel and aluminium parts here, too, to try to avoid electrolytic corrosion.
23. Fitting the driver-side was exactly the same.
24. Other jobs done include fitting the heater...
25. ...which is best fitted by starting with the lower-bolts...

26. ...and then tightening the upper bolts - it didn't really fit brilliantly, but I think that's by design rather than me doing anything wrong.  I had to fit a new heater-seal and it seemed far too big, so I think this might have thrown the fit a bit...
27. Fitting the pipes is easy enough (although I needed one replacement and it was fifty quid!), but the wiring that comes out of the bulkhead has to double-back on itself to get to the wing and it's a tight fit behind the pipes.
28. I've also had great fun routing the cabling out of the rear of the chassis...
29. ...up to the O/S rear light...
30. ...and across the back of the fuel-tank to the N/S...

31. ...and up to the rear-light there, too.
32. Here's the fun of all the wiring behind the instruments - I'm still working on that...
33. ...and I thought I might test-fit the bumper just for fun, but it's a faff and lining up the mounting bolts is really awkward, so that's work in progress, too.

So, there you go - Land Rovers may all look similar, but it's the little differences that'll b*gger you up given half a chance

Cheerio

Good effort.  And you are still smiling  .

Aye...still smiling

I'm having a bit of a mad push for the end at the moment...but things are pushing back...


1. Last time, I'd discovered that there was only one hole for the ECU cabling in my new Tdci seatbox, whereas the old Td5 one had two and much merriment was had over that fact, I can tell you.  On top of that, the hole in the Tdci box is too big for the cable grommet, so some sort of "solution" had to be come up with and then it struck me that the old seatbox had the right size holes, so I could just cut them out and re-use them...
2. A "repair" section, ready to be fitted into place somehow...
3. ...I drilled the missing hole the right size...
4. ...and the plan was to fit the plate to the back of the seatbox, but I hadn't quite got the holes in the seatbox to match the ones in the plate and, I realised, the double-thickness of metal would be too thick for the cable grommet, so...
5. ...I just used the one hole - you can see the fixing bolt holes drilled here.
6. With a bit of "manipulation", the cabling fitted through, effectively, it's old hole again - job done

7. Here's what it looks like on the inside - some interesting tolerances etc, but only people inside the transmission tunnel will ever know and they tend to have other things to complain about.
8. The other cable fitted through its new hole.
9. Not sure what I'm trying to show here, but you can see the ECU "shelf" isn't in place, yet.
10. ECU in and wired up.
11. The underseat fusebox and some relays - I was considering fitting the relays upside-down so that the wiring was easier to get at, but it was a daft idea.
12. The fusebox has five or six connectors to its underside and they're all different sizes, so are easy to re-fit in the right places - not sure why I took a photo from this side again, though...

13. At this point, I've run the thin loom that goes from one side of the seatbox to the other across - it comes through a hole in the top, left corner here and carries the power to the fusebox as well as some relay wiring.
14. The fusebox in and bolted down along with the relays and a "voltage sensitive switch" which does God knows what.  I decided to fit my backup ECU earth wire again, even though it shouldn't need it, but it does no harm.
15. Onto a slightly less cerebral problem - this is the inside of the front of the driver-side wing - where there's no oily mess is where a bracket fits, which holds the radiator in place.  Unfortunately, two bolts had to be cut through when I took this apart, as they'd rust-welded themselves into the captive nuts behind this panel and this ultimately meant I couldn't put the radiator back in.
16. After I'd successfully broken every drill bit I owned in the 3-5mm range and resolved to just buy new wings, my girlfriend (who was much less angry than me at this point and, therefore, had a better functioning brain) pointed out that I could probably bend the wing-panel enough to get the plate out from behind it, which held the broken captive nuts - all I had to do was drill out all the rivets and spot-welds.
17. This is the plate from inside the wing - what a b*st*rd it is to get at, let me tell you!  If this whole exercise didn't prove the whole "every job is the start of ten other jobs" adage, I don't know what does!  As you may be able to tell, I've calmed down considerably since doing this 
18. Here's the plate and you can see the problem - it's been designed from the outset to turn to rust and then be impossible to get at -thanks LR...

19. Now I knew what I was doing, I attacked the other wing rather more surgically and had the plate out in under five minutes - all those poor drill-bits gave their lives for nothing   Anyway, I was then able to grind the dead bolts off, tack-weld on new ones and the both plates are away at the galvanisers.
20. What other fun?  Oh yes - because the bodywork had all corroded away around the rear fixing bolts, I decided to strengthen it with some aluminium angle - as I have quite poor taste, I used chequer-plate
21. The outer-most holes needed more thought, as not only is the bodywork flat here (so I couldn't just extend the angle-piece), I'd also destroyed the fog-light and the reversing-light getting them off and intended to replace them with cool-looking NAS round replacements.  After some thought and marking-up...
22. ...I cut a piece of chequer-plate to fit and bolted it in place...
23. ...drilled a 40mm hole for the NAS light (40mm is too tight - 42mm would have been better)...
24. ...and proceeded to fit the fog-light on the wrong side

25. With the N/S as a template, it was easy to do the O/S the same.  After this, I drilled a load of holes for rivets and a couple of bolts, clarted the back of the plates with sikaflex and fixed them in place - job done.
26. In other news, I had to make an exhaust hanger-bracket (the gearbox PTO is in the way of the standard one and I had to cut it off)...
27. I don't know why I took a picture of this - that's some sh*t welding right there...I'm not usually this bad 
28. I also decided to change the drive-belt tensioner while I had the belt off...
29. ...which came off easily enough, but the replacement needed a thin-walled 14mm socket to fit which I didn't have, so that was a job that ended here.
30. This one photo gives an insight into a job which has taken days and such a quantity of innovative and furious swearing that I may have to scrub the walls of the shed down to get it all out.  I managed to pick up a set of vent fly-screens cheap off eBay - hooray...but I'd already fitted the dash etc and after an afternoon of trying to slide them in from the sides and getting one irretrievably jammed, I had to take the instruments, binnacle, air-vents and dash sub-frame back off again to get at it.  Then, these fly-screens are from a series or something and they have mounting-tabs that the Td5 bulkhead doesn't have holes for.  I didn't want to drill yet more holes in the bulkhead (particularly not around the vents, which enthusiastically rust out with no encouragement from cack-handed drilling), so I decided to stick them in with marine sealant (sikaflex), but this meant lots of complicated clamping to keep them in place while it went off, which was also a pain in the @rse...mutter, grumble, whinge...I asked my girlfriend the other day, "Do you know what really annoys me about Land Rovers?" and she rather astutely suggested, "Everything?" Hmm...

So the next jobs are: put the wings back together, put the dash back together and survey the lay of the land from the vantage-point of square-one again

Cheerio