Well Tuesday 9th June marked the start in our next journey, the delivery of the chassis for the 300tdi 90.
Over coming months we are going to be doing the chassis swap on this car and hopefully documenting it the blog.
Keep an eye out for progress and photos. The plan for this one might be to lift the body off in one go so we all need to hit the gym a bit.
Well another quick update, recently we have had a couple of little issues with Daisy the TD5 90, it all started with a bit of wet weather, when trying to drive the engine warning light came on and throttle response stopped.
After using diagnostics the fault showed up in the computer as Driver Demand, after a bit of looking we thought it was the EGR valve, a bit of inspection showed that it was a bit clogged so we fitted an egr blanking kit. that seemed to do the trick for a little while.
Then a couple of weeks later the same issue happend again! unimpressed we decided to go to the next possible cause the accelerator pedal, we had purchased one off ebay at the same time as the EGR valve so put it back in and the fault remained the same.
We noticed that the fault was caused when pressing the clutch, so replacement of the switch on the clutch pedal with MSK100050 [MSK500010] seems to have sorted the issues for now.
Well things have been a bit manic recently so updates were last thing on the mind.
But alas here we are April 2015 and here is an update on how things are going.
Ian’s Car – 200tdi 90
Well 12 months since the rebuild finished, its MOT time again. Car went in for its test Tuesday 7th April. It failed 😦 The issues were headlights weren’t bright enough, the drivers door wouldn’t open from inside the car.
So all in all not too bad, but the worst item was down as an advisory but actually caused the end of the test. A UJ in the rear prop had failed to the point where the tester wasn’t willing to carry out deceleration tests. The prop was unbolted and the UJ’s purchased and replaced. the prop then bolted back on and boy did it make a difference.
The door not opening was a case of adjustments on the mechanism for the handles just shortened them a bit and opening now much easier.
The headlights were the biggest concern. As I have high performance bulbs fitted to the car when the tester said they didn’t register on the testing machine. So reading around the subject points at a burnt out light switch causing poor performance. The solution is to put a relay feed to the lights. I purchased a Red Bison Boomslang from Paddockspares for £30 it was a bargain for the entire kit. I had it fitted in no time and made a massive improvement, its a product I would recommend to anyone.
MOT Retest 18 April 1pm. Result: Car passed
Jordan’s Series II
Well not much work has been done on the car since November, panels are now painted but not yet fitted to the car. The accelerator has now been refitted and the car can be driven around.
The main reasons for this is we have been busy working on Jordan’s Discovery 2, which since november has had a number of coolant hoses as it has been loosing coolant and the pressure build up has popped them. We have now replaced the suspected cause of the coolant loss and so far so good.
Nick’s Discovery
It has been plodding along as normal. We had a bit of fun while jet washing it ready for MOT when the jet wash smashed the sun roof. so that has been replaced and the alpine windows have been taken out and covered over.
Matthews Series.
As Matthew has decided he isn’t friends with 2 / 3 of us working on Land Rovers there will be no further updates about his car as we dont see him any more.
New Cars:
Yes we have been joined by two more land rovers that we can enjoy working on.
Daisy The Defender is a 2006 TD5 90, owned by some friends we have had a little bit of work to do on the car already including replacing a failed fuel pump and then adding some new bits such as chequer plate wing tops and a new bumper. With being such a new car there shouldnt be that much to do on it for now.
Tom’s 300tdi 90, this is going to be our next big project, Toms car is in need of a new chassis, due to the amount of rust it has, we could go down the route of repair pieces but Tom fancies doing a chassis, so one has been ordered so big project ahead for the summer. There should be plenty of updates on this one.
Last week showed yet more progress on the car, the tub was bolted down to the chassis fully, the sides and roof were bolted down to the tub and the inner sills put in place, so the shape of the car is now fixed. with it being mostly covered we then moved on to other jobs that were needed.
Over the weekend we started to look at the wiring of the car, the autosparks loom is set up on the car and now just needing to find where the connections go to.
So far we have the start system set up so with a key we can turn the engine over, next up will be making sure the warning lamps for the engine work. When the engine wiring is all done and we are happy we can then progress to fitting the wings and lights.
Well after running the car for a few weeks we noticed that the steering wasn’t as good as before the rebuild and we had put it down to castor issues after fitting 2 inch lift springs.
So we purchased a set of AllMakes springs that were standard height and today we got around to fitting them. We lifted the back of the car letting the axle droop a little then compressed the springs and got them out. We could slip the new ones back in without the spring compressors so bolted the retaining plates back in and the back was done.
The fronts were slightly harder, we had to remove the bottom nut of the shock absorber compressed the springs and then the shock we had just enough time to pull it out before the shock extended again. a bit longer and a bit of a harder job but we got it done, in the space of a couple of hours we had all the springs done and it bolted back down again.
This improved the issues we had with steering massively the car now feels pretty much as it did before the rebuild which is great news.
Also while working today we topped up the oil a bit more after the running in and also re bled the brakes.
Well car 2 has been on the road for 6 weeks now, with no major mechanical issues to report there are just some minor things we are wanting to look at.
Air Filter
We have recently taken out the air filter housing finished making little changes to the feed pipe and painted. we went with a spray version of ht Gentian blue the car is painted in and we are happy with the finish.
Thermostat
The car is currently without a thermostat, with it fitted the temp gauge goes very high and was causing concern to us. The thermostat was taken out and tested on the cooker and opened fine, so we think we need to refit and find out how to bleed the 200TDI cooling system.
Steering
We have some concerns over the steering, we are getting a bit of movement while driving along and your never sure about how much steering to put in when going round corners.
We have spoken to the company that provided the suspension kit and discussed the issues, and the outcome was, the movement while driving might be a side effect of the 50mm lift on the coil springs, making the panhard rod be changing the alignment of the front and rear axles so the car is essentially crabbing along the road.
The vague steering might be caused by the castor of the front axles being out with the lift.
So we are currently looking at the solutions,
Option 1 : fit castor correction arms and adjustable pan hard rod – approx cost £420 allows to keep the new TF201 kit intact
Option 2 : fit standard height springs that should solve the castor and pan hard rod issues – approx cost £80 means working to change the springs all round.
Will update the blog when choices are made.
I bought all the parts to completely overhaul both of my axles… new oil seals, gaskets, bushes and brake components etc.
First stage was to strip the axle down to bare casing as I wanted to rub it down and paint it.
Well after looking at a few sites talking about lighting upgrades I decided its a route i would go down for the rebuild.
For the dashboard I purchased a pack of 8 XENON WHITE SMD LED 501 T10 W5W WEDGE CANBUS ERROR FREE SIDE LIGHT BULBS from eBay after watching this video on youtube decided it was a 5 minute job so off I went.
Undid 4 screws holding the binnacle, disconnected the speedo cable and then twisted the bulbs out and slotted in the new LED’s checking as i went that they worked. Reconnecting the speedo and putting the screws back in, then waited for it to go dark to check the result.
It’s much improved over the original!
I have also wired in strips of LED lights to the interior lighting which is an improvement on the original light. I will get a picture of this over the next couple of days.
One final touch I made was to feed a string of blue LED’s in to the chassis and connect up to a switch that highlights the Richards Chassis logo, this is the result.
Well now the car is taxed, tested and insured, the post rebuild job list is building:
Body Work – Need to find the part number of the clips that secure the front door galv trims so they can be put back on.
We now have the part number just need to go about fitting them. Part is MUC3186.
Fuel Gauge – Not working, will replace sender as one of the spades snapped off.
Speedo Cable – Didn’t give accurate reading on way to MOT, tried resitting in to the dial, if this doesn’t solve the problem I will replace cable.
Resolved – The refitting has solved it and now getting an accurate reading.
Thermostat – Replaced during rebuild but wasn’t opening at temperature so will replace again.
Exhaust – Is causing vibrations through the car so want to fit a small length of flex to the down pipe to help reduce vibration.
Air Intake – The position of the air filter meant that with the bonnet shut it was being pressed against the alternator and bonnet causing engine vibration to transfer to body work. We are going to look at a couple of options for this so that the air intake is as waterproof as we can get it.
Rocker Cover – There is a small leak from the rocker cover, I think a britpart component was fitted last time so will look to replace with a genuine item and hopefully sort that advisory out.
PAS Box – The leak on the return pipe i think is down to a missing o ring, so we are going to try and fit one see if that solves the problem, if not spend the money on the correct pipe for the job.
Audio – Need to refit the cars radio for entertaining on trips.
Off Road Prep – I still have a steering and 2 diff guards to fit back to the car, which should help protect when I go off road again. Also have a CB radio to fit to the dashboard
Security Devices – we have a couple of security devices fitted to the car already, we will be looking to add more to this for extra peace of mind.
Towing Equipment – at the moment no towing equipment has been fitted to the car so this is something that will be looked at.
Slightly longer term items will be:
Winch bumper – while purchasing parts a couple of months back I tempted myself into buying a Huskey winch, so in time we will be looking to make a suitable winch bumper for the car.
Interior – One thing i didn’t look at during the rebuild were the seats. they could do with re trimming as the backs have split, also the frames could do with painting. We are also going to look at seating ideas for the back of the car.
Well as the car will be used for off roading at times we decided to make some rock sliders like we had fitted to the car before the rebuild. We were unable to re use the originals as fitting involved a big sledge hammer to knock one of the fixings in to the rear tubular outrigger.
This time round we got hold of some 80 x 40 3 mm box section, measured the lengths between wheel arches and cut to length. The fixing for the sliders were to be the tubular outrigger at the back and the bulkhead at the front.
So with some handy extra bits of pipe and 80 mm angle we made the mounting plates and clamped up the sliders, tacking them all together before removing from the car and welding fully. Handily at the time dads work were prepping a job for galvanizing and the bosses kindly let us put the sliders in with that.
On Friday i got a phone call saying that the sliders had been returned and looked good, so a small job for the weekend was fitting them, also swapping the bolts in the bulkhead over.
As Saturday was a nice sunny day it took all of about 30 minutes to fit them and it looks great, we just need to modify the wheel arch eyebrows to fit correctly.
Landy Rebuilds 