110 defender rebuild project and v8 conversion

Very nice, I have tubular on mine, but the diameter is rather less on mine I think!

I wrapped mine with exhaust heat-wrap, main concern was near the brake and clutch pipes, but presume overall it carries more heat out the back than retains under the bonnet which is a good thing.

To my great shame, I haven't touched my defender project for nearly 2 years! It turns out that moving to a smallholding (and holding down a normal job) has quite an impact on car projects! I suspect we all knew that before, to be fair!

By way of a small update (relevant, ish), Nigel the Disco failed his MOT in spectacular fashion last year... many hundreds of pounds to get someone to fix the issues we could see, let alone any hidden nasties. My favourite quote from the MOT was "Body no longer attached to chassis - mounts rusted out".

My backup plan for Nigel the Disco was always to have a spare 3.9v8 + bell housing + R380 in stock, in case it's needed for the defender in times to come. I just didn't expect to only get 12 months use out of him!

To get me by (for work and general sanity) I got a company lease deal on a Ford Ranger 6cyl 3.2 diesel auto.... I have to say, it's a rather lovely thing. I deliberately only got a 2 year lease deal, so that I had a nice deadline for finishing the defender. I now only have 12 months left on the lease!!!!! So, 12 months to finish my defender.... here we go!

Is this RIP Nigel if so hope his parts make others happy. Good luck with your build.

Mick Guilbert said:

Is this RIP Nigel if so hope his parts make others happy. Good luck with your build.

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Yes it certainly is RIP Nigel. He's been slowly dissolving outside the barn for 12 month now... a bit of a shame, but rust is the death of all D1's eventually. At least his engine & gearbox will ensure I have plenty of life in the Defender V8.

timc1967 said:

Very nice, I have tubular on mine, but the diameter is rather less on mine I think!

I wrapped mine with exhaust heat-wrap, main concern was near the brake and clutch pipes, but presume overall it carries more heat out the back than retains under the bonnet which is a good thing.

Click to expand...

I’m going to ceramic coat my manifolds i think. The outside diameter of the pipes are 48mm

farmershort said:

To my great shame, I haven't touched my defender project for nearly 2 years! It turns out that moving to a smallholding (and holding down a normal job) has quite an impact on car projects! I suspect we all knew that before, to be fair!

By way of a small update (relevant, ish), Nigel the Disco failed his MOT in spectacular fashion last year... many hundreds of pounds to get someone to fix the issues we could see, let alone any hidden nasties. My favourite quote from the MOT was "Body no longer attached to chassis - mounts rusted out".

My backup plan for Nigel the Disco was always to have a spare 3.9v8 + bell housing + R380 in stock, in case it's needed for the defender in times to come. I just didn't expect to only get 12 months use out of him!

To get me by (for work and general sanity) I got a company lease deal on a Ford Ranger 6cyl 3.2 diesel auto.... I have to say, it's a rather lovely thing. I deliberately only got a 2 year lease deal, so that I had a nice deadline for finishing the defender. I now only have 12 months left on the lease!!!!! So, 12 months to finish my defender.... here we go!

Click to expand...

I've got a 'mate' whose in the army. I was talking to him a few weeks ago and he was going on about the Ford Rangers being very poor. Hopeless on and off road, didn't know if the back end was going to drift out, blah, blah etc. Said all the bells and whistles were great, but nt a great drive. He might have just been saying that because he knows I'm a Landy enthusiast

Al2O3 said:

I've got a 'mate' whose in the army. I was talking to him a few weeks ago and he was going on about the Ford Rangers being very poor. Hopeless on and off road, didn't know if the back end was going to drift out, blah, blah etc. Said all the bells and whistles were great, but nt a great drive. He might have just been saying that because he knows I'm a Landy enthusiast

Click to expand...

Quite possibly true. I've never been a hard-core mud-plugger. Mind you, they used to say these sort of things about the gaylander and the disco at one point in time. It's like a top-spec mondeo inside, and a pickup outside - which I imagine only suits a very small number of users. I find it perfect for my weird hybrid of driving on the motorway for the I.T. job, and then towing 200 bales of hay at bailing time or taking lambs to the slaughter with the ifor canopy on.

holy thread resurrection!!!

The Ranger was fun for a couple of years, but gave it back at the end of the lease... Nigel the Mk1 v8 Disco was then dragged out of the hedge and given to a local landy mech for a fair bit of welding. Nigel then became my daily from summer 2019 onward.... lucky for him we had that pandemic thingy get in the way, so he hasn't had to do many miles. To my great surprise, we got him through his last MOT in July, and he has been pretty enjoyable to live with.

All of that said, he finally "let us down" as they say, a couple of weeks ago. On a trip with a livestock trailer on the back (with animals), the rubber clutch hose burst, fluid hits hot exhaust manifold.... woosh. Thankfully the fire was small and contained... we put it out v quickly, seemingly with no lasting damage. Recovery is a nightmare with livestock & trailers, so had to rope in family members to help and ended up getting Nigel recovered to the in-laws farm in Wales.... there he sat for 10 days or so waiting on a replacement part, and someone local to fit it. Finally, on Monday this week, I was able to go and collect him from Wales, and drive him through the monsoon back to Devon.

So, I now have renewed motivation to finally get this bloody defender build finished.... re-starting, I think, with the clutch system! seems fitting now that's in fresh in my mind.

Hurdle number 1001 - WTF is going on with union nut & thread sizes in this system!?!?! Nothing appears to be M12.... I'm assuming it's 1/4 pipe and not metric (1998 300tdi originally), the thread into the slave cyl looks very very coarse... hard to tell on the master cyl. Is this one of those old UNF20 vs UNF24 things? I'm really not clue up on thread pitch stuff..