Hi Guys,
I posted in the "Introduce Yourself" section a few months back telling everyone I'd bought my first car, a 1995 Defender hard top.
Just thought I'd share some pictures and let everyone know what I've been doing on it, since people seem interested in reading anything!
When I first got the car it looked like this:
It was in decent condition but just a little bit tired in places! It had been a working car all of it's life, with the last owner using it to transport gun dogs. I am the 5th owner.
When I bought it it had:
- Full service history for all 137k miles
- Decent set of Michelin tires
- Decent-ish attempt of ply lining in the back
- A dog guard
- Decent-ish attempt of a wading kit fitted
So far I've:
- Replaced lots of little accessories (pedal rubbers, wiper arms and blades, rear reflectors, door card clips, rear grab handles, number plates, wiper park switch, handbrake switch, bonnet slam buffers, rear door hinge pins, passenger seat belt and buckle, rear fog light rocker switch)
- Mounted the spare wheel on the back door (I know this probably isn't the best idea and a swingaway would be better, but the back door needs replacing in the near future anyway so it's a cheap solution for the time being instead of having the spare lying in the back)
- Fully cleaned and waxoyl'd the chassis (only found one small hole in the near side front outrigger!)
- Ground down and painted the rear crossmember
- Fixed the rear door stay
- Fixed the door speakers
- Replaced the exhaust mid pipe and back box
- Ripped out the ply lining (I plan on getting it done again properly or do it myself very soon)
- Replaced the radiator and all coolant pipes
- Fitted some black modular wheels and BF Goodrich All Terrain tires
- Replaced the rear trailing arm bushes (front and back)
- Cleaned what seemed like 3 tonne of mud and crap from the chassis and inside (including a bullet, some feathers and plenty of dog hair!)
It's coming along nicely and just passed it's MOT the other day with no advisories! On the previous MOT it had 2 (passenger seatbelt frayed and rear trailing arm bushes worn).
It now looks like this:
I'm so happy with it. I'll keep this thread updated and add more pictures of the repairs I've done if people want to read it.
Cheers
