James Mac's Defender 90 Rebuild

Roof on


Doors on




And it all went on and lined up relatively easily and quickly.
We did have one massive **** up when attaching the windscreen, we accident put the windscreen bracket in the wrong place and thought where the **** is hole for the bolt, so in a moment of madness got the drill out and drilled a hole through the galv bulkhead and the realised the bracket was in the wrong place. Bollocks. So now Iv got a nice hole in it just below the brackets, I haven't got a picture but I'll take one tomorrow. I need to think of someway to hide it now or somthing to fit into it like the aerial....

Once the body was on we did a few other odd jobs and then decided to fit the wings, radiator, intercooler and slam panel.


That's about it for day 2 of the rebuild, it's seem really high compared to before but I guess it was running a 20 year old standard suspension.



The plan for tomorrow is to start fitting the dash connecting things up in the engine bay, get all the pipe work done and all the fluids. So hopefully it will all go to plan again

So day 3 of the rebuild and it didn't go quite as smoothly, we hit a few setback and did a couple of time consuming jobs but we overcame them, the first was the radiator, the supplied connection that I got with my aluminium radiator didn't fit, so we poped to a plumbing shop to try and get some quick replacement with no luck and in the end we ended up drilling them out and they fitted perfect.
After that we started fitted the silicone hose kit, which I expected to fit better, especially for the money, pretty much all the hoses needed to be trimmed down in order to get them to fit and still it doesn't seem quite right but it'll do, this took ages with all the trimming. This is the bottom hose and as you can see there's only about 5mm between the hose and pulley as the T piece makes it sit a couple of inched forward.


Anyway we finally got them all in, just the air box pipes to fit tomorrow.


After that we couldn't find the fuel pipe that goes to the lift pump, I had a twin tank veg oil kit fitted before so the fuel pipes have been altered to accommodate that but it's going back to standard now and as I couldn't find it I ended up ordering a new set and I'll fit them tomorrow.

After that we cracked on fitting the dash and sorting out the birds nest wiring which was always going to be time consuming. I swapped the clocks over onto the new binnacle and got all them wired up and all the heater controls too, so that's mostly done now, I decided not to fit all the dash properly yet as it'll make it easier to wire up the center console switches and dials next week, so I left it all loose, plus when we try all electrics hopefully tomorrow we can easily access the back to fix any problems





Another thing that was a bit time costuming today was the fly vents, the old ones were spot welded onto the old bulkhead and as we overlooked this I hadnt ordered any new ones so we had to get them off carefully and glue them into the new bulkhead, not the best solution but it works and looks fine. We wedged in loads of screw drivers to hold them in place while the glue set



We did a couple of other bits and bobs too like swooped the turret over onto the new gearbox, fitted the fuel filler, we had to drill a new hole in the chassis for the breather as the hole was miles out, I'm sure we did lots more but I can't think, Here's a picture of the hand brake disk conversion that Iv fitted too


The Plan for tomorrow is to sort the rest of the electrics, seatbox in, fluids In, bleed the brakes and clutch, get it running and then go from there. Really looking forward to that as it hasn't been running on over a year and the engine has been reconditioned since then too.

so i completely forgot to update this the other week, plus i didn't really take any pictures on the last 2 days of the rebuild week buy by friday night it was complete, all the dash was back in, all the electrics reconnected and it was drivable. i don't have any picture putting everything back in but this is the end product.

if you look closely you can see that my bonnet doesn't match as i bought another one as mine was all dinted, so for the time being Its going to be black until i send it off to get resprayed to match.

so now all the big stuff was done i spend the majority of the second week i had off work sorting out all the interior, fitting the new raptor dash and wiring everything up, i quite enjoy wiring so thats was good fun

The first bit was to cut a bit of the dash out so I could attach the frame for the raptor dash. So I did that and attached it in place.



Iv loads of new switches to go into the dash, not all of them are going to be used as of yet but eventually they will be, so I wired all earths and light feeds up before I fitted it.





I then did the same for the new gauges


Which included tapping the sensor into the egr plate for the exhaust gas temp and doing the piping for the boost gauge.





Next job was to clean the rear rub out. When I used to run it on veg oil I accidental spilt some in the back and it soaked into all the carpet, so the rear tub was all sticky so I cleaned it all out,


Then I fitted some sound proofing, I'm not sure if it'll make much difference but I did it anyway.



Then I fitted some temporary carpet.im planning on buying a proper replacement carpet at some point but this'll so for now.


I also put some sound proofing in the front and used a bit of trunking so my speaker wires get Into the back neatly.


I then wired the rear sound system up. It's not going to be used for a while as I want to listen to how the Landy is running for the first 1000miles or so I can sort out any obscure noises/problems but it's ready for after that .


I probably spent another day or so sorting out the rest of the wiring and finishing the front off, I don't have a 100% finished picture yet, this is the best I have.


There still loads of little jobs to do, I'm going to order the Wright off road matting system for the front so once that in the front will be almost done. 8 think I'm going to fit some forward facing seats in the rear once the new mats are in the back too.

I also took it to the garage to get the wheels balances and for four wheel alinement doing, so that's all sorted now.



Iv been driving it around for the past 2 weeks and so far so good, Iv got a few little niggles but that was always going to happen.
I have a small oil leak from the oil cooler pipes at both ends so I need to give them a tweek. And Iv also got a small leak from the transfer box which I'm annoyed about as its a new recondition unit so it shouldn't be leaking. I'm half tempted to contact the supplier but I did buy it over a year ago so that might be a waste of time.

there are still loads of little things that I want to do to it/ need doing but there's not rush. It's back on the road and driving now so that's the main thing.

So iv got a few things on my shopping list/to do list but I'm hoping to have it all done by the new year.
Once the mats are in the front iv got a X-eng pedal lock to fit.
I need a new rear door so I'm going to try and source a galvanised one and get it painted and fitted at some point, and eventually ill do the same with the front doors but they are ok for now.
I'm going to fit LED light all around.
I need a new roof rack, I'm planning on getting a aluminium slimline one, quite like the look of the flat dog one, so ill probably get that eventually.
Once iv got a new roof rack I'm going to fit a LED light bar to the front, LED work lights at the rear, a roof tent and a side awning.
Im also going to fit a extra battery with a split charge system.
Im tempted to also for some of these panoramic windows but i might just replace the runners and get my county ones tinted but I'm not sure yet.

and i think thats pretty much the plan for the next 6months, I'm sure there are a few other things too but thats all i can think of for now.
The landy fund is looking pretty low atm so I'm not in any rush to buy/do all this lot but it will get done eventually i can't wait until its exactly how i want it to be

looks great
A credit to you

Well done, mate. It looks the business.