land rover thing project

got thrown a curve ball the other day . The chap that I got a few spares from for the series 3 build has offeredme a kit of body panels for a series 1 to build the chassis up as a series 1 landy thing, more in keeping with the original creation that was nailed together 20 odd years ago. Hmm one part of me says take him up on the offer and the other says stick with the original plan .. My gut says stick to the plan of building it as a lwb series3 although building it as a series 1 , hmm that would upset a neighbour who happens to have a series 1 thats been undergoing restoration for over 20 years, cant make up my mind ..

yes, I can, series 3 that was the original plan and its best to stick to it .. deviating from the plan just makes life and car building more complicated

Hardly progress, but managed to get the chassis off the trailer and on the deck. dropped the trailer back at my buddies . To late to do anythng else when I got back but the plan for the rest of the week is to get it in the garage , ( tidy up the drive) and strip down the and prime the reast of the chassis and clean and paint the running gear .. check / replace the brakes and get the chassis ready for the Rover motor .. So hopefully work will commence on the chassis again soon

I also got a video of the engine running, but it hasn't been extracted from its current engine bay yet .. Its presently resting in a Humber Hawk thats about to get a Chrysler V8 transplanted in the vacant hole ( when the holes vacant ) .

Chassis in the garage on Friday, gave it another power wash , stripped a few un needed brackets off it, and removed the back axle and springs for a clean , prime and paint .. rear brakes need shoes but wheel cylinders and drums look good .. shox need replaced as well but will leave those for now as It might be getting dropped a tad ..

Will strip the front end off over the weekend .. Going to look at the series one parts on Saturday .. although im kinda stuck on doing it as a series 3 the series 1 panels are already off the car, so saving strip down time on the other landy .. Every little helps ..

Im kinda liking the beat up patina on the LWB series one sides I picked up a few weeks ago,, cant help but thing it would be a shame not to use them..

Will get the chassis fully stripped, the underside cleaned and primed and get it painted .. Im not fussed about any scrapes or scratches it will pic up during the construction of the body .. its not going to be a show car LOL neither will it be a rough old dog although it might look it

Parts list so far: front disks, rear shoes , front and rear shox , and a handful of replacement ball joint boots .. Should have it panted up and reassembled by next weekend and hopefully word on the engine and box .. Might have even made a start to the body assembly of which there will definitely be some jiggery pokery ..

will grab some pics asap..

collected the series 1 ( maybee series 2) panels today .. loosely bolted the front together and chucked it on for a quick look ..

Need to chop a chunk out the inner wings to allow them to drop over the front suspension upper arms, that will drop the rad panel on the front X member so a fair drop yet to come .. Im not going to mess with the chassis ride height, just leaving that as Rover intended and will upgrade with decent gas shox if I get that far ..

Rear axle is cleaned up and primed, will get the rear springs sorted out and all the hardware cleaned up and painted before assembling back in the chassis ..

Front suspension will be coming off so I can get the chassis turned over, cleaned and painted ..

Not having the engine is a wee bit inconvenient as the bulkhead will be constructed around it and taking into account the length I need to find to suit the wheel base .. Got a few things to work out, but making a start ..

Nipped back in the shed and trimmed the inner wings to fit over the Rover top wishbone , dropped the front end back on , stood back and had a look .. Made me smile .. Could do with dropping another inch but that brings other issues with t and since this is suppoese to be a KISS project ( Keep It Simple Stupid) there isnt any point in building in problems .. Mind you , a smaller diam front tyre would give me enough scope to drop the front panels another inch but for the time being it is where it is .

Plan to rake out what steel I have laying around . Fingers crossed I will have sufficient material to make do without spending any doe .. otherwise its a trip to the etal stockist for some materials .. will need to order up a couple of sheets of ali for the floor and some sheep materials for the bulkhead which it looks like I will have to fabricate from scratch to make the body fit the chassis ..

I didnt realise that the series 1 is 3 inches narrower inthe body width than a series 3 .. 61 inches against 64 ..

Where I have it sitting right now on the chassis, the wing tops are 10 inches lower than the wing tops on the series 3 .. Its kinda at a sensible height to make it a decent useable thing .. Thinking that the Rover V8 might be over kill considering how well the old series 3 runs on its old 2 1/4 petrol ..

Interesting build

I agree with your ride height thinking but I wonder how it will end up looking. The point of the "original modified design" was to have something sitting down low. I hope it comes out looking good for you,

Here in the Netherlands many people have followed the "large dinner plate" wheel fashion fitting wheels that are two to three inches bigger than stock. For some reason it seems like many Dutch owners don't want to lower their suspension to get the larger wheels to look "right". To my eye they all look like they are riding around in prams...

...I suppose you could go old school low rider if you can fit low profile clad spoked 14 inch knock on / off wheels with boucing hydraulics (I think that would be a cool twist to the original idea - not that I'm trying to encourage you to go off on another tangent after your series one panel purchase!)

Dont go there I had a flirtation with hydraulics years ago , this was pre the days of using hydrogen spheres much like the citroen suspension from years ago.. The hydraulic set ups are pretty good these days, all depends on what your end goal is from them . The front end on this is perfect for bags but to be honest im trying to stay away from being seduced by all that stuff and keeping it cheap and cheerful.

Its not meant to be a faithful copy of that original car .. Just something along that style, but more useable, hence the decision to maintain a non radical stance. The front tyres will be changed so that will provide a small additional drop and narrow the track a little .. Its all a bit suck it and see .. wih a heavy bent on spending as little as possible . Having said that Ive splashed out on some metal stock today .. sheet materials and box section .. I like to use the proper materials rather that a hotch potch of scrap pieces .. makes life easier and thar job quicker and more professional looking As it sits right now its 10 inches lower than my series 3 I could squeeze another couple of inches from it but with every little bit of drop something else is affected .. This seems to be a good compromise height ..

flexible, cheap, available, simple , that's the name of the game here. Ive got a Rover V8 coming, eventually, if the fella ever takes it out the car, how long does that take ? a couple of hours ? any way, I was around by a local land rover fella today and scored a good 2 1/4 petrol lifted from a series landy about 10 years ago for a tdi conversion.. fella kept the engine as it was a good runner .. managed to buy it today for £250 .. he remembers it to be a 5 main bearing but even if its a 3 I think its a decent price . We dug through some stuff to find the motor with various LT 77 gearboxes stored on top .. I couldn't see in well enough to confirm if it was a 5 main engine but I could get a grip on the crank pulley and the engine turned easily until on compression .. so all seems good . Collecting it on Wednesday ..

Its an option for this landy thing, or a spare to build for the daily By all accounts it should fit in the P4 , and I could use a P4 overdrive gearbox and keep the whole thing ultra simple .. Im keeping my options open

Spent the day loading a Chrysler Hemi onto a pallet then loaded another pallet with some early ford parts , All part of the clear out

Also fixed a puncture on my old mountain bike, only took be the best part of a year to get around to it, so gave the bike a good service while I was at it .. rode it around the village and immediately got the bug back .. Specialized stumpy XL frame 29er with hydraulic seat adjust an upgraded hydraulic brakes with stainless discs .. was an ace bike in its day but the tech for these things moves forward so fast its scary.. Its all electric assistance these days,, My old MTB buddy has bought himself an electric mountain bike .. £8500... really!! for a pushbike .. Im going retro lol ..

After all that I did a bit to the thing ,,
I've also worked out the inner wings and footwell / bulkhead layout incorporating a removeable bulkhead centre section and transmission tunnel

Plan is to have the frame work in steel but sorta regretting this move, and thinking I should have just did it in ali but the material is bought so it will be steel with 2mm aluminium floors.

The sides turn out to be from a long wheelbase hard top and since I want to run it as a pickup to get it all in line apart from making them shorter I will also be be cutting some height out of them too.. to make them the same as the pickup sides ..

Im not going mad on minute details , its a custom , so I will be crossing over to the later build techniques and using pop rivits much in the same way as the series 3 to secure a lot of the panels..

My buddy s about to scrap a big old horsebox that was built from some kind of Ford lorry. The entire thing is built with ali sheet so hope to get a few bits of the weathered stuff to make a louvred cover for the pickup bed , but that's way off ..

Seat wise in going to use the beat up leather bench seat saved from the P4 .. P4 gauges in a series 1 style dash , no heated, no wipers, chop the screen to bring the proportions in line wire it with the wire loom saved from the P4 along with all the junction boxes .

That should about do it That's the plan .. I might also use a VW T2 dual circuit non servo master cylinder to make a wee brake safety improvement .. They stop my disc drum non servo T2 camper so should work OK with the P4 disc drum set up . Callipers and wheel cylinders are close to the same size pistons ..

one last thing Its most likely in gong to use the land rover 2 1/4 petrol with the P4 OD box but with the box moved out of line given the engine set back I will have to look at converting the P4 box to Hydraulic clutch .. PHEW ! hope to get a decent run on it next week ,, I seem to have caught up with myself ..

ARGHHHHHH! got offered a low mileage MGB 1800 engine , complete with OD gearbox .. for £200 today .. means no outlay for carbs manifolds starter and a gearbox ... 90 bhp , not sure about gearing but these old MGB motors were sluggers .. dimensionally it will fit easy .. to many options .. blinkin nora, might sell the V8 combo swerve the MGB and go straight for a K series .. on the MGB OD.. choices choices

I love the B OD gearbox, lovely things that somehow beat having a 5 or 6 speed gearbox although it does the same. there is something satifiying about flicking the switch and feeling the thump as it comes in and the revs drop
If you are looking for a bit of Xtra power you can bore out the 1800 block and fit a slightly wilder cam, even without larger carbs it will push along at a fair lick with the 1950 motor. My original B would do 120mph easily with it and the B is no lightweight car.

+1 on the OD instead of the seria 5 speed conversion.

Had to carry out a few chassis repairs .. sort a couple of outriggers and get to some rust issues under the centre X member .. but making progress. A few wee tweaks and it will be as good as new

Bit of a large scale mock up going on in the last pick .. Collecting some materials on Tuesday as run short of the 40x40 lightweight box sectionfor the bulkhead and body sill structures .. 7mtrs didn't go far at all .. Think I've went overkill on the sheet materials for the bulkhead as well but hey, it will just take longer to rust through ..

Not sure what this will weigh but it will be a fair bit lighter than the MGB the engine and box came from.

collected the MGB engine and gearbox today , got home had my tea and went out to see if it would work in the P4 chassis with the series 1 body .. Its tight but it will work. There are limits to heights and distance it can sit back which are guided by the physical dimensions of both the engine combination and the chassis , any hoo it will fit, thats the bottom line

Latest daft idea is to build this like a dry lakes push truck .. The original inspiration was just that , inspiration, a cool looking build with custom / hot rod angle .. There were loads of things I didn't like about it but understood tat some of those features were required to get the V8 in there. Quite a feat.
I decide early on I didn't want the hassle of the V8, after locating one and paying a deposit, still no engine but if its not out in a couple of weeks Im thinking he can keep it , will loose a deposit but save the balance plus a pallet delivery cost .. I think that's fair ..

So any way back to the plot . Im building this as a practical driver so It will be low but not stupid low . The engine should deliver enough power , indeed it looks like it might have been tweaked with the oil cooler and larger SU carbs .. wont be opening it to find out , its reputedly a runner so in the interests of much cheapness its staying firmly sealed

The body will just be as the bits come to me , worn, split dented, weather beaten etc ,, thats the final finish. Im planning to make over sills to cover the fabricated frame structure body sills but they will extend under neatheat all the way to the chassis forming a body pan which im planning to louvre .., ive got a press so its no cost .. just time

A few old Bonneville stickers , a push bar front bumper, chopped and raked screen and some additional gauges should see it done ..

Pass the salt

Fabricated some engine mounts today so I can get the engine mounted properly in the chassis and start to work out the bulkhead details and foot wells . Even managed to gain a wee bit of clearance between the filter and steering box . will do the trans mount utilising one of the old engine mount rubbers on Thursday ..

G0d@mn this is cool as fu$k

Do you tig or mig weld?
They look good

The mounts were tigged

Bough my tig from Poland SHERMAN make , delivered £400 . AC/DC, works a treat. Welded the 10mm suspension brackets to my buddies quick change rear in his hot rod , worked perfectly. Equivalent model from JASIC £1500.. I was worried, but when it arrived it was ace , good stable arc, electronic everything. Directions were in Polish but downloaded the directions from the Jasic website for the same model .. Run through the directions and they functions were 100% identical ..

I have an intolerant neighbour so do everything I can to keep any noise at a minamum so the tig ever needs ground just a quick file . I was actually sorry I filled that one, I like rediused edges but the tig is also a good effect .. any hoo no one will see them ..