Welcome to the build thread of my 1998 Defender 90 300tdi pick up restoration, so when the vehicle was bought it looked all perfect and straight from the outside, but we knew there was going to be a mess underneath with the vehicle being 'off farm' condition, the strip down of the vehicle proved this to us.
after buying the defender we thought it right to treat it to some freshly refurbished wheels (bought these before the actual vehicle its self!
) and a set of new mud terrain tyres seen as it was coming up to winter and we wanted to play in the snow!
So once the snow had gone we realised it was time to start stripping the land rover down to find the extent of the rot underneath the perfectly straight body.
After all the body panels were taken off we could easily see that pretty much all the suspension and drivetrain parts would need a lot of work to see them looking nice and shiny, at this point we figured an investment in a 20 gallon blast pot and 1 tonne of crushed glass blast media probably wouldn't go a miss as the current blast cabinet wasn't really up to the job, the results were pretty amazing to be quite honest.
The plan for this build is to pretty much galvanise anything that can be galvanised, hopefully a new galvanised chassis will be a starting point, then any steel brackets, including radius arms and trailing arms, A-frame and shock mounts will also be galvanised, including the bulkhead which as could be seen from the pictures needed new foot wells putting in which was the next job on the list. (the shock mounts as pictured will be galvanised, however due to the plan to put +5" shocks on they wont be used as we're needing to put the +5" shock brackets in (which will also be galvanised) so they will be left spare, if anyone wants to purchase these send me a message on here, i'll be happy to post them too)
The bulkhead foot wells have now been both replaced properly, the bulkhead is now ready for galvanising as the blasting of this has already been done (forgot to take a picture, I'll add one when I get chance)
so this is as far as we have got so far, hopefully next weekend the engine and box will be lifted out and cleaned up a little, including new gaskets and seals where necessary, and a new clutch and timing belt kit fitted for safe measure, I will try to keep you all regularly updated with any changes to the vehicle, thanks for reading, any tips and tricks to aid this full restoration will be much appreciated!
after buying the defender we thought it right to treat it to some freshly refurbished wheels (bought these before the actual vehicle its self!
) and a set of new mud terrain tyres seen as it was coming up to winter and we wanted to play in the snow!So once the snow had gone we realised it was time to start stripping the land rover down to find the extent of the rot underneath the perfectly straight body.
After all the body panels were taken off we could easily see that pretty much all the suspension and drivetrain parts would need a lot of work to see them looking nice and shiny, at this point we figured an investment in a 20 gallon blast pot and 1 tonne of crushed glass blast media probably wouldn't go a miss as the current blast cabinet wasn't really up to the job, the results were pretty amazing to be quite honest.
The plan for this build is to pretty much galvanise anything that can be galvanised, hopefully a new galvanised chassis will be a starting point, then any steel brackets, including radius arms and trailing arms, A-frame and shock mounts will also be galvanised, including the bulkhead which as could be seen from the pictures needed new foot wells putting in which was the next job on the list. (the shock mounts as pictured will be galvanised, however due to the plan to put +5" shocks on they wont be used as we're needing to put the +5" shock brackets in (which will also be galvanised) so they will be left spare, if anyone wants to purchase these send me a message on here, i'll be happy to post them too)
The bulkhead foot wells have now been both replaced properly, the bulkhead is now ready for galvanising as the blasting of this has already been done (forgot to take a picture, I'll add one when I get chance)
so this is as far as we have got so far, hopefully next weekend the engine and box will be lifted out and cleaned up a little, including new gaskets and seals where necessary, and a new clutch and timing belt kit fitted for safe measure, I will try to keep you all regularly updated with any changes to the vehicle, thanks for reading, any tips and tricks to aid this full restoration will be much appreciated!
