Thanks guys!
As to the pedestal...you might want to hold off on that in my case...you see I'm in now way a mechanic but I know enough to be dangerous and a detriment to society. Let's put it this way...Lady Gaga has a better chance to be taken seriously as a singer than I do of becoming a competent mechanic.
That being said...I had wanted a Series Landy for as long as I can remember and one nite I was looking at them online, wallowing in self pity for not owning one, when SWMBO asked "why don't you look at buying one"!!! That night I started the search and eventually found Grover.
When talking with the owner he told me about all of the things he had done to it and those things he'd like to have done and those things that needed to be done. Well this kind of got me to rethink if I should do this or not. Like I said before - I'm no mechanic. There are a few mechanics in the family tree but would it be fair for me to buy this thing and expect them to help maintain it?
I asked the owner if I could have a couple days to think on it and he said sure. So I talked with SWMBO about this and we came to the same conclusion - talk to the mechanics in the family about it and tell them that the deal would be ME learning how to take care of the Rover and maintain it if they would advise. They all laughed but agreed.
So I contacted the owner again and talked to him some more about this. He then told me something that cinched the deal...he said that working on the old Rovers was like working on a LEGO set - if you have all the pieces and the building instructions (i.e. the shop manual) you can build it. For those wonder about the LEGO reference...while talking we got on the subject of kids and I told him that we had nieces and nephews and they loved having me help them with the LEGO sets we bought them.
The day Grover arrived was one I'll never forget; what made it even more memorable was that as soon as I got inside the first thing I saw this little set sitting on the dash:
If your interested here is a link to a writeup about Grover's arrival.
Grover the Rover: Grover Arrives!!!
Anyway - that was way back in '04. I'm still no mechanic - but the skills and knowledge are improving. Now Grover is in about a bazillion pieces and is slowing being put back together.