The last week or so has been spent finishing off little jobs, putting the exhaust back together, painting the last of the chassis etc and also doing cosmetic things. I was given some fairly ropey looking bench seats by a mate, one of them was missing the seat base and the vinyl on them was past it. I managed to get hold of some foam from a gym (they were getting rid of a pole vaulting crash mat so had a LOT of foam to get rid of!) and spent 12 quid on 2 metres of black vinyl so made some seat bases and recovered the existing seat backs. The frames were stripped down, gently wire wheeled and sprayed with some spray galv paint, hopefully the shinyness will tone down as they look a bit too 'new' at the minute. THey came out reasonably well, definitely an improvement on how they were.
Next up was to strip the Land Rover badge of the who knows how many layers of NATO green paint, it took a few sessions with paint stripper and a bronze brush to get rid of it all. Hidden underneath it all was a fairly deep scratch (battle scar? Chicks dig scars, right?) which is weird as the body work doesn't show any signs of damage there, perhaps it's not its original badge. Either way I cleaned it up, sprayed it matt black and then picked out the lettering with some fine grit wet and dry, after a few years it's got it's identity back!
I flushed the brake fluid with new stuff and changed the oil in both the axles, swivel hubs, gearbox and transfer box, I noticed that at some point in the last 4 weeks the near side swivel hub has decided to fail so I replaced that while I was doing the oil, fortunately I had a spare from when I did the off side one a couple of years ago. While draining the gearbox was presented with these:
Now, the last time I did a gearbox oil change I also had a spring fall out, so, is there one remaining in there still or did one come out when the previous owner had it and is there none in there right now? I guess I'll find out in the autumn when I take the box out! The pretty savage gashes in one half of the spring would explain why I lost 3rd and 4th gear for 10 minutes about 18 months ago, you can quite clearly see where the high points of two of the helical spurs have bitten it, I'm trying not to think about what it may have done to the teeth. I'm sticking with my plan of taking the vehicle out for the summer, it's clearly been like this for 18 months so another couple won't hurt, I'll just carry on double declutching!