Belts & Bolts
The 110 Posted by
Nicky Smith Sun, December 11, 2016 19:54:23
Well I have had a busy couple of shifts on the 110 over the last 24 hours and I have surprised myself at how many loose ends I have managed to get tied up.
It was all nearly scuppered early on last night when the rain started to fall heavily. Now in the last house it would have been game over but with the car port covering most of the land rover and the shiny new garage roof keeping all of the water at bay outside where it belonged, I was happy as a pig in the proverbial pottering about with the dark winter nights being held at bay!
I have been sitting here for the last few minutes since finishing the first paragraph trying to remember exactly what I have done in what order but I am giving up with that! I will just pop in what I do recall as there has been quite a bit!
Firstly I put jubilee clips on the pipes I fitted last week, I had bought a large box off of the internet of the mixed sized ones and they have been a godsend, then it was onto getting the alternator and power steering belts.
I changed a couple of the bracket bolts over so they actually tightened up then after a ten minute mild panic hunting for the belts I knew I had bought in the garage then the spares shed, the belts finally turned up in the back of the 110 where I had put them so they would not get lost.
It took a mere couple of minutes to pop the into place and getting them tensioned up.
The top along with the bottom coolant hose were then fitted but the water pump bypass hose was a no go because I had bought the wrong one. I am off of work tomorrow so I will nip out and get the right one then.
I had bought a pair of intercooler pipe hoses thinking they would be long enough but after messing around with them fitting new O rings it turned out that they were exactly the same length as the ones I have already fitted.
Hmm what to do because I would really like to have a stab at getting the engine running this week and without these pipes I would quickly end up with all of the engine oil coating the garage and driveway, I don't think Wifey would be too impressed with that and cleaning up could take a while...
As a temp measure I sliced into the old pipes and extended them with metal pipe for now so I can at least get the engine fired up and will once again be able to move the motor about.
What now then? As I was still protected from the weather along with my new under car port lights creating a false daytime I decided that I may as well dig out the new radiator and get that lot fitted.
Out came the old one still in its frame along with the cooler and after a little more rummaging around I found the shiny new one too!
It literally took ten minutes to switch them over and drop the whole caged lot into place with the pipework plumbed in.
It's amazing how these little jobs take next to no time but make a huge difference!
That was enough for the evening because I was getting a bit cold and tired...the things that my shiny dry well lit work area could not help me with.
The following afternoon though I was in the mood for a little more titillating after all there were quite a few little jobs that needed finishing the majority of which were centred around the transfer and gearbox.
I had to dig out the transfer box linkage out from where it had become trapped somehow between the transfer and gearbox. It again was surprisingly easy...surely my luck could not hold here?
Then I swapped some of the bolts holding the transfer box onto the gearbox around as they had been put in in the wrong places...literally took minutes.
After a quick clean up I remembered that the handbrake cable would need to be attached and with the way things are going it should not be an issue.
Yep this is where it started to get a bit more challenging. Firstly I had fitted a Discovery transfer box to a Defender so the handbrake cable mounting was different. Ha! No problem there because I had the foresight to remove the one from the 1:6 ratio transfer box I removed.
With a slightly smug grin I removed the Disco one and it became very obvious that two of the bolts went into different places. Humph, I am on a roll at the moment so I would not be out off here. Now don't get me wrong I wanted to cry a couple of times as I tried to modify the defender bracket but after destroying three different drill bits, and I am also pretty sure I have broken my drill, the old bracket now sat proudly in place all adjusted up with the handbrake working.
After sitting back with a brew in hand I wondered at the speed that the whole project seems to be coming together all of a sudden. There seemed to be months when all I seemed to be doing was constantly working on the old boy but seemingly getting nowhere but in what amounts to a couple of days the whole thing seems to be accelerating at a crazy pace towards completion. All of these little jobs are ticking the big jobs off of the to do list which is getting smaller and smaller by the day and it feels great!
So I will be picking up the bypass hose tomorrow which will leave the exhaust to try and get fitted, the clutch needs bleeding then my friends it will be time to to get this beast started..
nickysmith.me