My friends.
I have made a terrible discovery
Ahem. 
I bet nobody's ever thought of that joke before...
Put in north of 14 hours today to get the old girl back together, with the kind help of one of my colleagues and latterly a length of 2x4, she went but there were some battles.
The body went back on with no dramas, The nice set of shiny bolts I bought worked in some of the mounts but didn't have enough thread for some of them, luckily I saved the old ones that were in good nick.
The brake lines were most of the battle; the old front flexi hoses did
not want to be separated from the steel lines, and I had to cut one back and make up some intermediate bits from the leftover cupronickel stuff I used for the back brake lines where I couldn't save the fittings.
The real bastard was the snapped off fitting in one of the flexi lines that goes between the chassis and the body under the ABS modulator in the nearside wheelarch. Drilling out for an extractor wouldn't have been difficult if the stub of copper line hadn't broken loose and started to spin inside the fitting, stopping the drill bit from cutting.
In the end I managed to cheese it out but couldn't use an extractor so drilled out to 9mm so I could clean what was left of the threads out and attach to my new line. Turns out you can never find a M10 x 1.0 tap when you need one, but in a pinch i did find a tapered UNF tap that was really close and did the job ok. I'll keep an eye on that one, I'll probably end up replacing both flexible hoses in the near future as they're not too expensive.
The brakes bled up well once I'd remembered to go and buy some dot 4, but the clutch was an utter barsteward. Through a combination of bleeding at the slave cylinder and cracking the unions on the master cylinder and the fitting where the clutch pressure switch lives, we got it to a point where it's usable but it's all down at the bottom of the pedal travel.
The wisdom floating around the forums seems to be to do your best then wedge the pedal all the way down and leave it overnight so I've done that, we'll see.
Putting the cooling system and the wiring back together went mostly ok with only minor cursing, turns out (would you believe) that some previous owner fitted the wrong battery, it's supposed to fit the other way, with the terminals towards the cab, and the terminals need to be on the opposite sides for the wires to reach properly.
You can see that the lug on the negative battery cable isn't anywhere near the grounding point on the inner wing. Long time viewers may recall that previously to this it had a length of maybe 2.5mm2 wire wrapped round it a few times and covered in electrical tape that was wedged behind one of the battery box bolts. No wonder the lights weren't up to much, that's the single ground for everything from the lights to the electric windows to the radio.
My temporary solution, on a Sunday and in the absence of any large cable or fittings, was to cut a strip of thin stainless sheet, slide shrink wrap tube over it, and bend and drill it to bridge the gap between the lug on the battery cable and the body grounding rail behind the ECU tray.
I'll make up a proper jumper wire when I can get hold of some terminals and cable, and ditch it entirely when the battery dies and I can get hold of the appropriate one. Interestingly, that also explains why one of the battery tie-down posts had been removed, as the battery is larger than it should be.
...farmers...
Anyway, some more futzing about tomorrow evening, and it's insured from midnight tonight
Should probably do something about the big hole between the seats where the gearlevers are.
The carpets won't be going back for a while I suspect, and I will be requiring access to put in a linkage for the CDL sooni i have a cunning plan for that, so most of the interior might stay in the boot for a while.
The MOT is due at the end of March so no rest for the wicked just yet, there's some holes in the body that need evicting, tie rod ends, the list goes on.
But I've got my Disco back
