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Post by valhalla on Aug 2, 2023 22:00:44 GMT 1
Got the powertrain back into the chassis this morning;
I realised why my notes on the transmission crossmember said "Cut three-of-four fixings back to within 2threads exposure" when I fitted this a few weeks ago; the clearance to the adjacent LH transmission mount is only a few millimtres, and you would miss this point from the driver's seat of the digger.....
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Post by valhalla on Aug 7, 2023 0:14:28 GMT 1
I have done a bit more to this, later in the week, but progress has slowed quite a bit; the "big event of the year" (we don't get out much on this Isle.......) is the main drop of chopped and split logs. The great pile of it, which is our fuel for the Winter months, arrived Wednesday lunchtime. As anyone who has live in deep-rural would know, the race is on to get the supply of wood away whilst it is still clean and dry. Despite having to modify the woodshed floor this year, before anything could even think about going away in there, about 4/5'ths of it is now stored safely, and the rest will not come to much harm under the old tarp that covers it all.
The devil has been in the detail with the Defender; very little to show for my efforts, but important all the same. Having got the powertrain fitted to the chassis mid-week (just as the wood arrived), it was clear that the fuel supply pipe-run was also going to have to be modified at the rear of the chassis; it just didn't look right near where it passes under the bulkhead, and I needed to shuffle it all forward about 4" - which meant re-clipping and re-binding with protective-wrap in 3 places.
Whilst there was unimpeded access to the front of the engine, it would have been silly not to change the timing-belt and pulleys. I last did this in 2014, so it's about time (the 300Tdi is good for 10years if you fit it all properly, and keep an eye on the debris inside the timing-case) and that proved to be the case once I had accessed the old belt - a fair bit of dry debris near the crank-pulley, but otherwise oil-free and clean. I like to take my time over the tensioning and initial timing of a new belt on a 300Tdi, so having good access made this a very quick job comparatively. I always time the FIE pump to be slightly advanced - just enough to drag the timing-pin ever so slightly on the advanced edge. This means it all stays optimal as the belt runs-in nicely, but of-course you also have to make sure that the tensioning is spot-on at this stage - triple-tensioned with about 10-turns of the engine, hence it is good to have already plumbed the low-pressure fuel system before you do this, otherwise the remaining fuel in the HP pump and filter will just go all over the floor.....
Once the timng-belt is all out of the way, then the PAS pipework can be fitted and optimised; it's all very tight around the 'box on the one (solid) line, so lots of adjustments, lots of spiral-wrap, and a fair bit of swearing about the idiot that designed all of this. As I had cleaned and cold-galvanized the pipes in advance of this work, I was less-than-thrilled to be fiddling around too much with the clipping. I just need to sort-out a poor bit of design on the nearside of the chassis, then the PAS system is complete !
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Post by valhalla on Aug 7, 2023 23:36:42 GMT 1
PAS pipework now all 100% - I made a "special" P-clip to allow the pipes to be clipped on the same fixing, yet be able to pass over one another. Then I found the proper P-clip in the box this evening.... Still, my clip is far nicer, and ought to last the vehicle out, as it's rubber-lined.
Checked the main lubrication system over (excellent still at 141k miles) and fitted new oil and filter at this stage. It means I cannot turn the engine over, as the oil-cooler lines are not plumbed to anywhere (yet), but it saves having the engine sitting dry inside for a few more months - there is a small chance the HobournEaton crank-pump can embolise over time if the pick-up tube is dry.
Fitted the main battery cables (re-tinned the main earth-points) and clipped it all back to the chassis, so it's now much better than before. I also went around the other earths and cleaned the ring-terminals before fitting to the various bits. I might (yet) uprate the earth to the starter, but at this stage I'm happy.
The exhaust front section is now fitted, and that means the whole exhaust has been aligned. I might have over-done the line of the rear section - clearing the rear crossmember with the exit-pipe - but I have given myself the best chance of working around the system when I come to refit the rear body-tub and the bracketry. If you fit the rear pipe too tight under the LH corner of the crossmember, you struggle above it to get the bolts in for the rear (seatbelt) support tubes.
The whole rig is on the rear ramps tonight, ready for the two propshafts and the induction pipework, otherwise I hope to get the rear body-tub onto the 2-post ramps by tomorrow night. I have 2x customer-cars to inspect tomorrow beforehand, so I'm hoping nothing comes out of that, as there's no way I'm delaying this next stage of the resto.
I have come to a decision over the paintwork, and it's a bit of a surprise - even to me. I'm changing the colour. Not by a huge amount, but essentially I'm going for a flat colour (anyway) and it's going to be BRIGHT. Anyone who has the same mental-sickness as myself will remember the bright, mid blue of the BL cars in the late-70's, MG Midgets, Marinas, Allegros, etc. etc. It was also used as one of the "new, bright" colours for the Stage_1 V8 Series Landrovers of the early-80's. Yes, we (the royal we) are going Pageant Blue. To really go doolally, I'm going to do it all in Synthetic Enamel, but there's method in my madness. This paint needs to cover Mrs. V's project as well (it's so close to "Metropolitan Bolton College Blue" that it makes no difference) and also I need to be able to do various stages of the painting with different application-techniques; most of the application will be by spray-gun, but a fair bit will be easier and better by brush-application. Further to this, I think the paint and its solvents will be less-aggressive on any existing paintwork, as I do not intend to bare-metal absolutely everything. I don't have the time, for a start, but also, most of the original paint is still pretty-well applied and stuck to the Birmabright, so it would be foolish to remove that for fun.
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Post by valhalla on Aug 11, 2023 23:21:34 GMT 1
Didn't quite get as far as I wanted this week, but "life" got in the way.
The main goal was to get the customer-car inspections out of the way by end-of-play Tuesday, and that happened on-target. This meant I could get the rear body-tub into the workshop whilst I still had a spare pair of hands on Tuesday evening, and by Wednesday morning, it was on the 2-post ramp-arms and jigged square, with datum-measures across all the critical gaps.
This was because the first job was to hack all the rot in the alloy at the front of the body - the upstand and heelboard behind the centre-passenger-floor. Once this was out, and I had also removed the first crossmember just behind this area, I was able to clean the underside of the floor in stages, finally with solvents & rag, to achieve a decent level of cleanliness. To this, I have now rebuilt the alloy upstand and two fillets either side of it;
The measurements were pretty important, because the repair section implied that this box-section was square, whereas my Defender was most definitely trapezoidal ! I might regret making the repairs so that I reproduce a factory fault, but I don't have enough data around me to work-out whether this is by-design or just a mistake. Anyway, I got the fillets to sit exactly as they would have been at the factory on my particular Defender;
The idea right now is to do a test-patch of paint on both bare and painted underside, and if it all sticks, do everything from the first crossmember forwards in this particular paint. I had a devil's own job to remove some "underseal" from the forward edge of the offside wheelbox, and it turns-out that this was a test-patch of "Emergency Roof Paint" (Flexible Acrylic paint with fibres) I did back in 2015 or thereabouts. It had stuck and protected the underside very, very well, so it took a lot of chipping with a knife-scraper tool to remove it this week. The paint underneath is still like new, and that had deteriorated immediately next to my masked-off patch that I did at the time. I don't know how well it will do on broken paint, or even bare-alloy (albeit I intend to etch the alloy with acid to remove the brightness from the surface first of all), so I'm going to do a trial first.
I need to get the paint onto the underside of the tub before I fit the crossmember, as I need to isolate the galvanized steel from the alloy as effectively as I can. The electrolytic bridge is still via the aluminium rivets, so I'm thinking about my options there as well. Only once I have got the front of the tub fully assembled, can I then remove all the other crossmembers, clean the floor, and finish the underside off. Otherwise I'm likely to end-up with a folded-in-half tub on the ramps. Easy. In theory.
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Post by rhyds on Aug 12, 2023 7:21:01 GMT 1
I dimly recall that Ferguson "Grey Fergie" tractors use some kind of barrier fluid/grease between the alloy parts and the steel ones to reduce electrolytic corrosion. Is it worth seeing if something similar will help here?
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Post by valhalla on Aug 21, 2023 22:43:04 GMT 1
I'm still scraping the barnacles off the bottom of the rear body-tub, right now. Each stage has to be done quite carefully - if I go too far in one go, i.e. remove too many floor crossmembers at one time, the rigidity drops badly in the structure. I have already had to tie-strap across the front of the tub to stop it splaying-out on the front support-feet to the ramp arms - I was seeing the tub 30mm out of true at one point.
I committed myself to the paint-purchase this evening. Lots of tea had to be consumed after that.....just under 1k for the paint/sundries/delivery/VAT. I had better make it stick !! What I'm NOT DOING is planning on feeding-in other cars into the workshop anywhere near the periods where the paint is going onto the metal, nor when it is curing. Not at the price I have just paid, unless the customers want to underwrite the paint-damage........
The flexible acrylic roof paint looks to be an inspired choice - very easy to apply, very good at bridging seams, and seems to be sticking exceptionally well. The downside is the fumes from the paint, both during and after application for a couple of days (this is an exterior paint, so I cannot gripe....) and the mess when you find a soft bit with your elbow the following day..... I'm going to do a test ASAP with the enamel high-build primer, when it comes, to see how good the compatibility is with this acrylic. Once the roof-paint is dry, it ought to be very inert. We will see.
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Post by valhalla on Aug 22, 2023 20:02:51 GMT 1
This is approximately where I am right now;
The crossmembers are a good fit, but the body isn't....... What is happening is that I'm dry-fitting the new, heavy-duty and galvanized crossmembers, all seems OK, then I paint both body-tub and the underneath of the crossmembers to give a double-thickness film of the acrylic roof paint. After it has all cured for 24hours, the crossmember is offered-up, and it is at that point I find the rivet holes don't line-up anymore! The new parts are excellent, but the body-tub was thrown together by "Bob" on the production-line on a Friday afternoon, so a jig was very "optional" at that stage....
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Post by rhyds on Aug 22, 2023 21:12:13 GMT 1
This is approximately where I am right now; The crossmembers are a good fit, but the body isn't....... What is happening is that I'm dry-fitting the new, heavy-duty and galvanized crossmembers, all seems OK, then I paint both body-tub and the underneath of the crossmembers to give a double-thickness film of the acrylic roof paint. After it has all cured for 24hours, the crossmember is offered-up, and it is at that point I find the rivet holes don't line-up anymore! The new parts are excellent, but the body-tub was thrown together by "Bob" on the production-line on a Friday afternoon, so a jig was very "optional" at that stage.... "She'll be reeet!" engineering!
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Post by valhalla on Aug 29, 2023 22:28:42 GMT 1
A quick update : The underfloor repairs were all finished for the weekend, including fitting new alloy H/D stays for the rear wings, and all the rubber packers for the floor-supports (to chassis brackets). I had to re-use a couple of rubber pads, as I only ordered 8 out of the 10 total, and even though I thought I was being extravagant at the time, it was struggle to find 2x good ones in the originals;
The huge job ahead of me is to deal with the outside (cosmetic) tub surfaces, and the interior. A start has been made on removal all the plastic decals and emblems from the paintwork, no small task as it turned-out;
Fortunately, the hot air gun was able to just soften the plastics to a "Goldilocks" magic temperature that was sufficient to soften the glues, without making the plastic too soft. It's the glues all over the bodywork, inside and out, that are posing the biggest challenge to bodywork preparation - solvent wiping commences tomorrow.
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Post by valhalla on Sept 20, 2023 22:24:26 GMT 1
Well, this is coming way too late into the Autumn......"foreign jobs" have meant that this restoration has taken a back-seat for a few weeks.
To clear the front ramps, the rear body-tub was propped onto the rolling chassis with a pallet screwed to it. This has meant that I could not only roll the whole lot onto the rear ramps, but also the tub is high enough to clear the chassis mounting brackets and provide room to sand and treat the external bodywork. The biggest part of this has been to acid-etch the alloy body where it is exposed - I actually brushed the lot with acid - and wash it down with solvents just prior to each bit being painted.
The weather has turned much colder this week, and I'm seeing the immediate result in the workshop; everything is taking longer to dry/flash-off.
Anyway, the decision was made to prepare the load-deck for painting with my beloved roof-paint, and to see how fast it will cure to the point I can begin to overspray it with etch primer on adjacent panels. Time will tell;
The floor looks much better with a lick of this paint, and by doing the hard-wearing surfaces and all the usual leak-paths with (effectively) a seam-sealant, it should be a whole lot more durable than when it left the factory. I'm not too bothered if this will not overpaint;
The areas painted with roof-paint will likely be covered in fitted rubber matting, so if I cannot get a decent overlap of colour-coat, it isn't going to be obvious. The main thing is that it will not matter if the interior of the tub gets wet (as-per the factory design of almost every joint, aperture, and grommet-hole....) and then traps moisture under the rubber matting. I have lapped the paint about 15mm up the sides of the rear load-deck wheelboxes, and done all the sloping panelwork that rots under the centre-seats at the front of the tub.
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Post by valhalla on Sept 21, 2023 17:08:30 GMT 1
One of the worst areas for corrosion and leaks on the rear tub is just under the rear (tailgate) door aperture. It seems that the complications, with so many sections coming-together in one place, just mean it's all going to go wrong. This has plagued Series and Defender restorers for years : Do you make it "tidy" and know that it's going to leak and corrode your lovely resto from the moment you drive it in the rain, or do you go the whole-hog, and seal it all up?
I went the latter route, but I will be sad if I cannot achieve some sort of colour-matching to the final cosmetic coats on this area;
This is a very visible area of a Defender; almost everyone who follows it in a car is going to be staring at it ! However, I will sleep better at nights knowing that water will not be wicking up through all the panel-joints.
One other "big problem" area is the joint behind the rear quarter trims (nominally galvanized on a Series, painted zinc-steel on a Defender, painted galvanized heavy-duty steel on my resto........) where it is assumed that water cannot pass. Wrong! Water can travel anywhere on a Defender, and these joints are often the cause of puddles in the rear tubs of all Defenders and Series Landrovers - usually up on the wheelboxes and assumed (incorrectly) to be leaking lamp gaskets. So in my case, as the new galv'd trms are going to be just a bit wider anyway, I have seam-sealed (i.e. painted my beloved roof sealant all over the joint) right into the gaps, top-to-bottom. I just hope the acrylic paint over-coats with the synthetic enamel, otherwise there really will be tears before bedtime.....
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Post by valhalla on May 3, 2024 22:32:49 GMT 1
I finally got a chance to get back onto this today - seriously !
I rolled the whole lot into the front part of the workshop, threw the doors wide open for the sunshine, and began re-prepping for the etch-prime spraying (probably tomorrow).
One conundrum has been how to improve on LR's assembly of the steel cappings onto the alloy body-tub. Procedure is going to be;
1) Etch-prime the body-tub, where needed, and the (galvanized) six capping pieces separately (they have been treated with mordaunt solution to their exterior and visible interior fcaes, then washed in water)
2) Grey-prime (by spraying) everything in its entirety 3) Let it harden as long as possible (depends how long the sunshine lasts here, could be a few minutes.....) 4) Apply self-adhesive closed-cell foam strip along the top of the body-tub, then bring the cappings down onto that - there's enough room in the vertical direction 5) Re-etch-prime where all the aluminium rivet-heads are now used/visible 6) Re-grey-prime over the top of the cappings to blend it all in, ready for the undercoat
I have found a (slight) downside to the grey emergency roof paint. Yes, it hardens nicely over the Winter and several months. But....it goes slightly soft and sticky again (under pressure of elbows, don't ask how I know this......) in the Summer. So I'm going to have to rely on a good skin of grey primer to isolate this problem. We will see.
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Post by valhalla on May 4, 2024 22:52:59 GMT 1
And lo, as expected.....the grey emergency roof paint is proving to be a "mixed blessing".
I have observed today what happens when a high pressure spray of etch-primer and air is fanned over such a previously painted surface; it goes wrong, big-time.
If you wanted to create a nice flecked surface, then this is a good way.... : The solvents in the etch-primer sufficiently soften the emergency roof paint (Acrylic) and the fan of high-pressure air lifts the glass fibres out and stands them up. Fortunately, none of this will be visible under the carpet/matting, so as long as I can get a dry surface, all will still be OK.
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Post by valhalla on May 5, 2024 21:33:50 GMT 1
Rear tub is now assembled with the etched & primed cappings. I took a photo, below, of the lower cappings already pop-rivetted into place, and particularly the closed-cell self-adhesive foam-strip over the top of the tub. The foam was almost too good a thing; I had to squeeze it down a bit to line the holes back up again (already checked & modified during dry-fitting), but I think it will make a huge difference to the draughts through the rear body.
I have now re-etch-primed the cappings and alloy rivets, and hopefully tomorrow I should be able to get the last main primer-coats on. At this stage, messy as it is, I'm going to spray the lot, as the finish out of the gravity-cup gun is pretty good; I had to do a minimum of rubbing-back this morning, and that was only because the initial etch-prime coat was very rough - the gun was not happy with less than 20% thinning of the paint, whereas today I had nearly 35% thinners, and turned the delivery down alongside the fan, which was miles better.
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