work begins

Here is the start of the work.

The landy is home and into the garage.

I took the head off the engine, but couldn't really see much - there was a tiny amount of movement in the pistons visible when the crank was turned - but the rearmost piston was well stuck in the bore.

I soaked it with diesel for weeks, tapped the pistons with a piece of wood and a rubber mallet, no movement whatsoever. Eventually I found the world's largest shifting spanner which went on to the crank nut at the front of the engine and with the help of a stainless steel tube over the end of the shifter (a yabby pump believe it or not) got the engine to turn. Once freed, the pistons go up and down just fine, the bottom end of the engine seems to be intact and working.

I automatically assumed it was a dud exhaust valve and big overheat that led to the engine grabbing a piston but a friend who is a mechanic looked at it and thought that maybe a head gasket leak / failure might have been the problem, that I should have a real good look at the bores for pinhole corrosion and hope that there isn't any so that sleeving the bores won't be needed.

So from here I've more or less decided to do an overhaul rather than a restoration - once she's running and registered I'll be going camping and shooting; carting firewood in the back; running down to the boat ramp with a dinghy and outboard and other boat stuff so a full scale resto would be impractical - but I do like the idea of having a solid overhaul on the major systems. I'd like to get it driving reliably rather than fix it up so beautifully that it doesn't get used.

The first jobs then will be to pull out and overhaul the engine, gearbox and transfer case. After that brakes, clutch, steering and wiring.

In getting started on separating the gearbox from the engine I had my first difficulty - I assumed that the nuts were all the same size, and the air ratchet socket made a mess of a nut that was smaller the adjacent one I just carefully fitted the socket to.

Eventually I wound up tapping a socket down onto it with a hammer, and easing it off by hand.
After that the engine seemed happy enough to come out, but it's always a filthy job working on the underside of a land rover with mud, gear oil, roadkill and Christ knows what else ground up into that sticky black stuff that coats everything and falls into your eyes.

Using an unconventional hoist apparatus the engine came out, off came the clutch, flywheel and flywheel housing and after a trip to Southern Fasteners in Kirrawee for 9/16th UNF thread bolts, the old Land Rover 2.6 litre 6 cylinder bolted up to the engine stand.

 Now I can start the engine overhaul, with a head recondition , (hopefully including unleaded fuel valve seats)  as well as stripping the block and doing rings and bearings, checking the bore, cleaning, rust prep and painting the block.

At the same time the truck cab and tub will come off so that I can look at the gearbox and get to the chassis.

cheers,
Allen

a new project

A little while ago, I was sitting at home and an email from Bill C came in asking the Land Rover mailing list around the world to look at a short clip and diagnose an engine noise in his Series Land Rover.  I looked at Bill's clip, immediately felt the enormous yawning gap in my life that comes from not having a Series Land Rover, and went to Ebay.

Sure enough, there was a beautiful 1967 Series IIa ute with an original LR 2.6 litre 6 cyl engine, a shed find from somewhere in NSW, in very original, very straight condition but with siezed engine. These engines are known for developing burnt valves if not set a little wider than original specs, and being IOE they sometimes don't get enough maintenance being a bit hard to reach.

There were no other bidders, and I drove up to see Gary from CLR and brought her home.


Over the years I've owned a number of Series Land Rovers, I guess there have been 5 or 6 of them, my favourite was a series IIa ex-mil hardtop 4 cyl, a beautiful landy that we used for camping and shooting trips.

Anyway, this will be an amateur blog about my amateur efforts in getting the old girl going  - it's going to be very part-time and I don't have any mechanical talent so will just slowly work through the jobs and try to record the steps here.

Comments and advice very welcome.

cheers,
Allen