THE PULLDOWN CONTINUES

Hmmm, decisions, decisions.  I've been thinking about whether to remove and replace the badly rusted pieces of the chassis before I send it away for sandblasting and today I made the decision to go ahead and do just that.

Dodgy welding job to be removed.

Bit of galvanized flat plate welded over the top.

Removing spring hanger for clean up and re-use.

I slowly cut back the chassis until I reached solid steel and allow me to internally plate the staggered joints.

And still the cutting back continues.

Ready for the new section.

The chassis still needs cleaning up and finalizing but at least now I can see what really needs doing.

All the waste parts.

REMOVING THE STEERING RELAY

As I mentioned in the previous post, Garry had obtained information from TimNZ's posts on the AULRO forum showing how he removed his steering relay.

Garry located some pieces of 75 x 75 x 6 steel angle and some 12mm x 600mm threaded rod and proceeded to construct a steering relay removal thingy.   Over the last week the offending part has been liberally  treated/doused with CRC and Penetrene.

Stuck good and tight.  Hard to see that it's a separate piece.

 It seems the 2 tonne jack was not capable of doing the job.  He could hire a 4 tonne jack from Kennards Hire or buy one at Supercheap Auto on sale for $34.00.  No prizes for guessing we now own a 4 tonne jack

Well and truly clamped and packed.

2 tonne jack and it's not even moving

Time to bring in the 4 tonne jack and start pumping.  Ever so slowly it started to move.  You can just see it starting to rise up in the photo below.

Finally, out it comes and you can see just how dirty and rusty it is. 

To say that Garry is stoked is an understatement.  Our collection of tools and implements is growing and all will come in handy, along with the knowledge gained from the AULRO forum when it's time to strip down "Bev".  

Thanks and credit for the steering relay remover thingy must go to TimNZ.

TIME FOR AN UPDATE

Life's been a bit busy lately and I've been slack on posting updates on Forrest.  Work has still been going on behind the scenes though. 

Garry, with some help from his brother Richard, has continued to strip all the sundry bits from the chassis which is now bare.  The gear box has been comfortably resting on the shed floor while other parts were removed and as you can see, the gear box mounts are totally stuffed.

This rear outrigger is a bit bend and will be replaced.

The front rail of the chassis will be repaired.

Along with the other areas of the chassis that need repairs and dodgy patchwork redone.

All the new pieces created with the CAD drawing program have been fabricated and just need to be welded in place.

With some help from timnz on the AULRO forum Garry was able to get some information for making a Steering Relay Remover thingy out of some old bits of steel he's had laying around for years it seems.  Check out the name on the bit of steel angle.  BHP Co Ltd. 

Will post another photo of the patented thingy in action.

He also treated himself to an early Father's Day/birthday present.  Hmmm, seems the presents are never ending for this birthday year.  Hope I find some good uses for it too, haha.

The chassis pushed outside for another clean.

HAPPY MAIL

Never did I expect to have these in my book collection.  I love books.

And the latest arrival is all about Series III.

Bedtime reading for Garry Treen.

AND THE ENGINE IS REMOVED

Yesterday "Forrest" lost his bulkhead and today his engine.  We now have quite a naked chassis.

Richard and Christopher came over to check on the progress and helped Garry remove the engine.

The gear box will be removed next followed by the front and back axles.  It will then be time to start the repairs on the chassis after it has been sandblasted.

PICK-A-PART II and LAND ROVER IDENTIFICATION

One of the things you discover when you start a Land Rover restoration is that you can always do with more spare parts.  With this in mind, Garry and his brother Richard carried out another raid  took another trip north to our Land Rover source. 

Mobile phones have become one of the handiest gadgets and we used one to take photos of the Landies left behind as there were still a couple of items that Garry was thinking of changing on "Forrest".  It was handy to be able to refer to the photos and help job the memory of exactly what was still available.  By the time he contacted the owner to organize another visit, he'd already sold one of the Landies for $700.00.  Compared to what we have been paying him for parts, we think he got ripped off,  Mind you, he has so many cars and the place is so disorganized and messy, he really needs to be getting rid of stuff.  Anyway, we were still lucky enough to be able to get most of the things we wanted off the ones still left.

On Thursday, Garry continued stripping "Forrest" and removed the dashboard.  He was very pleased to discover there was no hidden rust.  We do have rust issues to deal with, it wouldn't be a Landy if it didn't have some rust, and believe me there are rust issues and then there are really bad rust issues.  Overall, our bulkhead is in pretty good nick.

Bulkhead

With dashboard removed.

Another job associated with Landy restoration is cleaning parts. 

Heater switch - before.

 And after soaking and more cleaning you end up with this.

Heater switch - after.

As you can see, we have a nice little stash of parts in reserve and lots more cleaning ahead of us.

Lately on the AULRO forum we've been reading about a member's search to discover where the serial number was stamped on his vehicle chassis.  There was usually a plate screwed or pop riveted to the bulkhead inside the cab.  If that is missing then the number could be stamped on the r/h spring hanger but just confuse things it could also be on the l/h rear spring hanger.  Then I discovered that UK Home market ones were on the RH front - Australian built ones on the spring hanger at the back of the LH rear spring.  Good to know.  The amount of knowledge in that forum never ceases to amaze me.

We used the Clifton Netherlands website to do some chassis searches when searching for information on year of manufacture for  "Forrest" and "Bev".  http://www.clifton.nl/index.html?calvin.html
We haven't managed to locate "Bev's" chassis stamp as yet but I'm sure it will be revealed once we start stripping her down.  We obtained her chassis number from the identification plate which is badly faded but visible with a bit of photo manipulation on a computer.

The plate below belongs to "Forrest".

And so does this front right hand spring hanger - no signs of any numbers stamped here, or have they been removed during repair.

While we were over at the shed last week continuing the strip down and giving "Forrest" a good wash and degrease, and while Garry was distracted with other things, I decided to check out the rear left hand side spring hanger to see if I could find anything there.  Lo and behold, it was very faint but definitely looked like numbers.  I called Garry over so he could confirm that my eyes weren't deceiving me and after a light scrub and a bit of a wash all was revealed.

PICKING PARTS - A GOOD SCORE

After stripping off some panel work on Saturday we decided to give "Forrest" a good clean so we took over the degreaser and high pressure cleaner.

Here are the before and after shots.

Pretty black and greasy.

What a difference a good wash makes.

As my job description is "acquirer of parts" I've been searching online for some of the items on our list.  Now that we know a little more about "Forrest" and what we want to achieve we have created a shopping list.  When searching for specific parts without an obvious part number it's important to get the terminology correct.   For example, we know we are missing some of the heater components but we didn't know the correct name for them.  Our "go to" at the moment is the Australian Land Rover Owners Forum which is a Godsend. 

We found a front bumper with a few small dents that is better than what we have now, which is no bumper at all.  A search online revealed an add on Gumtree for Series Land Rovers in Wanneroo that may have  available parts.  Even though we were not really sure what we would find, we definitely spotted a suitable front bumper and it was worth the 45 minute one way drive up there just to get the bumper and to also check out the vehicles in his yard.  As far as we're concerned, we feel like we struck gold.

A new one would have cost us $275 - grinning.

Our box of Gold $150.00 - are we easily pleased?

Don't get distracted by the crappy duct/hose on the heater box, it just came along for the ride.

Garry managed to pull this out of the heater matrix and attached our garden hose to it on trickle to find that the water flows through beautifully so there is hope for the heater matrix yet.