OH NO, WHAT HAVE WE DONE!

I want to keep her old charm as it's what attracted me to her in the first place.  I would like to see her restored and running but I don't want to take away that aged patina and uniqueness that tells her story just by looking at her. I love the faded panel paint, I love the surface rust and the weathered timber planks on her tray. Basically, I want the chassis and engine restored but I want the panel work and tray to still look the same.

We couldn't reach an agreement on just how far to go with "Bev" the farm girl so I found Garry another Landy to restore to his heart's content.

This one was a lot closer to home, a Series 3 88" SWB with a 186 Holden motor. ("Bev" has her original motor)  Chassis no 90302164A  which I've searched on Clifton.nl

Needs a bit of a clean and goodness knows what else!

Cammo look carpet glued to interior.

We've both been reading TimNZ's thread on this forum (MY 88" Series 3) and are so impressed by his posts and his methodical approach to restoring the Series 3 inherited from his grandfather. Not to mention the serious workshop envy after seeing all the fantastic photos. We can't emulate Tim's workshop and we realized that the space we have available to us is in serious need of reorganization.

Garry has been in the building game for 41 years, starting as an apprentice carpenter with his dad who was also a carpenter builder. Our son is also a chippy but showing no interest in a builder's ticket. We've had our builder's yard for 18 yrs and in that time have managed to amass all sorts of things. We're tail lend baby boomers, we don't throw good stuff away!

Pano shot of the mess. 

All that is about to change and today we spent about 4 hours sorting, tidying and most importantly throwing things out. There is a good sized area in which to work but it just needs re-organizing. The shed itself is 9 x 6 mtrs but some of that is given over to timber, tools and fittings storage which it's not practical at this stage to discard as we are still a trading business with plant and equipment to store. There is also an under-cover area about 1500 wide at the back of the shed which runs the full length and will be ideal for storing any body panels, tyres and sundry parts etc. Once we finished at the yard, we took a full trailer load over for disposal. There is still a lot more work to do and as always the dogs are in supervisory mode.

Looking better

Temporary work bench.

 1 Full trailer

The Series 3 has been housed in a back yard shed for the last 8yrs and was purchase for a gentleman by his daughter, a retirement project if you will. Problem is he's 72 and hasn't yet retired yet so hasn't had time to work on it. He has a rego paper that states it was last registered in 2006. We don't know much more other than it has a 186 Holden motor and looks like it has been used for camping.

We will be going over to pick it up on Tuesday so will be able to take more photos in better light, the shed being too dark to take photos of the engine.

As he's been living in the suburb of Forrestfield for the last 8 years and is green we've christened him Forrest.

HOUSE TREEN of PARKWOOD - The Landy is coming!

Introducing the Hounds of House Treen (a nod to Game of Thrones for those of you who are not fans of the show.)

Our two originals are: 

Dusty the Red Cloud Kelpie aka "Big Girl" who is 11. Pretty easy going, scared of thunder and loud noises, likes to bark.

I'm cool.

Just don't piss me off.

Ned the Black and Tan Kelpie aka "Stinky" is 8.

A real farm dog.

All round cutie.

And TV addict. 

Jamie  the Poodle Cross aka "J'amie" commonly referred to as Little White Dog (so he doesn't know we're talking about him - he's too intuitive for his own good) is about 7, came from the pound and was inherited by us after my mum passed away.

Jamie of House Treen - The Landy is coming.

Sand flag and hi viz? Yes you little sh*t and iPhone too.  I will find you where ever you run.

Food thief too. 

Then there are the visitors

Molly aka "Mon Mon" the Rhodesian Ridgeback who seems to sleep a lot, when she gets settled.

And last but not least "Archie" the Bichon/Maltese/Silky?  Yeah, yeah, we've all heard the joke about what his mum got up too.

Cuteness faxtor X 2 - don't be fooled, they're bossy little buggers.

PHOTO SPAM - JULY 28

Obviously a fire, perhaps a controlled burn.

The spare door was off a Dyna Truck

Bonus spider on the engine.

Work ute in position for pumping up the tyres.

RECONNOITER MISSION - SERIES 2A LAND ROVER

In early July 2017 after looking through some old photos I came across the shots I had taken of an old Land Rover.  I thought it would be pretty cool to restore it so I decided to convince my husband, Garry, it would be a good project to work on together.  He wasn’t overly keen at first having other commitments on his mind like running our building business.  I worked on him for a week or two and printed off a couple of articles from the online back issues of Land Rover Magazine so he could read about what other people were doing.

"Bev"

I sent a message, with a copy of the photo, to the WA Land Rover Owners Club facebook group to see if they could help with identification.  A quick response told us it was a Series IIA and a few Google searches provided us with a bit more information but we didn't have a chassis or serial number.  We didn't even have a photo of the front end as I was more focused on a photo of the dogs at the time.  I'm sure my priorities will soon change!

After a quick conversation with John the Landy owner, it was to be ours free of charge.  He was happy for it to be gone (hmm, I've heard the same comment before) and said it had been parked up for about 5 years because of the brakes and most importantly it had a motor.  I suspect it may have been parked up a bit longer than that but I’m not going to argue.  John originally got it from a local guy after he bartered it for some drawing work.  John is a drafty.

On the road into the farm.

We’ve just taken a quick trip out to the farm to carry out a recce in order to determine what steps need to be taken to get “Bev” onto a hire trailer.  No point wasting our money hiring a trailer, driving 1 ½ hrs out there only to discover that the wheels don’t turn. 

It was also an opportunity to take the new work ute for a run and after cleaning that off when we got home, we've now realized it's not going to be practical for us to high pressure clean "Bev" at our yard as we initially intended.  We not only need to clean the buildup of mud off "Bev" when we bring her down to Perth but we have to clean up the hire trailer and the ute too.  Granted there wasn't a lot of mud on the ute last time but the gravel dust is still on the road outside our house.

We've managed to organize a more suitable area in which to conduct the cleanup op., so now we need to organize and plan the retrieval. 

For the trip in and out, we now know that if we take the same route in to the farm we have a 14.6 km drive along a not so good gravel road.  Or we can take another route and drive 9.1 kms along a different gravel road that is in better condition but adds a little extra travelling time.

Ready to pump up the tyres. Note the red Falcon hiding behind the Landy.  That's Shirl's Shaggin' Wagn'

As you will hear in the video, it was very windy and bitterly cold when we were pumping up the tyres.  The sky was heavy and ominous with dark clouds threatening rain at any moment.  We'd  just managed to get all the tyres pumped up when the rain hit.  You could see it working it's way across from the west.  Luckily we had taken a thermos and were able to sit on the verandah sipping a hot cup of tea, hoping the rain would soon stop.  The break for a cuppa also gave us a chance for a bit more Googling as we now had a chassis number.

The stamped aluminium plate attached to our body has the code 25323636D.  It's very badly faded and looks to be riveted in place as opposed to the many we have seen that are screwed into place.  We found that by altering the filters you are able to see a little more clearly what was originally printed in the background.  Only just.

Here is a link that we found very helpful.  You can enter your chassis number after you click on the yellow LR vin button on the Left Hand side.
http://www.clifton.nl/

253
Model: LR Series 2A
Body Type: Basic
Wheel Base: 109 inch
Eng: Petrol
Model Years: 1962-71
Destination: Completely Knocked down (CKD) r/h drive (RHD)

23636 = Serial No.

D = Desgin.  3 significant design modifications.  Suffix used from April 1967 till Mar 1968.

A little more eye candy.  Note:  the high lift jack was only used to take the weight off the tyres while we tried to get some air in them as we only had the small compressor. 

We successfully pumped up all 4 tyres and managed to tow "Bev" forward so we know getting her on a trailers will be easy.

A BIT OF NOSTALGIA

A nostalgic post while we are working out the logistics of retrieving "Bev" from the farm. 

I'd never been in a Land Rover until I met Garry.  Garry's dad had bought one for his hobby farm at Bridgetown which is located 258 kms south of Perth in the Blackwood Valley district of Western Australia. Beautiful country with cold winters, rolling hills and tall trees. Not long after I met Garry and under instructions from my future father-in-law, we took a drive with his brother in the Land Rover to pilfer old railway sleepers.

Things were going well until a hail storm suddenly hit.  It was such a heavy shower that were forced to pull over and wait on the side of the track till visibility improved.  I don't need to tell you how noisy it was with all that hail pelting down on the cab roof!  We are obviously easily amused as we had great fun playing with the hail once we had delivered the sleepers and in fact there was still enough laying around the next morning to have a snow fight.  (We don't generally have snow in Western Australia except on the rare occasion at Bluff Knoll and that's about 430 kms from Perth.  Even at that distance people still travel there to take a look).  You can see dad's old Series 2 Land Rover in the background of the photos below.

Richard in the puppy compound

  

Dad's Land Rover and our 1982 Commodore (circa 1985)

Not long after the farm was purchased at Bridgetown, a Land Rover was sourced which gave dad some good years of service.  Because of the Holden motor conversion, which may or may not have been done correctly, you couldn't drive it in high gear with out looping a bit of jelly rubber over the gear stick to lock it in place.  It didn't get up to high gear much on the farm anyway, so after the initial drive down from Perth it wasn't really a problem.

Land Rover towing State Energy Commission vehicle who got bogged when working on power supply to the property

Unfortunately, dad became a little bit too relaxed about the dodgy brakes and despite being warned he failed to take any action.  Anyone who visits Bridgetown will know how steep some of the properties can be and Treenvale farm is pretty steep.  Let me tell you, it's hard work walking from the dam to house along the driveways let alone from the dam to the house on the direct line up the hill.

Treenvale circa 1985/6

Dad, with mum along for the ride, had taken the Land Rover out onto the hill, just below where the house sits, to check for bracken fern, blackberry and thistle growth all considered noxious weeds here in WA and it's every farmer's responsibility to keep their weeds under control.  This property had been covered in the stuff when purchased a few years earlier and had been quite a job to clear (with the aid of a flame thrower of course) and so dad was very keen to keep on top of any new pop ups. The next job on the list was to check out the dam

"Come on hop in, we're going down to the dam." said dad.  "Nope" said mum "I'm not getting in that thing anymore, I'm walking." And so she proceeded to walk down the hill.  Not long after she hears almighty banging and clanging and turns to see the Land Rover rolling over sideways and coming down the hill. 

From dad's account of the story, "The breaks failed.", and in order stop he had turned into the side of the hill which then gave enough momentum for the Land Rover to start rolling over side ways.  In all it rolled about 8 or 9 times with dad holding tightly onto the steering wheel while all the objects inside the cab, including the other seats, catapulted around and bashed into him as the Land Rover rolled over and over.  It was only one of the doors flying open that eventually stopped the Land Rover which came to rest on it's side.  Mum being too afraid initially to approach the wreck and quickly working out her options of getting help suddenly heard dad cry out so knew he was at least still alive but pinned under the Land Rover.  After checking on him, she went down and around the hill to the neighbouring property situated in the valley behind.  The better and faster option that trying to get back to their house on top of the hill.

Final resting place

Vera and Dad  who looks like Wal from Footrot Flats

Dad in recovery mode, photo above, suffered with burns to his leg from battery acid that was dripping on him as he waited for the ambulance and fire brigade to arrive and free him from the wreck.  As to be expected, he was very bruised and battered but managed to find humour in the fact he had a bruise on his chest which was the exact imprint of a pocket knife which he had placed in his shirt pocket that morning. 

I can't remember how long the Land Rover sat out in the paddock but it was eventually spotted by some eagle eyed Land Rover enthusiast driving past the property who decided to knock on the door and ask if he could buy it.  Dad replied he could just take it as he would be happy to see it gone. 

The story dad tells is that "The guy came back and flipped it the right way up, installed a battery and drove it right out of there!"