I am man! Defender! Provider! Mechanic!

This was our 1986 ex-RAF 90, around 275,000 miles and in superb condition. Had to sell it as it was sitting outside doing nothing and costing money and we needed cash for a new boiler, sold it to a bloke from Wales who had zero mechanical sympathy, was a rubbish driver and said he just wanted something to run into the ground. *sob*

That’s camaraderie unreliability you dont get with a Ford Mondeo

You bought one because you’ve run out of toys.
Be honest. 😀

There are loads of reliable, cheap 4 by 4’s out there. If’d you’d wanted one, you’d have bought one.

They’re a way of connecting with our past 🙂
You can pretend you’re Livingstone whilst listening to recordings of Merlins and watching The Dambusters on your iPhone whilst waiting yet again for the AA. 😀

You bought one because you’ve run out of toys.

pfftf, working vehicle I’ll have you know! 😉

Im going to need a bigger trailer though. This is 1/18th of what I need to get back from the coppice. And arguably I ought to do it in even more trips as the trailer was looking v unhappy with that amount on it 😯

Yes dear, of course. 🙂

Honestly, try model trains, or classic Meccano.
All the patriotic feelings of home brewed heavy engineering without the repair bills and endless disappointment.

Don’t ask me how I know……

Still want a Morgan though. 😀

One word: Woodworm 😉

You really shouldn’t have sold your full length roof rack. Just think how much extra you could carry 😉 (75kg!!)

Im going to need a bigger trailer though

Yep. Trailer smaller than the vehicle itself is a macho fail 😀

I can put 75Kg on the smaller one too, it’s the roof that’s the limiting thing, not the rack 😛

Being that you have a nice land rover it would be a shame not to have a nice sankey trailer to go with it 🙂

Not allowed to spend any more on it like posh trailers for a while until I earn some pennies first, according to my accountant*

It’s had a bit of an attitude change since I got it.
Sold the wheels to a young grommet who wanted to go rock hopping – they paid for the 4 brand new tyres (more 80/20 road/off road style) I put onto some rims given to me that I refurb’d. Great having a drinking buddy with a tyre fitting machine in his garage, only cost a few pints…

Done so far:

Refurb’d light bar and fitted new work lamps
Oil change
Oil Filter
Fuel Filter Air Filter
Transfer box oil change
Gearbox oil change
Axle oil change
2 check straps
1 check strap slider
4 doors re-hung on new hinges (except for the bulkhead ones)
New door rubbers
Tidied up some unorthodox electrics
New tow hitch drop plate and towing electrics
and cut out rear seat box… 😯

got a sheet metal man folding up some aluminium for me to replace it…

Big job in a few weeks Im going to start on is welding repair plates to the bulkhead tops, or, if really bad, fitting a replacement bulkhead. That’s going to be 2 weeks work…

Much more fun than meccano.

* Never marry an accountant 🙁

Sankey trailers are great especially keeping a nato hitch as you don’t get grounded (by the drop plate hitch) on stumps etc (go on go on go on )and cross compatable wheels/tyres need I say more.

globalti – Member
This was our 1986 ex-RAF 90, around 275,000 miles and in superb condition. Had to sell it as it was sitting outside doing nothing and costing money and we needed cash for a new boiler, sold it to a bloke from Wales who had zero mechanical sympathy, was a rubbish driver and said he just wanted something to run into the ground. *sob*

Nooooooooo! That was a beautiful car. See those logs piled up? I would have picked one of those up and snuck up behind him, had he said that to me! Criminal waste, is what it is…
(Sits weeping quietly…)

looks a good old bus there

always a list of jobs to do

I’ve always wanted one – having owned most other 4×4’s over the last 15 years

and have booked into go have a drive in a new one tomorrow – looking at a 110 utility, seems multi multi purpose

Stoner you are probably already aware you can get bulkhead repair sections that include the door hinge holes. I had to replace those on my old IIA. It’s a straight forward enough job. Be careful when you are using an angle grinder anywhere near windscreen or window glass. If you don’t protect it red hot metal fragments embed themselves into the surface to create a sand paper like finish.

Is the rear floor section made from steel? Im assuming it must be rusty otherwise why would you cut it out?

I came very close to buying an ex utility 110 ( Yorkshire Water) complete with hydraulic winch and hydraulic connectors for power tools. It was a low mileage genuinely looked after truck, one lousy bid more and it could have been mine. 🙁

I just got some bulkhead corner panels from YRM Landrover which have all the holes pre cut and seem a good fit when offered up, I’ll let you know how they go on. £15 a pair.

Hey mcm, Riksbar,

yep, my plan is to go for those weld panels, but I replaced the door rubbero n one side this week and frankly it dont look good from the backside of the bulkhead a pillar. I’ll know more when I strip it.

Rather than try and weld the panels in around everything else, I shall strip the lot first, roof lining, roof, windscreen, vents, doors, wings, bonnet, dash, all off. Then if I think the bulkhead is too rotten, It’s only another few days work to do the looms/brake servo/engine bay gubbins etc and replace the bulkhead with a galv refurb. I reckon that it’s worth it to go with the galv chassis and the 200tdi.

EDIT: The floor plate is sound (ally) but the seat box is shot – sits right in front of the rear wheel shooting gallery. Having a replacement box folded for me. The floor member (original mild steel 1988 fintage) was rotten away, so am having an ally member made as well. Then rivet in with a cover plate.

Our 90 cost us £7000 after a “civilian” rebuild from the original MOD soft-top. During the 10 years that it was in our ownership we spent another £7000 on spares, repairs, servicing and upgrades. Some of the improvements I did to it were: fitting twin Defender washer nozzles in place of the singles (easy mod), fitting PAS off a Defender, fitting a spring-assisted clutch pedal off a Defender, fitting a Q type transfer box off a drowned water board Defender, fitting intermittent wipe with a Defender stalk, all kinds of other small mods and improvements – radio cassette, plastic Lucas headlights, rear work light, full interior trim with Trakkers seats, headlining, fully soundproofed transmission tunnel and bulkhead… it really was quite a civilised car to drive, Mrs Gti who is petite could handle it easily. The biggest problem was the fuel consumption at 26 mpg; when she bought a 1.4 diesel Citroen C1 for commuting the poor old 90 began to look a bit expensive. We had some great days out green-laning and pay ‘n drive quarry days, before the place was sanitised I used to drive it around Lee Quarry – scared myself to death there a couple of times. It was great for night riding because you could take off the front wheel and chuck the filthy bike in the back with all the sopping wet kit and not worry.

Happy days.

Vehicle envy 👿

It’s very Ant Hill mob style, does it go any faster ?

accelerates better, lighter steering, and I can get full lock with out the guddunkguddunkguddunkah….

The pictures should be labelled NSFW.

I won’t get anything done now.

These thread are dangerous, I’ve started looking at pre-73 (zero VED) V8’s… lovely if tad bashed pickup body on a RR chassis last week (no doubt a complete mess). Pity I have no space or mechanical ability & have been in enough LR’s to know there just horrible… Hmmmm

well, I seem to have succumed – got a new 110 xs utility turning up in a week or 2!

hope its a good un and not a friday afternoon job

Whilst all my mates were getting interested in Girls and spending their money in pubs, the object of my affection lay elsewhere:

(still miss the old battle bus, but scary to think i built that 20 years ago now……….)

Since you’re enjoying the LR pics so much, here’s the album I made up when we sold the 90. This is a standard ex-MOD 90 with a 2.5 naturally-aspirated diesel, about 63 bhp if I recall so slow but steady and good for hundreds of thousands of miles as long as you keep on top of the oil changes. Quite shortly before we sold it Mrs Gti got rear-ended by a Freelander; the Freelander collapsed and our 90 needed a new back door because the spare wheel carrier got pushed forward a bit.

There aren’t many of these coming out of the MOD in decent nick now, most have been in Afghanistan or Iraq and are wrecked, any good ones get snapped up at auction.

Here: http://s36.photobucket.com/user/C957/slideshow/90%20For%20Sale

Maxtorque, is that a 100 inch V8? Nice!

Thought I’d roll these out for extra Landy-jealousy points…

(We don’t actually drive it up ski runs with clients on board… that was just a bit of evening entertainment…)

Riksbar
Maxtorque, is that a 100 inch V8? Nice!

It is indeed. Rangie chassis with a 90 rear cross member nailed on, a bit of a spring lift, ex Camel Trophy defender bulkhead (came complete with a couple of kg of, i think, Borneo mud inside it!) and a mix and match of 90/SIII parts (like the windscreen, in the early 1990’s defender screens were mega money) JE 4.2 EFi V8 (with full MIL spec waterproofing kit, 35×12.50 MT’s, ARB cross axle airlockers in both ends, and for when all that wasn’t enough, a triple-battery re-wound 8274 on the front bumper 😉

Here’s some more gratuitous mud plugging:

Going UP:

Twisting by (in) the pool:

Water is only half was up the ducks?

Happy days 😉

If you want to do this, Kankku in Windermere have a couple of these ex-MOD 90s equipped with Satnav; you can hire them for the day and go on a Lakes safari round all the green lanes.

A few of the same thing:

Like the 100″ hybrid. See an AWDC sticker on there. That’s the club I race with these days.

If we’re doing show and tell I’ll stick a few up.

A battered old Range Rover…

4.2 V8 auto ‘challenge’ 90…

3.5 V8 88″ hybrid, knows as ALF…

Also had more standard 90/110/Discos, but not as much fun as the ‘toys’.

It’s been 5 years now since my last LR ownership (the red 90), think I might have to scratch that itch.

Mark90 great pics. My grandfather drove a ’20s Rolls Royce in the ’50s. I have the numberplate somewhere still. It’s ALF 828

I ran a IIA for a few years, it had three engines a 2 1/4 petrol, Perkins 4203, and ended up with a 2 1/4 diesel.

I’m liking ALF! Looks like a Sweet little coiler series! 😉

I love those pics of the series 2s. My dads first was one, called Noddy (NOD 364G – cant believe I still remember that from 30 yers ago!)
EDIT< Hah, just did a quick check and she’ still rollin’

“GREEN, 1968 LAND ROVER 88″ – 4 CYL LIGHT UTILITY 4X4”

I do miss ALF, probably the one I should have kept. So much character. So much fun to drive.

Was on a galv Designa 88″ coil chassis, fitted with 90 axles, 3.5 V8, series 2a gearbox and an O/D. Had it feartured in Total Off Road mag, with a full photoshoot.

I was tempted to buy ‘him’ back at one point. Last I heard he’d been fitted with a 200tdi. Shame, fun cars should have a fun engine.

One of the things that I love about driving a Defender is that you occasionally see a little kid staring at it in a “Ohh Wanty!” sort of way.

It takes me back to being a nipper and my uncle’s Landy, which led to my first car – a IIa. They all look “right” and have that same Landy smell. Recently a mate got a 1958 Series II – unlike Bill Clinton, I must confess that I did inhale. There might have been some stroking as well – she’s a very pretty vehicle.

If I had space for a workshop I’d be on Ebay like a shot for another Series IIa.

oops

What a fantastic thread resurrection! Some nice looking rovers in this thread…

McMoonter, nice to see an Orkney BS number on the old Landy there, certainly looks like Orkney in the background, West mainland somewhere?