Land Rover Series 2 Club

I stumbled across the Series 2 Club based out of London, England.  There is a plethora of information there on the site, some of it restricted to members only.  The membership fee is reasonable (26 BP)  and with that you get 4 issues of the club magazine.  The other benefits of joining the club are focused on Series 2 owners who live in the UK, a complete list can be found on their website.

There is also a section of photographs and technical diagrams available to view.

Series 2 hood

The Land Rover hood, or Bonnet if you are from the other side of the pond, is in decent shape.  There are a few small dents on the front but little rust.  The hood is in about as good a shape as the doors; the aluminum skin is in good shape, but the underlying frame has a bit of corrosion.

I was curious as to whether this was a replacement hood, every Series 2 picture I see appears to have a hood without the rounded edge or "nose" on it.  This hood is painted the right color, and as far as I can tell has the same paint on it as the other panels. My guess is that it was a late series 2 build (1959) and therefore had a Series 2A hood put on it.  The other possibility is that the Canadian models had the hood with the rounded front.  If you are familiar with this, drop a comment and let me know.

I pulled off all the trim that I could get off with a wrench or screwdriver.  This included the latch and brace.

The bolts here came off no problem.

I took the brace apart as well as I intend to clean up all the parts, strip and paint as required.

There it is, combined with one of the last exhaust hangers I took off at the same time.

You can see that most of the blue house paint has come off, and even some of the original Highway yellow.  I can't decide if I am going to mask the centre bit of galvanized steel before paint or remove it and put it back after paint.  The difference is having to replace the rivets.

The hinges are galvanized so they will be cleaned up and not painted.

Another pic of all the bits.  You can see the prop at the top of the picture, its galvanized so the blue house paint will be removed and it will be polished up before refitting.  In case you are wondering, the chrome ring is off of a 1978 MGB, one of my other projects.

Rear door

The rear door of the Rover is a one piece unit.  And it is in bad shape, crooked as a dogs hind leg.  A patch was attempted, with steel rivets btw.  The spare tire hanger is bent and its got a fair bit of rust in the frame.

 I started stripping the door by removing the rear lock. A few of the nuts were rusted on so out came the penetrating oil again.  

Once I had the lock out I took it apart and cleaned it up.  The galvanized bits had been painted over so I will run them through the degreaser and use some paint stripper to get them cleaned up.

Once that was all cleaned up, I proceeded with taking out the glass.  Had to drill out a few of the rusted screws but eventually it came out.

Driver side door

I have the doors, the hood and the back door off of the Rover.  The plan is to strip them down, get the paint removed, repainted and back on the Rover.  Simple, right.  Considering there is really nothing to the Rover doors, should be a quick fix. 

  

Galvinized trim came off no problem. The door hinges and aftermarket mirrors came off as well.  The aftermarket mirrors left 3 holes in the door which I am going to have to fill in somehow, but more on that later.

Here is all the trim and the glass off of the door.  I tried to clean up the alimunum channels with the sandblasted but it pitted the aluminum really badly so I wont be doing that with the rest of it.  Some Emory cloth cleaned it up and left the aluminum un-marred.  The felt that came out of the channels will have to be replaced here as well.

It turns out that each of the Rover doors has a different lock, requiring a different key.  So including the ignition there are four keys for this beast.  I don't have any plans to replace these locks so if anyone out there knows how to tumble these locks drop me a line, it would be great to lose some weight off of my keychain.

Refurbished Exhaust Hangers

After committing myself to replacing the exhaust on the Land Rover, I figured I could keep the costs down by cleaning up the exhaust hangers.  With a can of penetrating oil, a reciprocating saw and some old fashioned elbow grease I managed to get them all off.

Here is the mid hanger, as it came out of the Rover.  I got it all apart and ran the bits through the sandblasting cabinet.  After that effort, I painted them with black high heat exhaust paint.  They turned out pretty good, I will have to replace the nuts and bolts since I had to saw through a few of the rusted ones.  But overall I am really pleased with how it all turned out, and managed to save myself a few bucks.  Good thing I am working for free on this project, otherwise these hangers would have cost me more than replacement.

What exhaust?

While bleeding my brakes I had a closer look at the muffler on the Rover.  It is in pretty sad shape.  I am pretty sure its completely ineffective, which would explain why it sounds like a tank.

A replacement from Rovers North is reasonably priced, $250 CDN to have it shipped to my door.  An extra $60 for the hangers.  I have taken all the hangers off and will sandblast them.  The rubber grommets are in good shape, just need to clean up the metal bits which I am optimistic I can do in my new Sandblasting cabinet. Stay tuned!

Ben Fogle: how Land Rover's greatest started with a sketch in the sand

A great article on Ben Fogle at the telegraph. I have been to Llanfair-yn-y-Cwmwd and Dwyran on Anglesey but never stopped to find his gravesite.  I will add it to my next visit.

Ben Fogle: how Land Rover's greatest started with a sketch in the sand

Brakes

I was in the process of putting the clutch back together and discovered that the farmers fix brake reservoir had a leak in it.

So all that work cleaning up the clutch master and I still don't have any clutch (or brakes).  So I did the most prudent thing, ordered a new brake / clutch reservoir from Pegasus.

This reservoir feeds the clutch and the brake master cylinders so I ended up buying the correct lines for these as well from Pegasus.  The parts were reasonably priced and saved me building the lines which I was reluctant to do considering it was for the brakes.

Once I had it all installed I could bleed the clutch and the brakes.  I bench bled the master brake cylinder first because of the install of the new reservoir.  Then patched in the lines and bled the lines starting at the furthest wheel cylinder. No issues, the clutch works now and the brakes are firm. I am curious how these brakes are going to do, if they are soft I may consider upgrading to a vac booster and modern master cylinder.

Bench Top Sandblasting Cabinet

I bought a sandblasting cabinet for my workbench.  Its the small one from Eastwood. It got good reviews and its probably the best priced cabinet when it goes on sale.  And from what I can tell, it goes on sale often.

The unit came shipped via Fedex and was not assembled.  It comes with a crap load of parts, and was more assembly than I thought I was going to have to do, but no worries I pulled it off.

I read the reviews, one of the biggest complaints is its not easy to seal.  After assembly you end up with a few air gaps that leak dust once it is powered up.  I made sure I used lots of the foam seal strips that come with the unit and then took the extra precaution of siliconing the corners were there were gaps.

I wanted to make sure that the vacuum was going to work well; I don't want a ton of silica dust floating around in my garage.  Since my Rigid vacuum has a different sized hose as the cabinet fixture, I picked up an adapter from Home Depot.

I paid a visit to the folks at Consolidated Compressor in Calgary and grabbed the best medium that would work with the unit.  They suggested Garnet which was reasonable at $14 for a 50 lb bag. The benefits of Garnet is that the silica levels are very low, it can be recycled, it creates less dust and it is gentle on the parts.  They also have a DIY yard where you can bring your own parts to blast.  I will be taking my larger pieces there to blast for sure.

My test piece is the brake cover from the inner fender.  Its a bit beat up, had some paint, rust and undercoater on it so I figured it was a good piece to test.

In it went and I started blasting.  I blew the fuse within 5 minutes of operating the thing.  So I ended up having to turn off all the lights in the shop.  Good thing the unit came with its own lamp.

I spent about 5 minutes on it, and it cleaned up fairly well.  The rust and paint came off no problem but the undercoater will need another treatment.

A few of the comments online suggested the attached vacuum pulled all of the sand out of the cabinet, rather than recycling the sand.  But I had no problem with that at all, in fact there was very little sand collected in the vacuum canister, mostly dust.

So there you have it, a great little unit.  And I will be sure to be blasting a bunch more Rover parts in the very near future.

Happy Birthday

Not quite sure how I missed this one, but the Land Rover had a birthday last week.  Read all about it at Road and Track.  68 years ago on April 30th, Land Rover unveiled the original Series one.

More Heavy Metal

Did I mention that there are one ton push bars on the back of the Rover as well?  They are hideous and have got to go.  The bars are made from two inch pipe with 1/4 inch thick wall and are reinforced with one inch square solid bar.  These things are intense.  Not sure what the purpose was for them but I can guarantee you anything hit by these things would have been no match for the Rover.

I used the same reciprocating saw I used on the front 'roo bars' to get the rear bars off.  I went through 3 blades but they cut through the steel no problem.  And if you are wondering about the giant bumper, yes it is coming off as well.

See, now doesn't that look better? I am going to take of the lights and the Land Rover plaque next and see if I can clean up the galvanized trim.  Not quite sure how to fix that hole left by the reinforcing bar.  I guess I will just add it to the list of aluminum work that needs to be done.

The empty engine stand is just sitting there, ready for that engine once I get it pulled out.  I have a few jobs to get done first before that happens!

Galvanized Trim

With all of the trim off the doors I could start to clean it up.  This included getting rid of all of the old paint of the aluminum bits, the galvanized trim and the steel hinges.  I used some paint remover to get the old paint off since I was worried what sanding would do to the finish.

It worked very well and now you can really see the nice pattern on the trim caused by the galvanizing. I put on the paint remover and let is sit for about a half hour, then using some steel wool and a razor blade the old paint just came right off.

I will have to put a second coat on to get all the rest of it but overall I am quite happy with how it worked and that I was able to preserve the coating.

Stripping the doors

The doors on the rover have considerable surface rust on the steel frame but on the whole are in decent shape.  There is no major dings in the aluminum and they are straight.  They have been completely painted, including all of the galvanized trim and aluminum bits.  The glass is original and complete.  I have read that the Canadian models of Rovers came in a couple extra choices for paint, one of them being Highway Yellow.  The other option that made them uniquely Canadian is the fact that the doors are one piece.  The intent was to keep the nasty Canadian winter on the outside of the Rover.

My plan is to strip the doors and then take them to a local blasting yard to soda blast them.  Not sure if the order of removal I took is the right one, but I certainly got the stripped down. I started by pulling the galvanized trim and hinges off.  They came off quite easily by removing the bolts on the inside of the door.  The door latch came off next. The original bolts had been replaced by some large metal screws.  I will need to straighten that part of the door before refitting the door latch, just add it to the long list of things 'to-do'.

Once the trim was off it was time to take out the glass. I wasn't quite sure how to do this, the Haynes manual for the Rover is lacking in this description. So I searched the web for some more information and found a really good description thanks to TeriAnne Wakeman and her blog. You can find it at Replacing Land Rover rear sliding glass. I am going to try and order the Rocky Mountain kit as TeriAnne suggests as it appears like a good replacement.

 

 

It was a real challenge getting all the window slide channels out, especially the bottom one.  Water tends to sit in there and promote rot.  And all the dirt and grime sets in there as well.  I used penetrating oil on the screws and let them sit for a couple days. All but one refused to release its grip, the last one was drilled out. Here is the glass once it was out of the door.  I used a putty knife around the parts of the glass that had been sealed with DumDum. I was sure I was going to break the glass, but nope, managed to get it out in one piece, cleaned up and on a shelf safely waiting for the rebuild.

Here is al the bits laid out, I will be removing the paint using paint stripper and some steel wool to preserve the tin coating.

One of the other benefits of removing the trim from the door is I can see the original Highway Yellow paint, unfazed by the sun.  I put it up against the test patch I sprayed on the front wing and the colour looks like a pretty good match.  I am going to go with it.

Alright, door stripped, now to clean up all the bits and put them away for the freshly painted door.  My plan is to take all of the body panels in at once to get soda blasted so it will be a while before I am ready to do that.