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.