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.