12th December 2010 - Prop-shafts and steering rods

It's been a few weeks since I've had anything to write about. Sub-zero temperatures inside the garage meant that anything more than about an hour out there and I was too cold to do anything constructive. My "indoor" project - restoring the dash - has also been on hold waiting for a couple of spare parts to arrive.
However, today I did venture outside to finish putting the prop-shafts back together. I put a couple of pictures up of how they looked when they came off Pod - here is how they look today:

Basically I stripped, wire-brushed, primed and painted each component and then regreased everything as it went back together. I fitted new Hardy-Spicer universal joints as a matter of course.

While I had the paint out, I also cleaned up the steering rods and fitted new Lemforder ball joints. Before:

And after:

Hopefully the spare parts for the instrument clusters will arrive this week and I'll be able to make some progress there.

7th November 2010 - Let there be...er... heat!

One of the fun little "sub-projects" I'd been looking forward to having a go at was restoring the cabin interior components. Series 2 Land Rovers don't have a lot in them, so what they do have needs to look good! As Pod is quite a late Series 2A Land Rover he has one of the later "flat-style" Smiths heaters which were originally only fitted to the V6.

Here's the heater as it came out of the vehicle:

The heater appeared to be working okay, so it was just a case of taking it to bits, cleaning it up and putting it back together.

In bits:

And back together:

Mrs Jonesy thought I'd bought a new one! Praise indeed, I reckon. The matrix inside was treated to some kettle descaler, but apart from that it was in excellent condition. The "draught excluder" inside was rotten, so I used some camping mat to make a new one - it just ensures that the air from the fan is blown through the matrix and not straight out past the fan motor.

I was rather chuffed that I managed to peel off and retain the original "Smiths" stickers, so these have been stuck on again. I discovered that these heaters are still available new from L.R.Series - Given that my "restoration" cost me about £15 for the paint, I don't think that's too bad at all!

31st October 2010 - Destructive: out... Constructive: in!

Well it finally happened - I stopped taking things apart and finally did something constructive! My first bit of "restoration" took place!

I settled on stripping down and rebuilding the propeller shafts for no good reason other than they were the first thing I saw when I looked at the big pile of Pod in the garage.

Here is what they looked like when they were removed from Pod. Front:

And rear:

Getting the old universal joints out was a fun job - they were actually in pretty good condition, but my approach for this renovation is typically to replace things like seals and bearings as I have no idea how old they are or how they have been maintained. Pretty much everything else will be "restored" one way or another. The old UJs were Hardy-Spicer - same as the new ones. So obviously not original, but quality parts nonetheless.

When it comes to renovating metal parts like this, generally I will do the following - degrease, wire brush, primer, top coat. Here's a picture showing what the application of a wire brush can do - the part on the left has been degreased, the part on the right has also been wire brushed.

So each prop-shaft component was masked up:

Given a coat of red oxide primer:

And then a coat of black gloss:

A quick word on the paints I'm using - I did a little reading around the subject of primers, and discovered that all red-oxide primers are not the same. "Red-oxide" is essentially iron oxide or, as it is better known, rust. Its purpose in primers is actually to provide a "filler" to help the paint smooth out imperfections in the surface being painted. As a barrier to prevent moisture getting through it's pretty useless. More expensive primers will contain rust converters, and also glass "plates" to create an impermeable barrier. The primer I eventually bought is called Corroless S and contains a rust converter, zinc phosphate and glass plates, plus a bit of red-oxide. It's normally used for painting oil rigs and so on!

Over the top of this mega-primer, I'm using good old Frosts chassis black. This is decent paint at a sensible price - and it's easy to touch up the chassis and associated parts once a year, provided the base paint continues to do its job.

The prop-shafts bits are all painted up now, ready for re-assembly. How exciting!

17th October 2010 - Axles off!

The last "big" items still attached to the chassis were the front and rear axles, complete with springs and shock absorbers. I'd like to say they came off without a problem - but they didn't. To be fair, nearly all of the bolts holding the springs to the chassis did come undone reasonably easily, but the front bolt on the rear nearside spring absolutely would not come out of it's hole - the bolt was rusted solid inside the spring. I tried various approaches to removing it - heating it up with a blowtorch, beating it with a very large hammer, etc. In the end, I used Mr AngleGrinder to remove the hanger itself from the chassis - that should put my welding skills to the test some time in the future.

So the chassis now looks like this:

I bought some cheap and cheerful axle stands to keep it off the ground (they were less than £10 a pair!). Originally the plan was to start the chassis renovation right away, but time is moving on and I'm concerned that if I jetwash it inside and out at this time of year, it'll sit there full of water all winter without drying out. So I'm going to finish removing the last couple of bits from the chassis (bulkhead brackets, handbrake, etc.) and then wrap it up until the spring. It's not as if I haven't got anything else to be getting on with!

For completeness, here are the axles sat alongside the garage - these will be stripped and rebuilt, along with the springs and shock absorbers. I see no reason to replace perfectly good components just because they're a bit grubby.

So I'm now at the point where all the main deconstruction is complete - Pod is in lots of bits now! I've got to start the actual restoration process - but where to start...?

10th October 2010 - Bulkhead removal

As I mentioned earlier, my original intention was to do all the repair work to the bulkhead while its still attached to the chassis. Back in September I started doing a welding course at Basingstoke College - this has been great fun, but has also highlighted the fact that my cheapo MIG welder really isn't up to much. So I've decided I'm going to upgrade it as and when funds allow. So as not to halt progress on Pod, I decided to just tack weld the passenger door pillar into position so that I know it'll all line up, and then complete the repair work with the bulkhead off the chassis once I've got my new welder - it'll be easier working in the garage rather than on the driveway too!

So here's the passenger side - before...

and after...

With this done, I was now finally able to remove the bulkhead.

Not much left now!

1st October 2010 - Engine out!

Today I hired an engine hoist from County Hire in Tadley to get Pod's engine out. It absolutely chucked it down - I was soaked to the skin.
I had already undone all the bolts holding the engine to gearbox and the engine mounting bolts. With no bodywork in the way the engine plopped out incredibly easily.

Here's the engine, bolted to my shiny new engine stand.

Pod is looking sadder by the day - hopefully this will all be worth it!

September 2010 - Bulkhead repair

As you can see, the bottom of the driver's side of the bulkhead has seen better days. It needs a new footwell and the bottom of the door pillar is rotten.

The previous owner had already cut out some of the footwell, but to do a (hopefully) invisible repair, I'm going to have to take out more - right to the edges of the panel so that the joins are less noticeable.

Through the Series 2 forum I found a guy called Les who makes really original looking repair sections for S2 bulkheads. I purchased a pair of replacement footwells, bulkhead feet, and door pillars from him - to say I was impressed with the quality is an understatement. He does sell on eBay, but if you have trouble finding him drop me a line.

I should have taken some pictures of the work "in progress" but I got a bit carried away with the repair and didn't think about that until I'd nearly finished. Sorry.