We have recently taken stock of a Series 3 Land Rover 88″ Petrol. We found him at AB Cleveland 4×4. It came with an MOT but I suspect whoever did the MOT wasn’t too fussed about certain things such as the steering wheel being connected to the front wheels or the brake pedal having any effect whatsoever.
‘Bob’ as he’s affectionately been called by my children, is not a project to restore and sell. He’s is going to be our company van and will help us to move tools and car parts around the country. But just because we will not be selling him doesn’t mean he won’t get a good restoration! Despite his issues he does drive and we’re not taking him off the road while we make the necessary improvements.
The most important areas on these fabulous old workhorses, is of course the chassis which, unlike the aluminium body panels, is steel and does rust. However ours has had a galvanised chassis fitted giving Bob a great base. The other main weakness is the steel bulkhead but again Bob’s is practically perfect.
But there’s more good news! In the year of Bob’s creation, 1982, the Land Rover engine got an upgrade and the crank gained an additional two bearings, going from three to five. This made the engine stronger and smoother. When purchased we didn’t know if our engine was a three or five bearing engine. Nothing was mentioned in the advert. You can tell which you have by looking at the side of the engine block towards the bottom. The five bearing version has a triangular pattern of strengthening braces running from one end of the engine to the other and ours has them! We also confirmed this by cross-referencing the engine number with a list online. Result!
The engine runs like a dream with a shiny new Weber carb and the four-speed gearbox is wonderful. He would benefit from an overdrive to keep the revs down although he’ll already do an indicated 60 mph with a tailwind!
The interior is excellent having brand new seat covers and padding. Everything else is present and correct although we had to tighten several loose screws to stop some annoying rattles. All electrics work too which is extremely rare for a vehicle of this age. You can tell he’s had a lot of work done.
Another bonus is the Fairey free-wheeling front hubs. These take the strain off some of the driveshafts when four wheel drive is not engaged and are quite a pricey addition. However one them does not click into place correctly so we will need to take a look at that.
Another issue was only discovered when whizzing down a country lane. We came across a very wide tractor and needed to stamp on the brakes. Although all the brake drums, shoes, cylinders and pipes are new, Bob lurched violently to the left and we only narrowly avoided a trip into the hedge. Investigation found that a couple of parts of the right hand front brake adjuster had lost their teeth and were not engaging with each other resulting in an ineffective right front brake. Without spare parts at hand we managed to narrow the hole of one part with weld, file in some flats and file corresponding flats onto the mating bolt and hey presto they fitted together tightly once again and problem solved. Bob now brakes in a straight line.
The only other issue is the steering but it has been quite a while since I had a Series Landy and I can’t quite remember how bad they’re meant to be! Driving in a straight line in a Series Landy is certainly an art to be mastered but I would like to see if we can improve it. At rest there’s a shed load of play so there must be something we can do.
The door frames are rusty but Anthony threw in two good spares! Unfortunately he gave me two passenger doors and it’s the driver’s one that is really bad! We’re in no rush to swap them, not until we’re ready to paint the car anyway.
Of course the obvious non-perfect part of Bob is the paint. It looks like it’s been thrown on direct from the tin! It looks like the engine has been out to paint the engine bay, certainly a big effort, but even here there are drips and runs going in all directions. Very odd indeed! To be honest though bad paint is great. We want to repaint him in our company colours of dark blue and if the paint was really good we’d be reluctant to paint over it.
So, the next job was to try to improve the steering and fix the hubs. We’re a little busy already with our other projects and so found Dave at Woodville 4×4 who was absolutely brilliant. He loved Bob and replaced his hubs, swivels, track rod ends and drag link, among other things and the steering and hence the overall driving experience is utterly transformed. What a difference!!
To celebrate I bought Bob some new 235/85 R16 tyres and tubes. He now looks a lot more purposeful and probably goes 1 or 2 mph quicker!
The next aesthetic change I was keen to make was to sort the lack of sills. These of course are non-structural but I think a Landy doesn’t look right without them. I painted the back of them with etch primer before fitting just to give them some protection in the long term. I’ll be able to paint the outside of them when the rest of the car is painted but already Bob looks better with them on.
So it’s time to get some paint on Bob! But as we use him most days I’m going to have to paint him one panel at a time. I’ll start with the bonnet, then the front grille area, wings and so on. It’s something we can do with anyone’s Landy and has the advantage of enabling the customer to pay just for the panel being done, spreading the costs!
Check out this video which will introduce you to Bob’s severe paint issues!
Here we start to deal with the flaky paint on the bonnet. It needed rather a lot of sanding! However it must be done if we’re going to turn Bob into a good advert for our business.
I sanded the bonnet initially with 80 grit dry on a DA. Once it was pretty smooth I switched to a 320 grit, again on the DA just to hide the deeper scratches which might show through the primer. I started with the bonnet still on the car but took the bonnet off to get to the edges.
With the sanding done it was time for primer! I use a DeVilbis DV1 for primer as it always comes out super silky and needs very little sanding. It was very odd to see Bob with a panel in primer but it’s great that the painting process has started!
The orange patches on the primer are where I found a few small imperfections that needed filling with Dolphin Glaze (a very fine filler) and then covering with an aerosol isolator.
At first I painted the bonnet with HM Coastguard Blue but I didn’t realise the colour was a bit too purple. I should have read the paint blurb which quite clearly said it had a purple tinge. Prince would have loved it. Anyway I decided to redo it in Caledonian Blue which I really like. It has a turquoise tinge which seems to be different depending on the light. It’s a flat colour, not metallic at all but isn’t a Series colour. It is however a Land Rover colour.
Anyway what do you think?
