1984 Land Rover "ninety" resto' march update

so yeah, a bit more on that. after rapidly gobbling up all the darren screen names on various land rover forums I learned that BMIHT (british motor industry heritage trust, breath) keep all the old hand written factory ledgers from all the classic british car manufacturers like austin, mg, rover, leyland etc. i'd already learned that as an A plate this was quite an early vehicle, the one-ten long wheel base was release in 1983, and the ninety short wheel base like mine came out in '84. the 2.25 petrol was only used in the swb for a year so its fairly rare at that.

I contacted BMIHT with their online service, for a small fee they will give you some of the ledger entries for your vehicle based on chassis and engine numbers. or for allot of cash you can get a posh certificate with everything from who built it, to what colour seats it had. so anyway I emailed them with the details and it came back as build date 26th may 1984, chassis no. 20! ooooh ! the ninety wasnt launched until june 1984....

nice, currently rebuilding a coil sprung factory 100" that was built in 77 for the swiss army

despite working on them everyday,everyweek i still love landrovers and currently own a very modded 2000 td5 90 and a rangerover.
Keep the pics coming
Paul

That is a lovely looking Ninety.

IIRC most press cars Land rover used tended to have number plates which ended in WAC (or simply AC signifying a Coventry registered car .

after the purchase and I drove the landy home the plan was to go through it and make a list of what needed sorting, then get the day to day problems fixed. even on the very first drive home it had my cards marked, I was left stranded at halfords with zero effort on the starter motor. the alternator looked like it had spent 20 years at the bottom of coniston and wasnt charging, at all.

the other thing immediately obvious under the bonnet is that the standard air cleaner had been deleted and replaced with a cotton JR version, direct to the carb elbow. I found a brand new old stock air cleaner on ebay for pittance (richards surplus iirc) and a new inlet hose to join them up. you can see all 3 new items here



so now we had clean air, and some electricity. next thing I noticed was the gear stick gaiter was aged and torn, hell of allot of road noise and transmission whine filling the already spartan interior. I got a new one from land rover stock and my long term relationship with lrseries was in its infancy. in the picture below you can also see a new couple of gear knobs as the old ones were using gravity as glue.



the next problem on the list was a severe knocking noise when going over lumps and bumps, it seemed to do it on suspension compression and extension, I had a hunch from previous experience it was the dampers

a quick look in the engine bay I could see the shock absorbers bobbing up and down in the turrets with what appeared to be liquorice as bushing material. all efforts to undo the vaguely hexagonal blobs holding them on were futile and I ended up unbolting the entire turret (helpfully removable on LR's). despite this and given the visible state of the damper tubes I decided to replace with new (an irritating pattern you will start to notice)



the bottom nut I managed to get off with brute force. I put a ring spanner jammed against the axle, then rotated the body of the damper with stilsons + a length of pole over the end



the top two lock nuts I just sliced off to break the rust seal, the remains came undone with a spanner ok



satisfying positive diagnosis!



heres one reassembled with new gen LR shocks

Are you planning to keep the 2.25 petrol ?

Can't remember the last time I saw one.

another thing way down the "to do" list was examine the exhaust, it looked a little worse for wear. it had that sort of thinning and pitting where the steel almost goes purple. it lasted a couple of months and then got bumped to priority 1 when it started blowing from the rear box. credit where its due, the seller of this vehicle must have had a logistical nightmare getting every component on the brink of catastrophic failure.

as far as i can tell these systems are NLS from land rover, but you can get pattern aftermarket ones and also stainless versions. not surprising i got few recommendations given the engine+vehicle combo so i just bit the bullet and got a stainless one. the ethos of buy cheap buy twice ringing in my ears. it was from rimmer brothers bit i think might be rebadged " double S" system.

this is dissasembling from the exhaust manifold



and at various stages of undress. i ended up using an angle grinder with slitting disks to zip the old nuts off, and in one case just slice the actual exhaust tube. in the third pic you can see the cause of the blowing, it had torn completely from the rear silencer







here it is laid out section by section with the rimmber brothers system. i'll give them their dues, the system fitted perfectly, good construction and attention to detail. it came with a fitting kit too which had every nut, bolt, gasket and rubber hanger for the job.





and the pictures below of the job completed, i didnt hit any snags, it all went on like a glove. its such a joy to work on a vehicle you don't have to jack up, just literally wriggle under on your back with plenty of head room

V8 will have a similar thirst

haha yes to both. my advice to everyone else has always been engine donor is cheapest way for power, which is fact, but i'm yet to practice what i preach !

got a plan formulating though which doesnt deviate too far from originality, they carried on developing the 2.25/2.5 petrol engine in south america. over the years sprouted longer legs to 2.8L with 200tdi levels of performance...

hey thanks do you have threads for them? i think i only remember your imp.