Hello all, been joined on here for a while and have lurked before that for a long time, I figured its probably time I put up a couple of readers rides threads for my cars.
So as the per the title, I have a 1972 Land Rover SIII 109" which is my second car used for carting mountain bikes and other big stuff, my daily driver is a Mazda MX5 (which I'll make a thread for soon).
This was it on the day I picked her up:
So it's not very standard (like every old LR ever!) started off as a 6cyl petrol van, now running a Perkins Prima 2l turbo diesel from an Austin Montego, intercooled as well.
Picked it up unseen from Radstock in Somerset off Gumtree and drove it back to Chester in November with no real issue, but since then it has been nothing but trouble!
It overheated quite badly in December, which unfortunately I didn't realise was happening, as the gauges have proved to be very unreliable. It overheated due to a burst radiator, split between the core and the bottom tank. Got the rad recored, new 'stat and just last week a new pressure cap, but the damn thing is till using water so I suspect a hg failure. Been doing a bit of reading up on hg failures on these engines, apparently its a reasonably common failure just on the water jacket, as there is no oil & water mixing. New pressure cap (with the correct pressure) has reduced the loss a bit, took 2 litres in 150 miles of driving recently. It's still driving very well, engine pulls well and getting near 40mpg which is great in such a big draggy lump!
Replaced the (utterly pitiful) headlights with a spare set from the mazda, acquired a load of ally checkerplate from work so that is now lining the roofrack.
Other issues include a ruined heater matrix and housing, so it currently rerouted to avoid them. There was a tremendous amount of dodgy wiring until last weekend, with the help of my dad we removed 11 seperate sections of wiring that were completely pointless and led to nothing (mostly live), 2 toggle switches that served no purpose, rewired in the glow plugs so they work now, fixed lots of terrible earths, fixed the headlight stalk which had an intermittent fault and reinstating the speedo backlight which was missing!
Another issue is the braking, which was pulling drastically from side to side with no real warning as to direction, quite disconcerting! Adjusted them as much as I could (one seized adjuster, one ran out of adjustment) but it was still terrible, took the front apart last weekend, cleaned them up, free'd the adjuster but alas this was in vain. Tried bleeding all around as the pedal was a little squishy and in doing this the master cylinder sprung a large leak into the cab! Bloody old cars!!! New master cylinder on order, will fit this in the coming week and go from there!
Future plans include repainting it as I got 15 litres of enamel with it from the previous owner, keeping a very close eye on the water levels and trying to sort the brakes. Selling it sometime in the near future may be on the cards as tbh it has been curse word me off, was meant to be a cheap daily driver whilst the mazda gets a supercharger strapped to it (coming soon!) and it hasn't really lived up to that so far.
A bunch of photos, mostly from a while ago, so the curse word wiring and heater rerouting has gone now.
Cruising along at 55mph, could really do with an overdrive!
So as the per the title, I have a 1972 Land Rover SIII 109" which is my second car used for carting mountain bikes and other big stuff, my daily driver is a Mazda MX5 (which I'll make a thread for soon).
This was it on the day I picked her up:
So it's not very standard (like every old LR ever!) started off as a 6cyl petrol van, now running a Perkins Prima 2l turbo diesel from an Austin Montego, intercooled as well.
Picked it up unseen from Radstock in Somerset off Gumtree and drove it back to Chester in November with no real issue, but since then it has been nothing but trouble!
It overheated quite badly in December, which unfortunately I didn't realise was happening, as the gauges have proved to be very unreliable. It overheated due to a burst radiator, split between the core and the bottom tank. Got the rad recored, new 'stat and just last week a new pressure cap, but the damn thing is till using water so I suspect a hg failure. Been doing a bit of reading up on hg failures on these engines, apparently its a reasonably common failure just on the water jacket, as there is no oil & water mixing. New pressure cap (with the correct pressure) has reduced the loss a bit, took 2 litres in 150 miles of driving recently. It's still driving very well, engine pulls well and getting near 40mpg which is great in such a big draggy lump!
Replaced the (utterly pitiful) headlights with a spare set from the mazda, acquired a load of ally checkerplate from work so that is now lining the roofrack.
Other issues include a ruined heater matrix and housing, so it currently rerouted to avoid them. There was a tremendous amount of dodgy wiring until last weekend, with the help of my dad we removed 11 seperate sections of wiring that were completely pointless and led to nothing (mostly live), 2 toggle switches that served no purpose, rewired in the glow plugs so they work now, fixed lots of terrible earths, fixed the headlight stalk which had an intermittent fault and reinstating the speedo backlight which was missing!
Another issue is the braking, which was pulling drastically from side to side with no real warning as to direction, quite disconcerting! Adjusted them as much as I could (one seized adjuster, one ran out of adjustment) but it was still terrible, took the front apart last weekend, cleaned them up, free'd the adjuster but alas this was in vain. Tried bleeding all around as the pedal was a little squishy and in doing this the master cylinder sprung a large leak into the cab! Bloody old cars!!! New master cylinder on order, will fit this in the coming week and go from there!
Future plans include repainting it as I got 15 litres of enamel with it from the previous owner, keeping a very close eye on the water levels and trying to sort the brakes. Selling it sometime in the near future may be on the cards as tbh it has been curse word me off, was meant to be a cheap daily driver whilst the mazda gets a supercharger strapped to it (coming soon!) and it hasn't really lived up to that so far.
A bunch of photos, mostly from a while ago, so the curse word wiring and heater rerouting has gone now.
Cruising along at 55mph, could really do with an overdrive!