'75 Land Rover S3 88" ongoing project... V8 and rollcage!

Being a Land Rover welding wasn't an issue, pretty much everything is available off the shelf, so with the wages from a summer job I bought a few new shiny bits and set about cleaning everything up and sticking it all back together again!















The engine was deemed healthy from the test drive so was washed down, wire brushed and painted in the original duck-egg blue (amazingly I still have that tin and it keeps going!)







The next set of pictures showing the respray to British Racing Green and re-assembly are still missing somewhere

The axles were rebuilt with new seals and the chrome swivels on the front replaced and fitted with military style leather gaitors. A second-hand Defender bulkhead was fitted and some minor mods done to make it fit the series body/installation. The matching Defender servo brake, clutch and cable throttle pedals were fitted and plumbed in, rear tub floor cut out and replaced with aluminium chequerplate, new silver modular wheels bought and a set of 7.50 tyres fitted with a pair of tyre levers and a footpump! The one-piece rear door was replaced with a NAS 90 lower tailgate and the spare lift up top tailgate.

After a few years work it passed the MOT and was on the road









The plan was to re-spray the blue station wagon sides the next year all over cream to match the original cream roof, but I kinda got used to it, and then it seemed like a lot of unnecessary effort so still hasn't happened all these years later!

Wire mesh light guards and spotlights soon made their way on, along with a NATO tow hitch on the back, Range Rover 3.54 diffs so it drove better on the motorway and I home-ported a spare cylinder head to replace the original to get a bit more go from the 2.25







A few years and many miles passed, it sprung a Discovery spare wheel holder on the tailgate and enjoyed some off-roading too!







The original 2.25 was showing it's age, thousands of miles of foot to the floor driving had taken their toll, it was using about 1 litre of oil every 100 miles and was clearly losing power, something had to be done

Now that's a nice little Land Rover. Keep it coming.

Thanks, not quite so little now



I worked at a (then) local mail order company running around in the stores for five weeks, and bought the chassis before prices went through the roof, I think something like £600 I paid?

Almost every engine I've 'done' has been painted from that same tin, including my Rover P6 engine. The present engine fitted to my Land Rover hasn't been painted yet, I don't think the tin has enough in it to cover that one , more on that one later...

Series three's are my favourite!

Nice work on this one, they really are like lego.

Nice one. Did you fit a replacement galvanised chassis, or get the original one galvanised?

Fast forward to about 2006-ish, with the original 2.25 slowly dying I needed a new engine and just happened to have a scrap Rover P6B sat outside

The engine was seized, but I stripped it down, cleaned it up and dropped it into the Land Rover engine bay with an Milner gearbox adapter ring. The exhaust started out as a lash-up of various old series systems chopped about to fit, and a pair of tdi straight through mufflers exiting out through the rear pto hole in the crossmember.















The bulkhead only needed a little trimming to clear the heads and manifolds, and I fitted a pair of Stromberg carbs to the top.

This engine didn't last very long, maybe about 300 miles before catastrophically letting go at 3000rpm on the motorway, still drove up the recovery truck and off again!











I had a couple of spare v8 blocks so threw another high compression 3.5 in which ran a lot better, second time lucky! The Stromberg's were a little lacking in the dumping-fuel-in-the-intake department, so I took a spare inlet manifold, ported the tower out a bit and fitted a pair of 2" SU HS8 carbs which were off my P6 2000TC engine





It ran a hell of a lot better on the HS8's, although noticeably a bit thirstier it was great fun!

It's hard to think now that mine used to be shiny like the photos, not any more

Anyway, the SU's worked well, except a little thirsty, but had an annoying flat spot right in the middle of the rev range, then I got itchy fingers again! Off came the SU's, and on went a fuel injection system off an early Range Rover







With hindsight the injection was far more hassle and money than what it was worth, and never really ran very well, not really suprising as the newest ones were almost 20 years old when I fitted it!

I also made a set of sill bars out of 2" thickwall steel box









The original 10" drum brakes were upgraded to 11" stage 1 v8 brakes, and hell did they work!



I also made a set of extended shackles to raise it a little bit





With the running problems of the injection, I tackled it again, buying a good set of SU HIF44 carbs, Ford V8 EDIS kit and Megajolt









This was by far the best setup I've ever had, smooth and powerful with no flat spots all the way up to 5000rpm, brilliant for baiting hot-hatches and annoying rep-mobiles by not allowing them to overtake

And while I was at it, I made a raised air intake as I'd chanced it a few too many times in deep water



With the extended shackles and raised intake, more mods were to follow....

In it's present guise, I've not seen anything else like it, a couple of vaguely similar ones, but not close , and it's two engine swaps further along now!

Parts availability is very good, though you do need to be vigilant over cheap pattern parts, most are good enough, but some really shouldn't be on the shelves. You can buy probably about half the parts you'd need to construct a series 2/3 from scratch off the shelf, just a few of the larger body and mechanical parts aren't available new, everything else....