1980 Austin Princess mild custom - 1951 Lanchester LD10

You'll have a hard job using a discovery HG. You mean Freelander

Use 2 from a V8 kit for lower compression for the Rover 75 Turbo manifold?

Sorry to hear about the Rover woes sir. I'm sure you'll get it sorted in whichever way suits you best!

In the meantime have some old custom car mag Princess pics to cheer you up lol

Sounds like partially good news at least!

Tom

Depends if the last person to pull it apart (before you) took the same amount of care. Some people just tear into things with a gungho attitude then get the poops when things don't work afterwards.

Know that one well ..... take it from me,your back is worth more than any car engine ....
i''m waiting on help to raise the tow hitch on my Disco,plus get the thing serviced.
I can't crawl around under it,and i cant put pressure on my back trying to get rusted bolts undone to adjust the tow bar.....

We'll get there. Back is *loads* better today because I've been good so this weekend we should be all set for doing the Rover head removal, hoorah!

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With the Renault outside waiting for the engine to come back, the weather decided to help me with some more leak hunting. Here we go then, a tour of the leaks and what I think I need to do to fix them.

To start with, the boot is still letting water in, as evidenced by this puddle on the parcel shelf.


Taken me a while to figure this one out entirely but it looks like it's getting past the boot seal itself which has certainly seen better days. Looks like a generic profile on the seal so shouldn't be too bad to replace. It's coming in through the rear screen seal as well but nowhere near as badly as through the main boot seal.




The other puddle is this one.


That's caused by the side windows which also don't seal well, partly because the seals are too short. They just need a blob more sealant where the gap is to sort this. Looks like it's getting through just at the bottom edge of the sealant bridge. Really I should fit new seals to these rear windows to resolve this and again they look like a generic profile so I might do that in the future.




Next, this big old lake under the passenger seat. Here's where we get into the territory of difficult to locate leaks because on the passenger side there's a lot of them.


Most of it is coming through the top of the rear door.




Mainly because the stick-on seal (factory standard as far as I can tell) is knackered on all the doors and more knackered than the rest on this one. Admittedly, having gutters on the car would help lessen this as the water would be channeled away from them and I have priced up replacement universal guttering to do just that. Door seals will help too anyway in keeping the water out on the move.


The windscreen had appeared to have stopped leaking. Unfortunately that isn't the case and it is still letting water in along the top edge. I'm going to squidge more sealant into the top of the windscreen seal as was done when I got the car. At least with a cloth headlining I can see where it's coming in and have some idea of where to put the sealant. So, passenger side first which again is the worst side.


The door seal on the front door is also shot, the door doesn't fit as well as the others either, and that's letting water get in at the sill.


What was confusing me was that water did just appear in the footwell on the passenger side and I could never figure out how. Liberal poofing about of talcum powder highlighted just how it's doing it. Water is running down the outside of the bulkhead and then seeping through the body-to-chassis seam and into the car. That's more difficult to resolve, to do it properly it's going to be a body-off job so I can put some proper sealant/tape on before bolting the body back to the chassis. The bulkhead above this seam is completely dry.


Driver's side of the windscreen is also letting a small amount of water in.


As with the passenger door, the seal is shot and water is getting in and pooling on the sill. There is another drip from under the dash somewhere just to the right of the pedals and I've not figured that one out yet. I might have to fix the other leaks to find it. There is a small splash to the right of the pedal that highlights the leak, it's not massively clear in the photograph.



None of these leaks are a huge worry for now, I've emptied the car of anything that might be damaged by the water and since it's at home I can mop it out regularly. Once the engine is fitted I can get the car back in the garage out of the weather. Your recommendations for where to obtain generic seals are welcome, just remember the ones on the doors are a self-adhesive foam strip type, there's not channel to fix a conventional seal to.

sealsdirect for by the meter "caravan seals" and stuff

landrovers have this black bitumen putty all over the place in gaps and joins, even used as window sealant, colloquially called "dumdum". can be warmed up and worked like blue tac or plasticine then poked into gaps

Pu sealer can be moulded and cut to shape quite easily, make a mould out of masking tape and cardboard fill the cavity, let it cure then pull off the mould and trim to shape.

To be honest on some of my fleet I have never managed to completely stop the leaks, regular waxoyling of the floors and easily liftable carpets are the order of the day.