'84 Land Rover ex-MOD 109, OM606 hi-cap

Once all sorted 50 is just a breeze! It's happy at 70, though it's obvious that the sleek aerodynamics of the Land Rover are just beginning to hinder further progress!



Get the brakes and steering sorted, make sure all of the doors are adjusted properly and seals intact, add some sound insulation in specific places and there's no reason why it shouldn't cruise at the national speed limit safely and without too much discomfort. I have the added bonus of a modern refined powerplant which kicks out at least twice the power and a lot less cabin noise which helps immensely. Back in the day Land Rover themselves were doing high speed tests with the swb on the motorways, can't remember if they were cruising at 90 or 100?



My top speed is limited by other road users

Vintage cars on narrow wheels and cart springs which is on paper what a Land Rover is were doing over the ton decades before anyway!

88" has gross vehicle weight of 2 tonnes, that means the brakes have to be good enough to stop 2 tonnes, but it only weighs 1.4 tonnes unladen. if the brakes are scary in an unladen 88", then its time for maintenance !

Agree with the above but ours works for a living, mostly off-road so alignment, steering and body panels all get knocked around. Has the heavy duty axles and hub setup with the bigger drums which when setup work ok. Problem is parts are pretty poor with quality control absent from most of the well known suppliers.

We do have a 300tdi and disco diffs sat in the garage awaiting installation which should improve things!

Yup, remote servo on an 88 2A 2 1/4 petrol with a twin horse trailer on the back would pull up quite happily fully loaded.

Getting going again? That's another story!

Minor update time. After fitting new drums I've been racking up the miles again, and struggling to fill the fuel tank removing the seat, unscrewing the floor plate and re-assembly is reverse of removal etc. Bought a civvy underseat tanke with external fill as a temporary measure until I get round to making the auxiliary tank behind the cab







Then in the run up to RRG I noticed it was getting harder and harder to start. After a little prodding about I've found four of the six glowplugs have failed.

So off came the wing and inlet manifold, and I spent 4 days struggling with them seized in the head







In the end I only managed to replace one, and left the 3 snapped glowplugs. It starts with a little assistance on the throttle so it's just good enough. With RRG and a planned weekend offroading trip imminently coming I've had them soaking in penetrating oil so the heat should help loosen the carbon ready for the next removal attempt

Whilst at a local Land Rover show I picked up a pair of what I think are hi-cap rear light guards.



Having the extra military lights on mine they don't fit, so out with the grinder and welder and I made them fit!













Light guards done for now until I beef up the mounting points

Also got round to beefing up the bullbar feet. It's dead handy for hanging on when clambering about, but was a bit wobbly! Now it's bolted to a solid part of the front bumper



Also finally got round to the wiring and plumbing for the rear fuel tank. I now have functioning dual fuel tanks switchable by the flick of a switch! Suddenly I have a decent respectable range between fill-ups that I didn't have before, easily filled from the two external fuel fillers, luxury!

Then RRG happened, and the 109 performed faultlessly except for a bit of tyre scrub chucking it about the lanes laden there and back



Now the tyre scrub could be a bit of an issue, since I'm running smaller than standard wheels (ride and handling are vastly better), and I was booked into a weekend camping trip offroading and needed my Insa Turbo Special Tracks fitted which are substantially larger. So I smacked the wheel tubs a bit with the sledge hammer, fitted the Special Tracks and set off on Friday evening for the campsite! Only other prep I did was remove the exhaust, and weld a flange on the downpipe after the turbo so I could easily unbolt the lower exhaust that hangs below the chassis and made a short straight pipe side exit....









And now I'm back, and the 109 was amazing in a pay&play site for 2 days!













The only damage I got was bending the rear fuel tank up 3/4" from dropping the back end hard and the tyre scrub was a complete non-issue







Have I ever said old series lwb Land Rover's with OM606 engine are amazing?

Well they are

Great to see this at RRG and the weekend looks great. Pity my wife won't let me take _her_ Discovery off-road.

It's hers until work needs to be paid for then it suddenly reverts to being ours!

Yep good to see you too. Problem with offroading is you start getting the bug, then the confidence rises, then you get stuck, and if you're unlucky you break something and still have to somehow get home! I've removed a lot of clay from the underside, about half a bin bag full so far and the front swivel assemblies are still packed in the stuff. Gained a few extra scuffs in the paint and bent one of the rear tub lower skirts too. Also contemplating buying a Detroit Truetrac lsd for the rear to give the 109 that little extra help from getting stuck crossaxled. It got stuck twice, first time bellied out in deep ruts, and being a series they slide easy so was a quick tug back out, and the second time it got crossaxled and a little bouncing got enough grip to allow it to pull itself along.



They should to the ton in standard form anyway, the factory was doing it back in the day. I still have a diagonal drag link from the steering box down to the axle so any undulations in the road require immediate correction regardless. As regards to brakes, something I had never really thought of until earlier when comparing post offroading issues with my brother who took his series down for the weekend was that he had terrible wheel balance issues where mud had fallen off the brake disc onto the wheel and knocked the wheel balance right out. With drums, there's not enough room for the mud to collect in quite the same way so I had no extra wheel wobble than I had before considering how much additional weight I was carrying! In the future I'd like the Heystee disc brake kit, but not yet.

That sounds very happy bimbling along to itself.