1954 Long Wheelbase Land Rover Series One Prototype Station

I'd not seen a prototype Landie before.
Very rugged looking.
Much more so than the series 1.
Cool.

+Bookmarked. I like the oddness of it. Is that a "tropical roof" on top too?

So to continue with the grille modification:
All the spot welds were drilled out so that the brackets that support the radiator could be removed. Then working on the new cutouts I cut away the excess metal and made a plywood former to get the new shape.
Here you see one side done.


Both sides done and the centre strut cut out. I have already rolled the LHS in, just the right to do.


I now need to build a reinforcement piece to go behind the grille. I am not sure how this would have been done originally, but I have largly followed how it was done on the production steel pannel.


First I had to linish off the strengthening from the original pressing.

The steel version is made out of three seperate sections, but to maintain strength I decided to make mine in one piece. These sections have a reputation of cracking at the best of times, which is why the steel version was adopted on all latter series one vehicles.
So there was much playing with paper templates wooden formers and a bit of ali.




In the last shot above it is nearly finished, just the edges to trip up. Whilst making it, it was a suprise as to how much the metal spang as it was being formed. The whole think bowed like a banana once I had removed the former, so I had to bend it all back into shape, as a result the edges arn't as tight to the outside edge of the grille pannel as I would have liked, but I have never tried anything like this before, so was happy with my first effort - no one can see it anyway!

Next was to bond it in with Sikafix. then cut two pieces to infill the holes, which were again bonded in.


Then reunite it with the radiator mounting section. I have again bonded this with the addition of a few aluminium dowls I have countersunk in. Fingers crossed this will be sufficient to hold the weight.

I finally gave it a skim of filler profiled it and gave it a coat of etch primer.


The primer has highlighted a couple of areas that need some attention, nothing drastic, just a bit of sanding and stopping, before I put on a couple of coats of high build primer and flat it off

Fantastic to see this rebuild. I do love these Station Wagons and seeing a prototype with the subtle differences is fascinating. Bookmarked 🙂

I have some one looking at my wings just now so we will see how they get on. I could buy a whole new repro set for £1200, which is the way a lot of people would go, but I prefer to retain the originals where I can, I also think you can repair properly for less than that sort of money. Some people with deep pockets take the easy way out.

Thats what I ended up doing, blasted the area behind until it was spotless, feathered the edge of the hole, used a modern panel adhesive (smelt like it was epoxy based) to bond new metal in from behind, then used alloy based filler to finish it off.

Over the last couple of months the front wings have been welded up, In some places aluminium cut out and new put in, in others holes just filled. you can see the results in the photos. not pretty, but it is at least solid and stable, so a skim of filler has been required. Numerous hours of applying, sanding and repeating the process, fairly happy with it now and will see what it looks like after some coats of filler.
IMG_2626
This wing had a whole new end made up and welded on.



After creating a ton of dust, we are here.

The inner wings were badly corroded and broken, so being basically flat I decided to make my own replacements. This started with drilling out all the spot welds and rivets, to separate it from the wing top.


I'm lucky enough to have access to a guillotine and bender. Which is helpful.
Pleased with the result.



Having done all this I wanted to check it all fitted back together, so have done a dry build just using nuts and bolts. A lot of the wing will eventually be held together by rivets or bonded in place of spot welds. On the new ally, I will create some fake spot welds
.[/url
The fit hasn't been too bad, some tweeking and elongating of holes where the ali has distorted and pulled.
Before spraying I did a trial fit to the vehicle, getting these aligned is always a nightmare as there are so many variables. To get this stage I had to reposition the bulkhead and do a bit of tweeking. When comparing to the factory photo the panel fit doesn't look too bad, although I do want to get the wing fronts straight and level, it really bugs me when I see vehicles with wonky wing fronts.

Congratulations on your determination to preserve such an iconic vehicle. Looking forward to seeing the various stages of progress and the ultimate end result.

What a lovely & interesting old Land Rover. Carry on the good work!