1954 Long Wheelbase Land Rover Series One Prototype Station

Awesome work bookmarked

What I am about to embark on perhaps requires a little explanation.
On the production version of these station wagons, the windows in the rear passenger doors were sliding as modelled on my old truck here.


But originally the prototype had fixed windows like this





These doors are all split so the glazed tops can be removed from the rest of the door, in the same way as the front doors on a series one land rover. Rover kept LRSW107/4 up to 1960 as a factory hack, used for carting visitors around and very early on the prototype door tops were swapped for production ones. I have seen a photo (but don't currently have a copy) of king George with it in this state. My aim is to return it to how it looked in the early photographs and so I need to recreate these early tops.
The simplest way in theory would be to convert the existing tops, however I don't want to do this as they are quite rare in their own right and I want to keep them as an alternative option. One friend of mine has suggested putting the production type one side and prototype one the other, to demonstrate the difference.
To modify them is not just a case of cladding them in an aluminium panel and glazing them, the bar at the bottom is too high to allow for the correct size of glass, plus the the rubber glazing strip. In addition the profile of this bottom bar would be wrong as it did not appear for another year.
I decided my only option was to convert some early front door tops, which fortunately are quite plentiful as I would need four of them.

These window sections are of very thin steel and comprise of one pressed part to form a Toblerone shape which is then spot welded to a flat section to form a box, Once the frames were manufactured the were galvanised. Whilst I cleaned up all the outside edges I could not efficiently clean the Zinc from the inside, a combination of zinc contamination and the thinness of the metal, meant that even on the lowest setting with the mig, it would just blow holes. Fortunately we experimented on off cuts first.

Years ago dad used to do a lot of brazing. This was before mig welders and he couldn't get on welding thin stuff with a stick. I dug out the old brazing touch and hooked it up to the old arc welder and gave it a go. Fortunately it doesn't seem to generate the magnetic fields that welding does (my heart rate didn't pick up dramatically anyway) so it's something I can do for myself. The brazing worked well, was not troubled by any zinc contamination and after brazing the frame together and subjecting it to a bit of bending and twisting abuse in the vice only one joint fractured which I remade.
I know brazing does not have the strength and penetration of welding, but even after linishing it held up. The frame isn't going to be structural and will have an aluminium panel wrapped around it, so hopefully will be fine.


Here the main frame has been done and the extra bottom bar (part of another old door top) is being prepared to braze in. The flux is on ready. The final frames cam out well. Initially when placed on a flat surface there was a bit of twist, but a couple of strategic cuts in the back side of the frame, which were then brazed up delt with that.









Yop right is the production door frame, the other two my concoctions, just marking out here to drill the holes for the anti-crush tubes that the door hinge bolts will go through.


Backside of frames. This side will largely be visible inside the vehicle when completed, the otherside hidden by the ali panel. Once galvanised they should look ok.




Anti-crush tubes salvaged from the old door tops ready to go in.







Job done, now all that remains is to shave 1/4 inch of each external side of the frames, due to the pin position making the whole frame wider. With gap margins being what they are on these old Land Rovers I might get away with out doing this, but I also have to consider the ali sheet wrapped around it which will further increase the width by another 4mm. I don't want to have to take metal off once they are galvanised.

As a thought you might find you can use a inverter mig welder, they don't generate anywhere near as much of magnetic field as the older transformer types.

Thanks for the tip, something to look into for the future.

homersimpson as you rightly point out, it can't be King George, I took the info I was told at face value. This is another poor quality image I have of the same event. My vehicle is in the background to the left and in the original you can make out the registration number SNX547. The chap in question is next to the bowler hatted chap (one of two in the photo) who I was told was police protection.

the door top re-manufacture is fantastic

Superb find with the Pathe video. We found the company that looks after the Pathe footage to be really helpful. Managed to get a full resolution version of the footage we needed without having to pay the broadcast cost, still had to pay but fairly reasonable. I can dig out the details of what version they called it if you are interested.

Completely agree on it being worth the effort to remove the galvanised parts and redoing them. Some very good restorations are let down by painted galv trim. Might as well do it right once.

Would be very interested in those details please Raumer . I see they do stills at £120, but if I can get that price down it would be helpful.