1977 Landrover Series 3- Luscious Lisa!

So, the message I'm taking from this is that projects can be hidden in plain sight if disguised as garden ornaments. Excellent.

I'm in. cant wait to read more.

Funnily enough that was my neighbour’s reaction when I nervously asked if he’d noticed what I’d done in the back garden....

Psst; when we moved 3 years ago (bigger house for Her and the little witches and bigger garage for me) I could convince her that the garage first needed an update as this was used during renovation work for storage etc. Might also work for your garage door height?!?

Thom

Apart from the kids occasionally sneaking in to the garage for a play with their massive toy, nothing much happened for a year or so, while we got the house looking a bit less grim. I toyed with the idea of dropping the body onto the chassis of the tip-run 300tdi discovery I’d been smoking around in while moving. Fortunately, my sensible head kicked in in time and I realised this would just mean I’d have two scrap vehicles instead of one. That and I’d have had to find a 109 tub to cut down rather than using this one, so there wouldn’t have been much left of the car. Then thought about doing the same garden ornament trick in the new house, but the kids were older and a bit over it, so that got shelved. In the end, the financial manager announced that she was sick of me deliberating, and that I should just get it rebuilt. The tip-run discovery was promptly sold to fund it and I started hunting for bits.



First win was a chassis. Not perfect, not completely original, but solid and semi presentable. If there’s interest I’ll do an update on the few little tweaks that were needed:





Next, a new roof. Quite fancied a van roof but crucially, quite fancied being able to physically fit behind the wheel (I’m 6’4”) and this opens the opportunity to mod the seat bulkhead. Honestly, I’m only mentioning this to give an excuse to post the following picture of me sneaking it home:






The final big gap was in the engine bay. Last time it’d run, it had been on a 2.5NA D, but this got cannoned at the stag doo after ingesting a load of muddy water. Said dead lump had gone by the time I acquired it. Did the usual stewing of options using my head:



1. Original engine… nah..

2. 200tdi, nah, wanted something a bit different.

3. 200di, quite like the idea but I knew id want more go

4. Small but torquey low-tech diesel. I’ve had a few Fords with 1.8 TDDIs in them of turbo and NA flavour and I really like them. Don’t get me wrong, they’re loud, slow things but bombproof (don’t mention the pump!) and the torque / power figures across the rev range are broadly in line with good landrover 2.25 petrol engines (had one of those in the blue series at the start of the thread and it was ok, so maybe). However, I couldn’t find anybody who’d tried it, let alone finished it.. given the hassle, I’m not sure it would be special enough.

5. “small” petrol engine. Who doesn’t love a 1.8 zetec, there are plenty of bits floating around to make them suitable to go north / south without spending a fortune and they’ve got a reasonable shove to them.



Then I realised I was using my head too much. V8?

1. as so many people shoved them into landrovers back in the day, it’s probably not much more difficult than building an “original” landrover.

2. Yes, it’ll use more fuel, but as it’s only a toy anyway, it’s like the difference between a pet elephant and a pet rhino.

3. It’s only ever going to get harder to justify a V8 as time goes on, so conversely now is the best opportunity to actually build one with a V8.

4. One popped up on ebay with all the conversion bits for £notmuch.



Boom, another brummie legend comes home:
































Where does that leave us? Body (ish), chassis, engine, axles, gearbox, steering, leaves, but not much else. Aside from some other landrover-y stuff to re-acquire there’s a load of generic car bit-boxes that need to be ticked, the minor issue of a wiring loom and the fact that the bulkhead’s rough.. More next time.

Bookmarked, because Land Rover, because V8 and because entertaining!

Thanks! yeah i have to admit it was a slightly nervous drive home with that on the roof... and worry not, it'll be plugging through the mud one day soon (with an engine rather than the kids making brum noises ;-)

Looking forward to seeing your updates, really enjoying your progress.
Warren

The bulkhead needed a-pillar bases and their mounts to the chassis replacing, as they’d been severed during the garden shenanigans. I figured I’d get them back in place so it could support itself, do the v8 mods, then worry about the usual rot stuff later.

Started off hacking at the base of the footwell and adding some Binky-esque CAD templates:




then realised there wasn't much point trying to save the outer skin, as i needed to hack the top about too... so, in with some frech stell and off with some more of the old:









Filled some of the gaps (think you can see all the internal grimness had been cleaned up beforehand in one of the last photos)







much the same on the other side, but i'll save you the boredom of running through it all again.

Next up, needed to make the gap for the engine a bit wider, to clear the heads and manifolds. If you hunt round online, you'll find a guide from years back explaining where you need to trim the footwells to fit round a v8. I started out by following this guide, thinking it'd be a decent starting point.. As you can probably guess, it was a bit optimistic:





Now technically that could have fitted, but  the thought of the head gently tapping the bulkhead constantly didn't fill me with much enthusiasm so i took a deep breath and reached for the grinder:



















again, same sort of thing on the other side but  this post's getting same-y enough already so i'll skip that. On that note, if this one's a  bit dull with too many pics, let me know.

That leaves us with a bulkhead which fits around the engine and holds itself up so it can go onto the chassis. So next up is probably going to be the basic throw-together. That said, there's an elephant in the room that needs to be addressed before too long...we'll see.