1981 BL Land Rover Series 3 88" – Bad Decisions

This is not an easy read. Hope it comes/came good for you.

You sound better than a lot of people who work on Land Rovers at least you tried to get all the bolts back in !
Looks tidy with the galvanised Chassis etc. Probably wasn’t a bad investment over time either.

Sure the story gets better over time !
James

Part 2 – "temporary" Diesel power



While I was trying to deal with my head gasket/sheared rocker bolt/bottom end irregularities I was still needing transport and a towing vehicle. The head gasket blew in May ‘07 but by August I’d decided I needed to get a “temporary” vehicle to tide me over rather than getting on with fixing the thing! Realising that the standard Series Landy wasn’t quite what I was needing I had the first sensible thought I’d had in a while; “a standard Series didn’t fit my needs”. This was quickly followed by a more in character daft idea; “I need to get a Series with a bigger engine!”



Unfortunately, this was 2007 and there were lots to choose from. In the same week I checked out a Stage 1 V8 pickup but it was way too rusty and another Series 3 88”, both within a couple of miles from my house. The 88" was a late model 1983 Series 3 fitted with a mighty Perkins 4.203 diesel engine. That would be the same Perkins 4.203 made famous from its use in tractors and forklifts. The seller was letting the landy go as his wife refused to get in it and had gone and bought some Suzuki or something! Crazy we both thought! Her loss was my gain though so I handed over a wedge and drove off with the Landy (really slowly).


I thought this new Series was the dogs doodas, for the first few weeks anyway. My girlfriend, who also had to drive it, thought slightly less so. It was ridiculously noisy, you had to shout to any passengers while the engine was running. It was ridiculously dirty, covering your hands in black oily/sooty mess after driving, no matter how many times it got cleaned. And it was also ridiculously slow, 55mph was absolute top speed, you could have driven it off a cliff and it would have still topped out at 55. Acceleration was so slow that I learnt to flash artic lorries back in after they inevitably overtook me.


Gas flow optimised exhaust manifold 

It was also hopelessly unreliable and broke down regularly. The wiring would fail, it would spring leaks and the gearbox had features like no first gear unless you were already rolling. All this sapped my time from fixing the original Landy. I did some longer trips and these really eroded my love for the vehicle, the noise was the killer! Best wiring fault was when the battery +12V lead fell off the starter motor and had a go at welding in the engine bay. As the engine was all mechanical it kept running though!




I ran this Landy until February 2008 when I took my Car and Trailer (B+E) test. I booked an intensive 2 ½ day course during which the instructor and I did 300miles of driving in and around Aberdeen, all while we went deaf and the Landy slowly gassed us with a leaking exhaust manifold. The morning of the test my instructor abandoned me in the street outside the test centre while I took the exhaust manifold off and tried to reseal the blown gasket with exhaust paste and tinfoil. I managed to survive/pass my test, even the super challenging emergency braking part, and drove back home. There was something not right though, on acceleration the gearstick was moving back and forward like it wasn’t connected right and on braking there was a horrible scratching/grinding sound.

Once back home I opened the bonnet and found the engine and gearbox mounts must have snapped and the 4 garden trowels attached to the water pump pulley that make up the cooling fan had kissed the radiator!

That was the final straw, I closed to bonnet and didn’t use it again! That was two dead Landy’s on my drive...


Here was it getting a trailer load of tyres stuck.  I'd collected these tyres from my local garage as a favour (so they didn't need to pay for disposal) in return of getting a lend of their car transporter trailer.  

Lookjs like a load of scrap tyres en-roue to a local sileage pit, in order to hold the covering sheet in place. :-)

Love it! Looking forward to more of this story.

Also keen to read more.

Well just like the subject of this thread life got in the way and derailed my thread! Back on it now with "Part 3 – The V8 minus 2"


I’m going to wind the thread timeline back to the end of the first post, November 2007, when the Petrol Landy was running but in a bad way. I wasn’t sure where to go with it, the original engine would easily have been repairable by a competent mechanic but I’d still not get the magical performance out of it that I wanted. That would also require me to actually ask for help as well - I was much more of a stubborn, struggle on with it myself kind of person.

I started thinking of engine swaps, slightly better than tractor spec diesel engine swaps though! I had friends tell me to put a V8 in it, fuel economy wasn’t any worse than standard but way more power. To make things easier I actually had a rover V8 with twin SU carbs from an old Ranger Rover that my dad had swapped out for a tractor spec diesel a number of years ago. What I didn’t have was any of the other bits or any clue of what those bits were and where/how they fitted. By now I’d also realised I didn’t have the skills to pull off a job like that either.

A couple of weeks later I was back looking thought the Scot-Ads paper again and spotted an ad for a Series 3 fitted with a Ford Essex V6, again not that far from home. It was listed as a trials machine with no tax or mot, priced as "offers". I skipped over the detail about it being a trialler and started looking up info on the Ford V6 conversion. Digging up details on the net showed it ticked a few of the requirements, I wouldn’t have to make major modifications to the bulkhead or chassis and it was a relatively decent match to the Land Rover with lots of torque. Youtube had a few poor quality videos of Essex's with short exhausts that sounded really good too, those video's pretty much sealed the deal. The thinking was if this had already been converted then it would have all the bits required to get the engine running in my first Landy, and my near scientific level of research all pointed at this was the right engine for the job.



This is where I need to insert one of those Guy Ritchie travel montages from Snatch, except replace the phone with a Motorola Razor, the whisky with a cup of tea and the plane with my smoky diesel Landy slowly and noisily trundling off with a transporter trailer.





After a very slow trundle back home I unloaded my new purchase and gave it a run. It was battered, the chassis had a bent rail, buckled outrigger and the wrong rear cross-member, which was also bent. The body work was also battered. Apparently the previous owner bought it unseen off ebay and it arrived with a roof held on with tie-wraps and rubber hoses used as exhaust joints. He’d used it for trialling but said it wasn’t really competitive against the army of Jimneys so was punting it. The engine ran alright but the gearbox was stuck in 4x4. There is no central differential on these things so after having a hooli round a field I struggled to get it manoeuvred into the workshop as the tight turns required had the front axle jumping and making horrendous noises as the front wheels tried to turn at the same speed as the rear.






The vehicles were in different sheds at this point, 2 miles apart. The transplant was going to be done in my small 1 car garage at home while I kept the Lightweight in a field at my mum's and planned to remove the engine in the shed there. Enthusiasm was high, I set about pulling the 4 pot first. After battling a lot of rusty and siezed bolts the front bodywork came off and I got my brand new engine hoist in about the engine. This part wasn't too difficult, there were quite a few extra self tappers used to hold the floor panels and the original screws and clips were all seized but the excitement of V6 noises was driving me on. This was all new to me at this point so lots of head scratching was required to figure out how things might come apart. I had a few good ideas like I was smart enough to put the nuts/bolts and screws into labelled jars. To balance out my smart thinking I inadvertently worked myself into a bit of a hole as I had driven the Petrol Landy engine first into my relatively narrow garage. I'd now pulled it’s engine out and realised I’d not thought about how I was going to get the old engine out the garage and the V6 in...






Back with the Lightweight I did the same thing, drove it into the shed engine first. This time I I'd thought about it, I needed to get the engine under the block chained to a roof truss. Afterwards I'd pull the carcass out with my surviving Diesel Landy. The condition of the Essex wasn’t really causing me any concern at this point, it was just a bit muddy right?!. I found some right proper “lateral thinking” had been applied to the install. The air filter was held on by the bungee going over the engine bay. Under the pancake filter a tin of dried baby milk with the bottom punched out had been attached with pigeon poop to the carb filter plate. The bottom plate of the air filter had a large section cut out of it too, must have been to improve air flow of something! The crankcase breather/oil catch can was a Stella can with some very carefully and neatly punched holes in it forming a little grill. The builder obviously put some effort into the install! Floor panels, engine accessories and other parts were held in with a mix of roofing bolts, tie wraps, dried mud, sand and gravel but as I was now a seasoned Landy engine remover I knew where to look and got the whole thing pulled out in an evening. I dragged the Lightweight out with my Diesel Landy and planted in a field.




I dropped the Essex onto a twin axle trailer and headed round to my garage. As soon as I arrived I'd realised I'd snookered myself even more. There wasn't room to park the trailer on the street and unhitch so I had to park on my drive. There wasn't any room there to unhitch either and not be left with a trailer in the way of the garage or a Landy in the way of the trailer so I ended up pushing the Petrol Landy by hand at least 5 car lengths (on gravel) before I could snake the twin axle trailer in past it and into my garage. I then snaked the trailer back out and went to drop off the trailer. Who needs power steering! I returned with a couple of old tyres, roped these to the bumper of the Diesel Landy and used it to shunt the Petrol one back into the garage.




I now had all the components need for the swap in one place. The internet informed me I had to cut the battery tray out and move the engine mounts back a couple of inches before the Essex would slot in. I was a dab hand with a grinder but advanced noob level with a stick welder so I set about making the required adjustments. The thick chassis plate was forgiving enough to weld to but I was determined to get proper textbook welds, despite my lack of experience. I spent way longer than was probably necessary perfecting my welds. Up till this point I'd only done welds on pieces lying flat on the deck with lots of easy access so welding vertically in the engine bay was a bit of a step up. Also as I was working on a relatively new, galvanised chassis, I took special care not to gas myself!

This is where things started to stall a bit. I spent ages practicing my welding on bits of scrap as I wasn't happy with the first attempts on the chassis. After a number of weeks I finally satisfied myself that I could get a decent weld and finished the engine mounts and the Essex was ready to drop in.

Part 4 - The Best 4x4 by Far 

I'd had some reasonable distractions while trying to get the engine bay prepped for the Essex install. It was during this time that the Perkins engine in my Diesel Landy decided to make a break for it. I was getting pretty bummed out with all the time I was having to spend trying to keep these vehicles on the road. My girlfriend was about 7 months pregnant at this time and was probably worried I was going to make another poorly thought out purchase. She seized the moment and suggested we go look at a new 4x4...….at an actual car dealership.

We went to a local 4x4 dealer and had a nosey around. There was a short wheelbase Defender that I was interested in but after a look over I realised it was about as knackered as the junk I already owned. It also cost more than all 3 of my previous purchases put together! Everything else was either too expensive or too not a Land Rover. The girlfriend found a medium sized Toyota that was reasonably priced and said she’d like to take it for a test drive. By this point I'd given up the fight so we returned to the showroom and pointed to the Toyota (a Hilux Surf), the salesman gave another employee a nod and proceeded to distract us of several minutes. Eventually he let us leave the showroom where we found the other employee at the Toyota with the bonnet up, a battery, a jump pack and another truck running, all connected with jump leads trying to start the smaller yota. This looked like my kind of car. We went for a test drive, returned and put down a deposit. That Toyota became my favourite car for a number of years but something didn't quite sit right at first. I sold it to myself by thinking; I hadn't bought a Toyota, I'd just upgraded every part of my Landy with Toyota bits.




Back in the shed I thought I'd better have a wee keek inside the Essex before I threw it in the Landy. Stupidly I'd not covered it up while all the grinding and cutting was going on and it had a thick layer of grinding dust on it, with no cover over the carb inlet. The rocker covers came off to reveal an absolute mess of emulsified goop. The oil in the sump wasn't emulsified so I thought it might just be a build up of condensation but I decided I'd take the inlet off to clean out any stray grinding dust and while I had that in bits I might as well take the sump off and clean that out. While that was off I thought I'd pop the heads off as I'd bought a full gasket kit anyway. Over a number of weeks and then months I ended up with the whole thing stripped to the block.



A friend at work told me to pay particular attention to the big end bearings since he'd had trouble with his V4 version of the engine back in the day. Right enough the bearings were all well worn with large amounts of the bearing surface gone. No issue, I thought and ordered a set of new bearings and did absolutely no other checks whatsoever to determine the condition of the crank.




This camshaft bearing looked like it had a chunk out of it. I ordered new bearings but realised I couldn't fit them myself. For the first time I looked for specialist help and took my block to a local engine builder to get the new bearings fitted. I only took the block, cam and the bearings, not thinking about taking any of the other parts, like the crank, to get inspected at the same time.




Along the way I'd found someone on a Land Rover forum looking for a smaller steering wheel. I had a Montney one fitted in the Petrol Landy that I wasn't that keen on and he had a Leyland car one in his. We agreed to an exchange and each popped our wheels in the post. The Leyland one was a little bigger but looked a bit naff. I wasn't going anywhere soon so it would do for now!

After quite some time I got my block back from the engine builders and went into full rebuild mode. I slapped in the new bearings, oiling everything up on the way. Not once did I measure anything or check any tolerances, just chucked it all back together! Everything turned over alright when the bolts were torqued up so I cracked on. By June 2009 I had this lovely looking future train wreck all assembled.

Thanks, annoyingly I had parts 5 and 6 written up but I've managed to delete them by mistake! Be a couple of days before I get it written up again!  There are/were quite a good few Landy specific forums but the quality varied massively!  Out in the wild I've only passed 3 or 4 series on the road in the last year or two, I suppose they weren't the best lockdown transport!