In 2015, whilst working as a head sailing instructor in the Royal St. George YC, I purchased my first car. A Land rover 90 first registered on the 3rd February 1986 from Leeds in the UK. I had no previous mechanic expereience or knowledge. The car had seen much better days, the original chassis was badly rusted and needed extensive repair works done to it. The rear body tub had rotted through at its mounting points to the chassis and where seatbelts were located. The engine suffered badley from con rod kncok and needed a rebuild. The body had been poorly resprayed, all doors needed to be replaced, the wiring was in tatters and the main bulkhead needed repair work. But the car ran and drove so I used it that summer doing enough to keep it on the road.
At the end of that summer, on my way back from a sailing event in Cork I broke down and the car needed to be towed home. A modification to the exhaust had failed and needed a new exhaust. As I was going back to college, I did not need a car as much and knowing that my car was in areally poor shape, I decdided to do something about it. At the time the car looked and sounded more like a tractor. So I decided to do a full rebuild of the car.
I began by completely stripping the car of every component until I was left with a bare chassis and a mountain of worn out car parts. This was the lowest point of the project, The condition of the car meant that it more or less fell apart as nearly every nut and bolt had been rusted to the point that it needed to be cut away. The first milestone to keep me motivated was to get to a point where I had a rolling chassis. The first step was to get the chassis restored so I began by getting it sandblasted, all the rotten areas replaced with fresh metal, new rear cross member and then I got it galvanised. This means that the chassis will be impervious to rust for over 30 years.
Whilst the work was being done to the chassis, I stripped the axles, repainted them and rebuilt the wheel bearings with all brand new components. I restored the old suspension components and added new springs and dampers. I then assembled the rolling chassis.
Once I had a rolling chassis, I went about getting the bulkkhead restored, orgnaising body parts for a respray, sorting out the engine and gearbox.
Brushing over a lot of the details, it remained to install the rest of the body parts, put in the carpets and make sure it all worked. The actual list I was working on was much longer, you only realise how much there is to a car when you decide to take on apart.
Once I got to a stage where I had what resembled a car, my mechanical expertise became apparent. The engine was very unreliable however everything else more or less worked as it should. I had replaced the engine with a second hand engine which I managed to get for a very reasonable price, however I did not know the history on the engine and it had beeen sitting for some time which meant that the injector pump was not working correctly. The diaphram which controls the amount of diesel going to the injector operated by the turbo boost pressure had rotted away. I got the injector pump rebuilt and ran the engine for a few months where it failed again. This time I had a catastrophic oil leak due to a faulty oil pressure switch. This warranted the engine unserviceable so it called for a total rebuild. This was the most rewarding part of the project. I had an as new defender but an old and tired engine. I got the engine block rebored, pressure tested and skimmed, replaced the freeze plugs, replaced the crankshaft with a remanufactured unit, got the cylinder head rebuilt and got the turbo charger remanufactured.
Since the engine rebuild, I have completed 5000 miles through Europe. This did include breaking down and trying to camp in Monaco to name the most climatice breakdown of the trip.
