A bar repainted

On Friday night I removed the bumper and A bar and repainted the A bar with smooth black Hammerite. Then on Saturday I refitted the grille, the bumper and A bar. It doesn't look too bad but could do with another coat while in situ as a couple of spots got marked etc when refitting :(

Bonnet cable

Well today I went to my local Landy specialist and picked up the screw nut for the end of the bonnet cable. I'd thought about using a choc block electrical connector but that would have been a bodge and I wanted to do it right! Anyway, all fitted in a couple of minutes and I now have a bonnet that can be opened from a lever inside instead of the piece of the rope I was having to use poking through the grille!

While I was at the garage then I also bought a rocker cover gasket in anticipation of adjusting the tappets sometime soon as they are making quite a noise.

New bonnet release cable

To get to the bonnet catch I had to remove the A bar and the front bumper. The front A bar needs repainting anyway as the black spray didn't key to it last time I tried to paint it and is peeling off in chunks - especially after the day offroading through mud etc. This time it is going to get a coat of smooth Hammerite which should stay put!

After removing the A bar and bumper the front grille was removed so I could fit the new bonnet cable. Old cable came straight out but was a pain to remove old broken bolt in cabin where the bonnet pull should go (was broken). New cable fitted and run through but there isn't a proper connector to attach this to the latch :( I'll have to get one tomorrow now before I can refit everything...

Parkwood (Tong) off road day

Day out offroading at Parkwood which is in Tong, near Bradford, West Yorkshire. Had a great time and can't believe some of the stuff the Landy can do!!! I started off quite sensible until I knew what I was doing. By the end of the day though I was going up/down stuff that other people couldn't manage and we'd thought were impossible in the morning :)

Bits and bats

After the problem of not being able to get the wheel nuts off before I thought I better coppaslip them all which I did. I also greased all the UJ's and took a look at the minor power steering leak. It looks like it is just the seeping from the drain plug/washer rather than the front seals so I'll have to remove and replace them soon to avoid leaving small puddles of power steering fluid on the garage floor!

More heater problems - new thermostat

More heater issues! Even though the fan was blowing on both speeds my Landy had never really got that warm. Having got hacked off with this and thinking that the temp gauge never moving more than a couple of mm was wrong I thought I better do something about it.

I thought I'd replace the thermostat first off as they are cheap and easy to do and then give the whole system a flush if that didn't work. Imagine my surprise when I removed the thermostat housing and found nothing but water in there - there was no fricking thermostat fitted!!!

Anyway, the good news is that now it actually has a thermostat it warms up quickly and sits dead on centre of the temp gauge whether in traffic or on a run. Even better than that is that the heater is now half decent :)

Hot start problem solved

Hot start problem. My Landy has been starting great when cold - I just give it 20 seconds glow plug preheater and don't touch the throttle until it fires which is normally a couple of turns. I had been worried about switching it off though as warm/hot starts seemed to take forever. I'd been out for about 4 hours (not switched car off at all) and then switched off to refuel. Got back in and it took ages to get going, was really worried it wasn't going to go at all!

Anyway, having read about somebody else having a similar problem and it being a blocked banjo bolt hole on the fuel filter I decided to take a quick look at mine. I removed it easily enough and in the side of the bolt there was what looked liked a tiny tiny hole that I couldn't even tell if it was blocked. My local Landy guy had mentioned before that these should ideally be drilled out to 1mm as apparently these engines run much better with that done. Armed with a drill and 1mm bit I did the mod and refitted the bolt. The Landy was cold and fired up fine as usual, phew!

I then left the car running for about half an hour until it was warm and switched off again. Crossed my fingers and tried to restart it and amazingly it fired up after half a turn It now consistantly starts straight up when warm with no preheater or throttle at all - fantastic!

Who would have thought such a simple thing would make such a huge difference!

Day out greenlaning

Day out "beginners" greenlaning - Maltby to Retford to Bawtry :) Great fun on a sunny frosty day but picked up a few scratches along the way on a couple of the tighter lanes. Didn't have to use low box or diff lock at all even on the slippy stuff!

New offroad wheels/tyres, jate ring, and alternator belt

I just wasn't right to still be running standard wheels that had been painted white with thin standard tyres! I managed to find someone breaking a Discovery off roader fitted with black modular wheels and 235/70/R16 Grizzly Claw offroad tyres. We did a deal and they are now fitted to my Landy - much better :)

As I'm going off roading tomorrow I thought I better make sure that I had decent recovery points front and rear "just in case". At the rear I have a pin style towbar so that is fine for the rear but at the front I have now fitted a jate ring on the front right hand chassis rail. As I tried to remove the standard recovery eye the old bolt head snapped off which at least meant I could just push the bolt stratight through and not have to undo the whole bolt thread ;)

Alternator belt - I noticed that the alternator belt was frayed so got a new replacement. Having had a look then my first thought were that it was going to be a right pain to fit as it is behind the power steering belt and looked like the fan etc would all need to be removed too. As it turns out it took less than half an hour to do :) Here is how I did it - Slackened off the alternator with the front and back alternator bolts and the two that adjust its tension. Slackened off the three bolts holding the power steering pump on and removed that belt. Slipped the alternator belt off the pulleys and then eased it over the fan so it could drop off. Then just did the opposite to get the alternator belt back over the fan (one blade at a time) until it was fully over. Then replaced PAS belt and tensioned it while tightening the pump mounting bolts. The most difficult bit was getting the new belt over the pulleys but I think that was because the alternator hadn't fully retracted on it tension adjusters.

Removing wheels

I hadn't had the wheels off the Landy since I got it so thought I better try getting them off to make it easier in future. It's a good job I did as they were rock solid and the wheel nuts had been painted over! I managed to move a couple using a 6 foot bar but in the end I managed to snap a socket extension as one was so tight!!! Rather than risk any further damage I took it to my local friendly garage where he did me the favour of loosening them using his snap on truck wrench :)

Heater fan fixed :)

Heater now fixed! :) Last week I tested the fuse (think it is 3rd one up from bottom on left hand column) and it was fine, even tested that 12v was there so had ruled this out. I just went to investigate how to bypass it as I was going to wire a switch directly to fan motor for now. Luckily I decided to double check the fuse and as I moved it then the motor came to life! After all this it was just a dodgy connection in the fuse holder! Connector cleaned up, fuse replaced, and I now have a working heater, even on both speeds!

More heater fan fun

Been investigating heater problem - The resistors are actually fitted in the heater box under the bonnet rather than the switch and is basically the box where the wires go in that's pop rivetted on. To change them is a faff as you need to drill them out and access isn't great. Thinking of hard wiring the switch in directly so heater is just on or off!