Project Landrover the third

The Landrover, a reliable car. There was only one big problem, a problem ever since I had the car, the mounted 4 cilinder Diesel engine is not powerful enough, to be honest sometimes it was driving me mad. The car is equiped with a four speed gearbox and overdrive. The overdrive only worked downhill or with a strong wind from the rear, especially after I put a roof tent and a storing box on the roof rack. On dirt tracks the engine was perfectly alright but on paved roads especially in Europe it was a nightmare, not to mention towing a trailor. What to do. There were not many options. Selling the car and buying another one was out of question. The car is what I want to keep for the travells. The only option left was putting a more powerful engine into the car. But before we start with the engine buisness there were a couple of other things I had to do. Nothing mayor though but still it had to be done.

Let us start with the wooden box on the roof. This box was build last year with all sorts of left over plywood boards. It did a good job but the rain in Belgium was not doing it any good. And the wood was not protected anyway, so after a couple of month the whole thing started to fall apart. Luckily in Olen/Belgium I could use wood and all the machinery to work it. I used birch plywood for the outside and oak wood for the frame. I reckon this time it will last much longer. The whole thing is protected with three layers of oil used on boats. I reinforced the edges with aluminium. At the old box there was a lot of damage caused by branches. One of the problems tarvelling with a relativly small car is always the space inside the car. To win some space I figured out two things could be done. The cupboard for clothes could be extended all the way up to the roof and the big gas bottle could be replaced by a smaller one. No sooner said than done. I built the cupboard extension and the mount for the gas bottle with birch wood as well. It is amazing how much more space there is in the car after these changes, it is much better.

What I did as well was placing three gauges, one each for oil and water temperature and a voltmeter. Especially oil and water temperature are very important. The wood work were actually the jobs I did during a couple of weekends in Belgiums. All the other jobs were done in Spain. When we talk about Spain. The weather was not on my lucky side. We had a lot of rain, and in Spain we are not prepared for bad weather. The work is mostly happening outside, so the rain was slowing me down quite a bit . Anyway, back in Spain the first thing I did was going to the MOT. Having this done I replaced the suspension shackle plates with longer ones to give the car more ground clearence. And than back to engine. The engine I wanted to put in the car was taken from a Landrover Discovery. I heard from people they had put this type of engine in a Landrover Series III so I knew it was possible. First the engine itself. Friends of mine in France were scrapping down their Discovery and by coincidence they mailed me to ask me if I wanted the car and as a matter of fact I did. On the picture on the right is the car were the engine is coming from. Before I placed the engine in my car I overhauled it.

It got new pistons and bearings, new seals, the head was skimmed and the valve seats regrinded, a new cambelt and tensioners, a new fuel lift and a water pump, new head bolts, yeah, that´s pretty much about it. Overhauling the engine took me three days, interupted as well by the rain. After three days the engine was sitting there waiting to be put in. But first the old one had to come out. While the engine was off I took advantage of fixing some wireing. Than the engine itself. It was not easy. You have to imagine this engine was never built to be fitted
in an old Landrover Series III. On the pictures above left, the old engine is coming out, right, the "new" engine getting into the car. I was not planning to fit the Turbo charger which the engine is normally equipped with. For two reasons. The first is the torque which might be too much for the gearbox and the second is the space in the engine compartment.

This is maybe something I am going to do later, maybe next year. The almost only part which was fitting straight in was the clutch. To start with, the engine had to sit on it´s mountings. I was cutting both engine mountings brackets in the middle and was rewelding them in the right possition. A big problem was the bell housing, which had four studs in a different possition. I was drilling wholes putting threads and even made the bolts myself. Next problem were the manifolds. Both of them didn´t fit at all. At the end I made a couple of angles out of flat bar steel and used the original studs to fix them. I will not bore you by telling you every single problem I had, I´ll give a quick list what needed to be done. Throttle cable, cooling fan, fuel pipes, aircleaner, the batterie holder of one of the batteries, electric wireing, altinator bracket, not to mention all the tiny bits and pieces like connections, pipes, hoses etc. All in all it took me two weeks to get all the problems sorted. Sometimes I thought:"What have I started here", but than on the first test drive I knew it was worth it. I thought I am driving a different car. What a change. I couldn´t believe it. I should have done this already 10years ago. I was going uphill in forth gear where before I needed second. What I had to do after the first test drives was putting a colder thermostat and a different throttle cable which at the end I made by myself. One thing I have to say about my now custom-made car. I made all this possible with a very small amount of money. Sure, the easy way would have been to go to the shops and just to buy what was needed. But in Africa there is one thing which always stayed in the back of my head. The possibility to lose the car.

 Be it by accidents, mecanical faults, robbery or even worse. So, the reliability is out of question but the amount of money spending on a car is not. So I tried to find a balance between the both, reliability and costs. We will see in the future if it was a good choice. The picture on the left side shows the engine when finally everything was fit.
So far the engine, the next problem was the gearbox. Since a couple of month I couldn´t use the overdrive anymore. It was just too noisy. It was howling like hell. And the main gearbox and the transferbox were leaking oil. I found a gearbox in Granada. Same typ, 4speed gearbox with overdrive. Only the overdrive was a spanish built Toro overdrive which has the double size than the old Fairy one. I took the risk off putting the whole gearbox into the car and had a dissapointing result. Everything was fine but the second gear did not hold. It was jumping out all the time. There was no other solution then taking it off again and break it into parts. At the end of the day I broke both gearboxes into parts and used always the better parts of either to built one good gearbox. For example one gearbox had a bad mainshaft, the other one had bad synchro rings etc. It took me five days and a lot of thinking but than I had a nice working gearbox with new oil seals and gaskets. The gearbox sounded very good which means it didn´t sound at all, and that´s exatly what I wanted. No jumping gears, no howling, great. The picture shows the fitting of the gearbox. It had to be removed or placed through the right hand side door.

The drive unit done I could turn all my attention towards the welding. I decided to put a third jerry-can at the back of the car. So like the others I used flat bar steel and welded a holder. Second was the awning. I had one but maybe you remember the Landrover was hit by a lorry at the mauretanian border and the awning took most of the impact. I had exactly the same one than before but I wanted to have a different fitting. One more thing I had to do with the welding equipment. The bracket for the spare wheel on the roof needed an extra metal bar to be reinforced. The rear springs, I can´t remember how often I had them taken off to put more layers to get more ground clearance. This time I made it different. I put some new extra heavy duty springs and on top of it I reinforced them with two extra thick layers. Now we are talking. 100mm more ground clearance. I almost need a step to climb into the car now. Ok the suspension is a little bit stiff now, but rather stiff than too weak. Changing the springs I saw the suspension mounting in the car frame on the left hand side was gone. So, it needed changing which is always great fun. They need to be cut into two parts with a metal saw and than still they refuse to come lose.
Happy to have the main work done I was looking forward to go for some expanded test drives, I mean the engine had at least to run in a little bit before I could go on the journey. Not to mention all the little things they still could brake down or had to be improved, redone or changed completly. What I wanted was a good running engine to avoid trouble driving in Africa.
Apart from fixing the car, I decided to go with different or better equipment on the journey than last year. What I was really missing the last time was an air-compressor. On sand or soft ground it is best to release tyre pressure. That´s easy done, but what to do after hitting solid ground again. Exactly, a compressor is needed. After some researches I bought a solid not too expensive compressor which has to be connected directly at the battery. What else, GPS. The last time I did not have a GPS what so ever. People were recommending T4A which means tracks for Africa. T4A only works on Garmin GPS equipment. Ok, I bought a Garmin and the maps, but to be honest I was quite dissapointing. Most of the tracks I am planning to take are not on the maps. Looks like the money was not well invested. So far the preparations were more or less done. Yeah , sure, dirt tires needed to be back on the wheels, but actually the car was ready to go.

The link underneeth will lead you to Picasse photo gallery.
https://picasaweb.google.com/106213480355655195189/LandroverTheThird