Got My Lightweight!! Stay Tuned for Project Updates and Plenty of Questions!

[jac04]

I had a few more hours to work on the tear-down.

Here is the engine & transmission coming up....


... and out.....


...and into its new home, which is on 6 swivel casters to make it easy to move around the garage...




Almost gone:

[telwyn]

Great buy! I'm new to this forum (never noticed it before on RoversNorth), but glad I found it. Heck of a project you have going. Look forward to following your progress.

Lots of Rover folks over on www.ExpeditionPortal.com with a great forum there as well you may want to poke around.

I have a 1982 Land Rover Lightweight - here's a site with my pics and modifications. Lots of ongoing work as well.

http://web.mac.com/eelwyn/Pokey/Home_Page.html

Good luck!

[jac04]

The front axle ass'y out from under the old chassis:

A little surgery required to get the steering relay out of the chassis:

The old rusty chassis finally out of my garage:

Now, the long, tedious task of restoring every little piece and slowly re-building this vehicle from the frame up.

[SafeAirOne]

Hmmm.....You've been working on this for what....a month or month-and-a-half now and you've disassembled a lightweight so that there's no original part left that's bigger than a bread box. You've ordered and received tons of new parts. I'm presuming that you've gone to your regular job during this period...

I'm really curious--how the heck did you find the time to put up Christmas lights on your house?

[jac04]

I'm presuming that you've gone to your regular job during this period...

I knew I was forgetting something!!

In reality, most of my time spent working on the Rover is between 8:30pm and 1am. We have a 3-year-old daughter and a 2.5-month-old son, so that's the only time I have.

[rwollschlager]

In reality, most of my time spent working on the Rover is between 8:30pm and 1am. We have a 3-year-old daughter and a 2.5-month-old son, so that's the only time I have.

hmmm so while the rest of us are dreaming of rebuilding a land rover, at that time you actually are!

[jac04]

Yes indeed. Like right now (10:20 pm) I just finished the first coat of paint on my engine & trans mount brackets. Between coats I will be sandblasting various other parts and prepping them for primer.

[jac04]

I got the benchtop sand blast cabinet fired up. Here are a few pieces that were heavily rusted. They have been blasted with a fairly coarse media. I will switch to a fine abrasive for final clean-up before painting.



Here are my finished engine & trans mount brackets:

[jac04]

I finally unpacked the rebuilt transmission and got it installed.

Now THIS is what a rebuilt assembly should look like. Everything has been cleaned & painted as required and all hardware/covers have been re-plated.





At home in the chassis:

[BackInA88]

WOW that is looking sweet!!!



Steve

[Tim Smith]

A thing of beauty!

[SafeAirOne]

Very nice---You'll be done in no time!

It's your project, so you can, of course, do anything you want, but I secretly hope you don't restore it to the point that it'll never see dirt under its tires again. As you know, a rover yearns to be on trails and in the woods and fields, and fording streams and climbing hills...

[jac04]

It's 12:15am Saturday morning, which means I just finished up a few things on the Lightweight and I'm getting ready for a solid 4.5 hours of sleep. After sandblasting the steering relay, I installed new seals and primed & painted it. I also did the steering relay arms and a few pieces of the e-brake linkage. I plan to send a bunch of the little stuff & hardware out to be cadmium plated, so it got the blast treatment as well.



The drying room:





SafeAirOne- I hear you. Well, the plan was originally to give everything a quick "once-over". I must have some addiction to restoring things, because I just can't seem to put a part back on the vehicle without really doing it "right". I just want to make sure that all this hard work will look good & perform well for years & years.
I promise that the body will not be getting a real restoration. It will most likely get stripped before paint (only because the paint is flaking badly), but I don't think that I will bother with any real body work. I certainly don't want this one to get to the point of my 63.

[jac04]

Here are a few pics of the pintle hitch broken down and partially cleaned-up. The pins, clips and hardware will be sent out for plating:

[Tim Smith]

Something tells me that you won't be needing a hammer to open and close your pintle, like some of us do.