James’s LandRover
James’s LandRover is a long wheelbase series IIA 21/4-litre petrol
engined pickup fitted with a hard top. (phew, what a mouthful).
After spending most of it’s working life on a local farm, it is
now planted firmly in my garage, stripped down to the chassis. With the help of
Kevin, his uncle, they have replaced ALL the outriggers and plated what’s
left. James’s has since painted it with Finnigans undercoat and two top coats
of satin black. They have also replaced both footwells and doorposts. We have
since replaced the rear brake pipes (solid and hoses), rebuilt the rear
differential, replaced the axle seals and painted it.
We intend to remove the engine soon in order to get the clutch
working, this will allow us to refit the master cylinders and complete the brake
piping, prior to replacing the rear body (unless someone finds us a safari
body).
Future plans are as yet undecided. We have a V8 (possible LPG
conversion) which we could fit if an early RangeRover auto can be found at
the right price. Or a swap to diesel.
UPDATE MAY 2000
We have now acquired a series IIA diesel engine in good working
order. This, I feel is the
incentive we need to remove the existing petrol (very good condition)
engine. The reasons for
going diesel are mainly economy, but the LandRover provides us with an excellent
base for fuel experiments. We are
going to try running it (off road of course) on vegetable oil, this will
include a heated tank and some means of switching back and forth.
We also want to try running LPG. This
is a relatively new idea, basically, the diesel gets the flame going, and the
LPG then ignites, adding power. Tales
from the states talk of running the engine on tickover and then slowly adding
LPG to increase speed to between 30 and 60 mph.
Just need to work out the basics.
Feel free to keep coming back here to check on progress and drop us
a line if you feel we are slacking !
We have a few links from here. The following sites have either
helped or inspired us.
http://www.landrover.org/wwwboard/wwwboard.html
http://www.4x4now.com/4wht.htm
http://greenmini.mrbean.net.au/~rover/holden.htm
http://www.offroad-net.com/toc/
http://www.legs.co.uk/price1.html
http://www.rockcrawler.com/enter.htm
This link takes you to Dad's Series 1 page