The car is safely off the trailer and it feels very real all of a sudden. The gravity of the project has finally hit me as I realise just how much work I have to do. However the horror and excitement come in equal parts and I eagerly begin noting the areas that need work and prioritising accordingly.
As mentioned in my previous post, it took a while for a suitable car to come up locally. I wanted something that needed work but wasn’t a complete basket case. I also knew what I wanted to pay having spent several months watching eBay auctions to gauge the market. The car I ended up buying (pictured below still on the trailer) had a number of merits that made it a good buy, but it was definitely NOT without issues.
The good bits…
- The engine starts and runs well. It’s a little smokey, but it’s running on 10 year old diesel and oil that resembles treacle. I intend to flush all fluids so will re-assess after.
- The chassis and bulkhead are, for the most part, solid. The only deep rot is to the forward most outriggers and rear crossmember, the latter of which can likely be repaired. Outriggers are cheap and easy to replace though, so I’m considering this a strength.
- The body panels are mostly straight and tidy. There’s the smallest amount of re-shaping to do on the off-side wing, but nothing crazy.
- The seats are really tidy, free of tears. The interior generally is also pretty good.
- It’s entirely original and unmolested, as far as I can tell.
- It drives. Sort of. You have to start it in gear (more on this later).
The not so good bits…
- All 3 doors have dropped and aren’t aligning with the frames. They do sort of half latch, at least, but these will need looking at.
- The electrics are mostly non functional. The blower motor seems to work, as do the rear sidelights, but no life anywhere else. Oh, and the starter works, thankfully!
- A few lights are missing and will need replacing.
- Every ball joint I looked at is shot and will need replacing. There’s also a heck of a lot of play in the steering and a likely leak from the steering relay box.
- It’s very gunky underneath. I think this is a mix of mud and oil.
- The door tops are rotten beyond repair and will need replacing. Bottoms can be patched.
- All the door seals are shot, as are a number of rubbers around the car, including the radiator bleed off hose, so these will all need replacing.
- The off-side front CV axle is missing.
- The clutch pedal is totally soft, so no clutch (hence having to start it in gear to move).
- The brake pedal is totally soft, so no hydraulic driven brakes. The handbrake does operate and seems to hold on a level surface, hills not so much.
Given my requirement to move it from where it rolled off the trailer without plowing through my parents’ living room wall, I figured the first thing to sort was the clutch. The seller reckoned it was just a case of the hydraulics needing filling and bleeding, so I was feeling optimistic. Naive moment #1. With my dad on the pedal and me on the bleed nipple, we followed the bleed process outlined in the Haynes manual (my first purchase of the project – I haven’t bought a single part yet).
It’s hard to tell if we made a mistake during the bleeding process or if the slave was defective, but it ended up hydrolocked with a rock hard clutch pedal. The clutch did seem to be disengaged at least, so the fact it wasn’t seized to the flywheel was encouraging. However to gain this insight I had to remove the slave from the bellhousing to inspect the pushrod. Naive moment #2 comes in here because of course the hydraulics were over-pressurised so as soon as the slave piston’s movement wasn’t limited by the pushrod, it suffered a rapid disassembly event and bestowed upon me a face full of brake fluid.
New master, slave, flexi and flexi-to-slave pipe ordered. As they say, in for a penny, in for a pound.
In the meantime, driven by really not wanting to faff around with the slave whilst the car was on the floor, we had to get it into my dad’s garage where there was a 2-post lift waiting. This was NOT easy given the hazards along the route from where the car was sitting to the lift. I’ll spare you the details, but it involved lowering it down a hill on the end of a rope attached to my dad’s L322 as far as we could and doing the finer movements into situ in the garage by hand. Pretty sure my dad and I both walked away from that with a herniated disc, but it’s done.
