Boing (Part 4)

The final frontier ... not space, but the Front Anti Roll Bar

Katy didn't have a Front bar so a whole fixing kit was needed

The first part was fairly easy - undo the Drop link and bolt on the bracket. only one problem the bolt at the front would have had the nut just half on so we decided that a new shiny longer one would be better.

Then as we would be needing the spacing to decide where to fix things the next job was to assemble the bar and fittings loosely. This is the new 25mm bar in all it's glory, and the last time it will be clean

The bar was held in place with the front drop links and a bottle jack as you can see. The kit came with rivet nuts (more about that later which needed holes so we set off and drilled them

Unfortunately we discovered that the rivet nuts were just not going to work on Katy's Chassis.

The chassis has been plated with extra re-enforcing along it's full length as part of the strengthening to create a 127 chassis. It made the section too thick, and probably meant we could have actually tapped it and screwed straight into it, but we'd already drilled larger holes than would have been wanted for that so

After consideration of whether to go and try and find some even larger rivet nuts and tools (and the cost and delay) it was decided that the best option was to weld these brackets in place as they were never going to be moved anyway

Luckily Steve is a wizard with a welder so all I had to do was sit back and take pictures of the nice pretty sparks whilst waiting with a water spray just in case (Katy leaks oil and we were not going to be able to clean it all up)

So here it is in place, just a job of going over all the nuts and bolts and tightening them all up

So hopefully that's the end of the suspension upgrades. The improvement has been significant already and I feel that it's been really worthwhile.

The cost of the whole exercise has been about £1200 as. I've gone for high end components that should really stand the test of time. I've learned a lot I'm a lot more confident in being able to work on the suspension should we have any trouble again and most importantly the driving experience is already significantly improved so I can enjoy the view out of the window rather than worrying about every bump in the road

Waxolyling

This is going to be a long story. First of all you gather the tools and set off into the adventure with a great deal of optimism - I mean how hard can it be to wax a Land Rover ?

According to all the instructions available you warm up the Waxolyl in water before using it and if necessary thin it with white spirit (which is also good for cleaning things as you will see later)

Whilst that is warming up I popped around the front and tried reversing Katy up onto some ramps I'd borrowed - unfortunately I gunned it a little hard, shot backwards and with no-one to tell me how far to go I misjudged it and ended up going over the back or the ramps and jammed them under the chassis (oops!)

No problem I thought I've got a good jack so I'll just lift her up a little, free them off, and take them out.

However the jack wasn't tall enough so I got a log from the log shed, which worked perfectly as you can see below.

Well actually what you can't see is this is after I've removed the first of the 2 ramps and discovered that the combination of log + jack at minimum height is taller than the gap up to the chassis when not held up by a ramp. This combination is therefore well and truly stuck !
  

So this is where Log & Jack number 2 comes in useful - I had to get an old scissor jack out of the garage and use that to lift the chassis up just a little so I could get the bottle jack out. I( have to say that this was a good lesson in the different capabilities of the 2 jacks because the bottle jack lifted her easily and the scissor jack was hard work

Having learned from the first side I put the scissor jack in whilst the bottle jack was still under and then released that one first and just lowered down on the less capable scissor jack.

On with the job then and the first discovery is that all this warming the stuff up was a waste of time it's still like goo and sprays awfully. So I go indoors and do some more reading and people talk about thinning it down so I take a dollop out of the can, replace with white spirit and shake madly - this time the stuff sprays OK so I start on with it

Apart from the nozzle on the sprayer blocking quite a few times I managed to get the job pretty well done, well at least I thought I had until I took these pictures. You see it's really black under there now and I didn't want to take a torch under as I was a bit messy by then, as you can see later. So I'll need to go back and touch up some bits

All in all however I have about 12 litres of Waxoyl applied and I'm letting that coat go off before I try any more as it's too sticky under there just now

Also at this point Rhian had come home and I needed to spend about an hour cleaning myself  as you can tell by this picture that she took. The 2 kids cycling past the end of the drive just at this time almost fell of their bikes laughing at the state of me.



However even though I do have some more to do I am congratulating myself on another job of improvement well done and no worries about going out in the snow and rain this winter


Update... I had this message from a friend (John Perriment who is a superb photographer http://www.johnperrimentphotography.com/)

 Waxoyl? Didn't know you could still get that, what a blast from the past. I'm afraid I laughed at your predicament in overshooting the ramps and getting the jack stuck! Still, it's a job well done. At least Katy shouldn't rust anymore during the winter - and neither should you, judging by the state of that photo!

Thanks John!

Kindred Spirits

I have for a while thought it would be good to join a Land Rover club to meet like minded people and get some more sources of excellent advice

Recently I went to the Tredegar House Classic car show and I think I might have found some suitable nutters, I mean Kindred Spirits

Fancy using a classic car show to replace the chassis of your land rover ?

Well these guys did... and here's a view of the old chassis looking not too bad actually

And here's a picture of the new one looking all shiny and galvanised before all the rusty and oily bits go onto it

I suspect that these guys may well be worth having a beer or two with

It also reminds me that I need to get on with Waxolyling before the winter sets in