Air Filter/Fuel Tap Links/Bonnet Lining

air filterI finally measured up and fitted the air filter. This included fabricating the brackets, moving the housing closing clips so that they didn’t foul anything, fitting rivnuts to the chassis (much stronger than self tapping) and painting the whole assembly. During the measuring up, I had to refit the left wing panel which, with the black outer skin, looked great (should have taken a photo). air filter fittedIt looks like the snorkel ducting will work our nicely, even though the 200Tdi duct is a little tight on the footwell inside the wing (footwell must be wider on Series vehicles). I also cut the left steering box support so that only the bulkhead edge extends above the bottom of the large hole – this is where the flexible pipe from Tdi duct to air filter will run.

fuel taps completedI also completed the fuel selector taps. This mainly consisted of fabricating a pair of operating linkages to connect the feed valves’ link arms to the associated return valves’ arms. Naturally, I set both valves to a matching position and measured the distance between bolt hole centres on each arm. I then fabricated the links bars, drilled them, stripped the ould paint of the material, de-burred the edges, etch primed and painted them. Then I fitted them. Bloody Land Rover! The links opened the return valve fully in one direction, but hardly at all in the other. 90 degrees of feed valve rotation was only translating to 80 degrees movement of the return valves. This was traced within a minute to the operating arm lengths – the arms on the feed valves were 24mm long, while the return valve arms were 27mm. After a lot of adjustment (not enough material on arms to drill off centre and move the holes that way) and fabrication of a second set of link bars, the taps are now fully completed and working properly.

I also repaired the original bonnet noise blanket, which I will refit to protect the Noise Killer lining and to smarten up the engine bay.

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