Alpine Trip is on

Having been stone-walled with every attempt since last July at getting leave arranged for this summer’s expedition around the Alps, I finally lost patience and went over the company’s rostering department’s head and spoke directly to the Fight Ops Director (second highest man in the company). He was extremely reasonable and had it sorted within an hour, so the trip is on.

I’ll have to sort out that gear jumping fault, but other than that, the 109 is mechanically set to go. The knock from the rear may have been due to slight looseness of the spring bolts. I gave them a tweak, and everything seems happy. The new rear prop shaft has quietened down the transmission at high speed.

I found a trace of vertical movement in the rear wheel bearings, though they’re sound laterally, which leads me to suspect that the stub axles have a slight wear ridge from the wheel bearing inner races. The friend that provided the prop shaft also has a spare 1983 Salisbury 109 axle from the same donor, which had much less than 20,000 miles on it. He’s already taking the brakes off that axle for use on his 88″, so I’ll be having the stub axles and hubs. As well as being a cheap source of mint condition parts, it’ll also mean that I have post 1980 hubs and stub axles all-round – I already replaced the 1972 front axles’ worn stub axles and hubs with the brand new ones I had bought for my 1982 axle (before I bought the 1972 vehicle). These later axles have identical large inner and outer bearings, and are the same as those used on the Range Rover Classic, Discovery I and all Defenders, so they’re much tougher.

The aluminium cargo rail arrived today from Landrox4X4. I will be fitting four 3′ strips in the rear end of the tub, along the outboard edges of the wheel arches and the outer edges of the floor, to provide lashing points for securing boxes and netting to secure the loads on the trip.

I also had a play around with the pioneer tools and brackets I got from the Finmere parts sale, along with some of the remaining Quickfists. I have two configurations in mind: the first is a copy of the Camel Trophy 110s, with a shovel on one wing, pick head on the other, and the pick handle above the rear door; the other is a copy of the British Forces Wolf 110, with the pick head to the rear of the left wing and the shovel and pick handle on the bonnet. I’ll probably opt for the latter, as it provides better forward visibility from the driver’s seat, restricts access to the engine bay less, is probably marginally safer for pedestrians, and will allow me to use bolts and washers to secure the brackets and Quickfists to the bonnet, helping to support that Noise Killer noise pad on the underside of the bonnet that keeps falling off. It also means that if I really hate it later, I can just replace the bonnet instead of having to replace two wing tops.