One day to go!

A few more little jobs today.

I fixed the leak from the rear screen washer. The rear headlining had to come out for this job, so it wasn’t that quick a fix. Of course, to get the headlining out, I had to remove each of the four setbelt shoulder points, the interior light and speakers… Anyway, the whole length of tubing inside the rear roof section has been replaced with a much tighter and more flexible rubber substitute, and the ends have been cable-tied as tightly as possible, so it should never leak again.

I wasn’t happy with how high the spare wheel sat on the bonnet – it had a 1.25″ clearance between the lowest part of the trye sidewall and the bonnet skin, which looked a little odd (though this is standard), and also obscured the front left corner of the vehicle too much for my liking. The rubber buffers have been cut down by one inch to lower the wheel to 1/4″ above the bonnet. I have refitted the buffers, but am waiting for the PU adhesive on the top surfaces to set before refitting the wheel. The retaining ring was already too high for use with these after-market rims and I’d had to fit four rubber spacers to pull the rim down onto the bonnet buffers. With the buffers’ alteration, the ring was going to be over an inch too high. I have modified a second retaining ring by cutting 1/2″ out of the centre of each vertical section of the central bar, and then bolting through with a 1″ overlap on each side. The net effect of this is to lower the retaning ring by 1.5″. The ring used is presumably the type mae for alloy wheels – the ring sits underneath the wheel and has three wheel stud and standard wheel nuts to secure the wheel above. If it works, I’ll modify the better galvanised ring in the same way.

I managed to fettle the door seals so that they all seal correctly – not as straight forward as you might expect, given that I have fitted Defender seals to SIII panels (which have a wider seating strip with a lip for the rivet-on seals of the earlier vehicles). I still need to apply sealant to the various gaps between the hard top side panels and the roof or tub around the doors, but the weather wasn’t appropriate today.

I finally remembered to fit the large grommet to the chassis rail around the main wiring harness, so the harness shouldn’t fret. I still need to fit all the grommets to the harness where it passes through the plastic plates on the bulkhead (the black ones with three holes). I also ordered the custom front propshaft – not cheap at £175, but that’s the nature of tailor made parts. At least the UJs will be standard, so replacing those in the future shouldn’t sting the wallet too much.

I have taken a photo of my steering tracking tool – a picture paints a thousand words. It’s dead simple, and as such, cheap and reliable. It’s just a length of steel angle (in this case, the wall strip of spur fixing shelving) with two bolts at one end, secured at just under 16″ separation. By pressing the bolts against the rim and carefully marking marks on the ground where the end of the steel touches down ahead and behind each of the front wheels, you create a box of ground markings. Find the distance between the front and rear markings, then divide that measurement by the difference between the lateral markings in front an behind the wheels and you have your tracking ratio. Divide this by 60 and you have your toe in/out angle in degrees. I’ll throw my measurements in as an example:

The distance between the ground marks ahead and behind the wheels was 2720mm. The lateral distance between the rear marks was 5mm greater than between the front marks. 2720/5= 60.4 Dividing this by 60 gives 1 degree toe in.