Preparing for a Holiday

My family and I are going to France for a camping holiday this summer – nothing as adventurous as last year’s trip, but it’ll be a fun and relaxing break. We’ll be taking the 109, so I’m doing a few little jobs to make sure it’s ready.

It have given it a service, and while I was dealing with the oil filter, I attended a small weeping leak from the oil temperature sender. The only way of doing this was to remove the sender and use a thin smear of RTV sealant on the outer portion of threads, keeping the inner threads clean to ensure good electrical conductivity. The weep has now stopped, so the mess around the bottom right corner of the engine bay should stop.

I then set about sorting out the engine mountings. The new chassis had been built with standard SIII gear box and left engine mountings, but had a 12J/19J right hand engine mount to allow me to fit any of Land Rover’s 2.25 or 2.5 four cylinder engines. Unfortunately, this right hand mount was fitted 13mm too far aft. This caused a twist in both engine mounting rubbers and pushed the engine and transmission back about 8mm aft of where it should be, while also putting undue strain on the mounting rubbers. It also put the turbo charger elbow closer to the left foot well, resulting in light contact and noise when applying high engine torque in low gears.

To modifiy the chassis would be very difficult and would ruin the galvanising in the local area, so I decided to alter the engine bracket. I removed the right bracket from the block and fitted new rubbers to both engine mountings. Next, I slackened the transmission mounts and pulled the engine and transmission forward so that the three standard mounts all sat correctly. With the engine in the correct place, I fit the right side rubber and engine bracket to the chassis and marked the block through the bracket’s bolt holes. This allowed me to accurately measure the misalignment.

The bracket was removed again and taken to a local and very helpful metal engineer (Chaucer Engineering, Bedford). He filled the existing bolt holes by welding in some discs cut from steel rod, ground the welds flat and then drilled new holes in the necessary position. After repainting, the bracket was refitted and tightened. High tensile socket head bolts allow for the proximity of the holes to the side of the bracket. For £10, I now have engine mountings that sit the engine correctly. Hopefully, it’ll stop the turbo charger/down pipe contacting the corner of the foot well and stop that annoying noise.

The bonnet’s release catch had become very stiff and finally jammed, so I set about finding the problem. It didn’t take long. The bowden cable has seized near the front end. I could just have replaced it, but it would likely have failed again quickly – this one only lasted a three years from new. I had already refurbished a pair of MoD/Camel trophy style bonnet clasps that had been given to me by the guys at Rogers when the broke an ex-MoD 110 to canabalise it for spares. It made more sense to fit these than repair the catch. These are fitted to the bonnet and wing tops with stainless bolts, with the measurements for the bolt hole positions in bonnet and wings taken from an MoD 110. The hardest part of the job was using the Dremmel to grind the chequer plate pattern flat where the catch bolts to the wing top. Before bolting them down, though, the pick-axe head and bracket were removed from the left wing top, the sourroundings and wing top vents all masked (and the rivet heads too) so that the wing top chequer plate could be sprayed with matt black enamel (this was needed, regarless of the grinding, because the curved section at the front seemed to be wearing through its powder coat). I left the bonnet latch mechanism in place, removing just the faulty cable and the bonnet pin, so the system can be very easily and quickly refit if required.

I have just replaced the bushes on my rear TI Console (Heystee) parabolics with genuine “Polybush” polyurethane bushes. I don’t generally like the idea of polyurethane bushes, but have been forced into doing this because the eyes on one of the springs had become slightly loose on the standard metelastic bushes, allowing them to move under loads. This made some awful noises and occasionally could be felt through the chassis. Paul Heystee has advised me that polyurethane bushes are not so sensitive to spring eye tension or dimensions and that they will cure the problem. They should allow the springs to continue to give excellent service – they have been fitted for twelve years and still have not sagged or started to lean. There are huge variations in cost and quality of polyurethane bushes, so be careful what you buy!

Replacing the bushes on the faulty spring was very easy, and was done without removing the spring from the axle – the eyes were loose enough that the bushes could be drifted out with a hammer and chisel. Replacing the bushes on the other rear spring was much more difficult, requiring removal of the spring so that I could take it to Rogers of Bedford to use their 30tonne hydraulic press. That gave the added complication during reassembly of getting the axle to locate properly on the spring, for which I had to pull the axle forward using a ratchet strap. Still, the rear springs are now done. Weather and work permitting, I’ll do the front pair tomorrow.

Once the bushes are done, the next job will be the gear box. I’m replacing the selector shaft seals with some that I have made up from 5/8″ heater hose and a piece of rad hose (for the bigger diameter reverse selector shaft). These will be thicker and tighter than the standard seals, which are always loose from new, and plasticise and harden quickly, causing significant leaks from the top of the box. I’ve had enough of the drips on the driveway and of having to so frequently top up the gear box.

While I’m at the gear box, I’ll be separating it from the engine and shifting it back so that I can remove the bell housing, followed by the main shaft, so that I can re-shim the third gear. There is a small amount of excess end float on third gear (about 0.2mm too much) which causes the gear stick to move 5mm or so when fully depressing or releasing the throttle. It doesn’t cause any problems, but it’s an imperfection that annoys me. A lot.

As soon as the gear box is done, it’s on to the “nice to have”, rather than important, job fitting the rear anti-roll bar. I may need to drop the rear fuel tank in order to drill the bolt holes for the mounting brackets – the upper and forward holes are ahead of the tank, but the rear hole is overlapped by the tank, so drilling that hole will be difficult. We’ll see. I’ll make sure I take plenty of photos of that – several people have been asking for details of how I’m going to do it.