SIII firewall into county?

[cal415]

Gday All,
The county i recently purchased has some nasty rust in the firewall which i am not to keen to fix, it is also the model without vents, So i am looking at the possibility of putting in a SIII firewall. I have a good SIII lined up for some other bits (LPG gear) and it looks as though the firewall is in top condition. Can i use this in my county? will my county dash etc fit in? how big a job is it?


Thanks,

Mick.

[scrambler]

I loiks yer thinkin. Never seen it done, and even the Series 3 V8 (Stage 1) and County firewalls differ. There are differences in the front panels, transmission tunnel. I would think the dash would be straightforward because the dash right through to the '06 Defender is just a modification of the Series 3 dash.

[JDNSW]

I've never heard of it being done, but they are basically the same item - you could expect to have to make a number of modifications, particularly to the engine bulge and transmission tunnel fitting - but these bits of yours are probably quite good and could be cut out and fitted complete.

John

[dobbo]

Does anyone know is there anywhere in Aus you can get refabricated firewalls? With the amount of people doing restorations there would be a market for them.

[isuzurover]

Gday All,
The county i recently purchased has some nasty rust in the firewall which i am not to keen to fix, it is also the model without vents, So i am looking at the possibility of putting in a SIII firewall. I have a good SIII lined up for some other bits (LPG gear) and it looks as though the firewall is in top condition. Can i use this in my county? will my county dash etc fit in? how big a job is it?


Thanks,

Mick.

You probably know this, but swapping a firewall is a HUGE job. Would likely be a lot easier to fix the one you have - as long as it can be done in-situ.

If you do go down the swap-route - I recommend galvanising the donor, so you never have to go through it again.

[JDNSW]

Does anyone know is there anywhere in Aus you can get refabricated firewalls? With the amount of people doing restorations there would be a market for them.

As far as I know nobody is doing them locally. Problem is that while a lot of people are doing restorations, there are nearly as many different firewalls! (Series 1 - at least three major variants, Series 2/2a at least four variants, Series 3 - three major variants) - consider for example four cylinder, six, diesel, V8. Not sure how many 90/110/Defender variants there are, but I suspect there are several.

A further problem is that some bits of them require either a lot of handwork or press tooling - in Series Landrovers the bulkhead was the part that required more tooling than any other bit of the body or chassis.

The UK market, where there are, I believe, a few variants available, is probably at least ten times the size of ours - not only is the population much larger, but the number of Landrovers per head is much higher.

John