Ex. Army Series 3 GS 109 6 cyl 2.6ltr - Never Say Die

Cleaned up the air filter.

It was a bit battered and bent, having been dropped some time in it's life.

Had a fair bit of manky oil in the reservoir, mixed with grass and seeds.

Dropped the lid and rusted components in a citric acid bath to let the magic happen.

Cleaned the mesh with lots of engine degreaser to remove the old oil residue and tweezers to pick out the grass.

Knocked out the dents in the lid with my new leather beater bag. I suspect there's too much sand in the bag.

The air cleaner came up a treat and I like the patina'd look.

From memory the recommended service interval for the valve clearances on the 2.6 was every 5000 miles.
Given it was such a marathon job to get at the exhaust tappets they were often overlooked and this resulted in burnt valves.
I believe the issue was more prone to the engine when fitted to a Land Rover, as the Rover sedans had a different shaped exhaust manifold with the exhaust pipe flange centered, not positioned nearer to the front cylinders, so the exhaust fumes/heat got away a lot better.

Cheers, Mick.

Great info Mick88.

Valve clearance adjustment pretty well makes every service a major one IMO given that panels need to be removed etc etc.

I won't be doing a lot of KM's when Regie is finally road worthy, so I'll probably do one service every year and check them as part of that process.

Now that I've done it once, it should be a lot easier / faster next time....

Still, not as much of a pain as my first car - a 1950 Ford Prefect with side valve motor. From memory, no adjustment was built in, it was basically remove and hone.

During Regie's time in pasture, he acquired a few dents and scrapes.

So, armed with a little knowledge gained from Youtube, I thought I'd have a go at making the dents a little less dented.

A couple of the dents penetrated the side of the tub and were fairly deep. I managed to knock these out, finding the aluminium rod really useful to punch small areas in the dent; the hardwood timber great as a dolly and straight edge, and the big hammer - especially the ball end to give lots of heft to bash the metal into shape, particularly in the curved area of the tub. Some of the sheet aluminium stubbornly refused to return to their proper profile until they received some quite heavy blows.

All of the dents are around 1mm deep now, so really happy with that. For the dents that didn;t penetrate the side, I won't even bother filling and painting. I like the look of having a few scars.

With the dents that penetrated the side of the tub, I'm thinking I might rivet / sikaflex a patch over them - so it looks like a patch, rather than aluminium weld (of which I have no experience nor the tools to do) the splits (or JB Weld I've been told) and apply a thin skim of filler, paint etc to hide the damage.

First thing this morning I squirted some diesel around the steering relay.

After removing the air cleaner bracket and arms attached to the relay, I thought I'd see if it had any oil.

I removed a top and bottom bolt on the relay (the little Whitworth ones) and nothing drained out. Yikes.

So after dinner I thought I'd have a go at extracting the relay from the frame.

Initially I put a 20T jack under the relay and jacked away. No movement other than the front end of Regie lifting off the jack stands.

Time to get serious.

I grabbed an 'I' beam off cut from my scrap pile and a 2.5T strap. Wrapped the strap around the front cross member and positioned the jack under the relay.

Started jacking and waited for a bang. I could hear the timber pad between the jack and the shaft of the relay crunching as it was crushed. I was just about to release the jack and replace the timber peice with something harder when I noticed that the relay had moved up 5mm.

Could it be that easy? So, I kept jacking and watched as the relay slowly emerged from it's home.

The housing in the chassis had a little rust, but nothing to worry about. A small wire wheel on the cordless drill and a screw driver to chip off the flaky stuff and it cleaned up nicely.

Dissembled the relay using the bag method as per the manual. The parts look to be in great condition, so I'll track down some new seals, clean up the relay, paint and reinstall later down the track.

After a basic clean of the relay body, I test fitted the relay back in the chassis housing and it goes back in and out very easily now.

At least the bits look oily, even if there is not enough to run out. And there does not seem to have been water in there.

Yes, well spotted John. It spat oil all over the inside of the bag when I knocked the central shaft out. The oil was really gooey, but no sign of water which was extremely grateful for.

The spring is under spec so I've ordered a new one along with 2 new seals. The rest of the parts look great.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dordie

Yes, well spotted John. It spat oil all over the inside of the bag when I knocked the central shaft out. The oil was really gooey, but no sign of water which was extremely grateful for.

The spring is under spec so I've ordered a new one along with 2 new seals. The rest of the parts look great.

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If the seals are from a LR supplier don't waste your time fitting them.
A bearing shop will be able to get quality seals.

Colin

Ahhh, ok. Thanks for the heads-up Colin. Will do.

After dinner I had a great couple of hours with my son working on Regie.

We decided to bite the bullet and remove the driver's side guard.

This allows easy access to clean and paint the front chassis, remove the steering box / shaft and a host of other jobs. I also want to have a go at knocking the guard and headlight panel back into shape.

Lots of dirt fell out when I removed the steering box cover, mostly from a wasps nest. There was the usual spiders webs in abundance.

Most of the bolts and nuts played ball and un-did. The screws with nuts mostly put up a stout fight, but eventually gave in or broke.

We also drained the oil in the steering box. About a teaspoon of water came out and a lot of honey coloured oil, so it will be interesting to see the state of the steering box internals when I strip it down. The water was clean and I'm hoping it entered the top of the steering column when I picked Regie up from Wellington, as it rained all the way back to Sydney. Finger's crossed...

After seeing how easy it was to remove the front guard, I'll be pulling the other guard and the radiator support panel soonish.