Thread: My 88" Series 3

Just a couple of 5 mins job's left to do Tim

(TBH I'm still too scared to make a "To Do" list yet!)

Cheers,

This is a great thread Tim. Thanks for sharing and putting so much effort into it,,, but not only the thread, I'm sure your grandfather would be extremely proud of your will and determination for this project.

Thanks very much Chops! I used to pester my grandfather endlessly about pulling things apart, the SIII included! It's only taken about 30 years, but I finally got my way I think he would be happy with how it's coming along, although he would shake his head in regards to the money spent!

For me this thread is a two way thing, it does take effort to remember to photo things, and post up all the bits and pieces, but to be honest, without the support and feedback I don't know if I would have kept on with it so much. So thank you all!

Cheers,

Also, the pile, it grows!!





Cheers,

Having decided to buy a Series ourselves, I find I am going through many threads in this section, both for information and just curiosity I suppose. Having had a S3 SWB Ute as my first 4x4 nearly 30 years ago, I thought having gone to Disco's I would never be back. Then we bought the new Defender (Puma), which sparked not really an interest as such, but it got worse

So now we have our own, there's just so much to see and relearn etc. Just love these threads.

In my bid to put off doing any body work for as long as possible I thought I'd have a look at the steering box:





With the top off:





And all stripped down:





Bearings are a bit ropey :C








And 2 of the mounting points are cracked:





I have another box from the 109 I stripped, but this has a hairline crack on the steering box as well, this one on the mounting point for the bottom plate that holds the worm gear bearing:





I don't know if I can get away with using this one, or if I should get it welded, or replace it. Any advice on this would be much appreciated.


The wear surfaces on the fork(s) are not perfect, but quite serviceable





Cheers,

As the steering-system is also a safety-system, don't be tempted to use cracked components.

Find someone who is a guru at welding aluminium and ask them if it is worth fixing; I suspect that finding a better box will be cheaper and easier,

Cheers Charlie

Hi Charlie,

I'll drop into the local engineers next week and ask about welding the casting, however if it looks like they are going to have to put a lot of heat into it to weld it, (because of the oil), I'll probably bin it.

Back to the body work... The car has been repainted at some stage with what I'm guessing is Acrylic. This top coat is really unstable, I can even scratch it off with my finger nails. I have tried some paint stripper on a test piece, (the bit that sits between the guards, in front of the radiator), and while the stripper removes the top coat, it doesn't remove the original paint. Unfortunately, it does soften the original paint making it to soft to sand.

Its a bit hard to see in the picture, but the original, (still glossy), paint can be seen where the spare wheel mount has been removed on the bonnet:





I'm really not sure what I am going to do with the bonnet, as I will have to remove all the rivets to sand it properly. I grabbed some of the smaller pieces to sand back and prime. I'll stop by the painters next week and see what his advice is.





The primer/sealer I'm using is a 2 pack ISO free type, I'll see what the painter says about these bits, I would like to do most of the prep work myself, (one to save money, and two to do it myself), but if the primer is not up to the task I don't want to make the situation worse.





Cheers,