Thread: Series 3 Rebuild.

LandyAndy made a suggestion during his visit the other day that we should build a Jarrah dash.

Although it would look nice we decided to go with our original idea of recovering the old dash with 1.5mm rubber! Stronger than vinyl, grippy for when you put things on it and with that nice "rubber" smell it should be just perfect. Louisa has removed all the old black and cracked plastic and filled the cracks and holes with grey silicone, at first I though she was doing a bodgey job, but you know what, it's worked out really well. The silicone has filled all the holes and now that it is dry it has the same squeezyness (is that a word?) of the dashboard foam.

Tomorrow we'll be attempting to apply the rubber with kwik grip and the clasps from the original plastic.

Top work Louisa!

The silicone idea is a ripper - I await with interest the result of the rubber covering,

Cheers Charlie

Thank you Chazza for that vote of confidence. Hopefully it won't be as "bodgey" as Trav believes my work to be. It's all in the end result.

Although it did work it still had loose sections and was overtight at others. Any minor little bump from underneath was eaily visible, it looked shocking and I noticed that the smell of the rubber was not wearing off and would possible stink out the car for the next ten years.

I took it to an upholsterer. He said getting the surface perfectly smooth to apply vinyl would take several hours and cost around $300. He suggesting covering over with carpet would look better, last longer and things on the dash would be less likely to slip off. Cost $110, I'll post photos when I pick it up.

Originally Posted by TJWA

Although it did work it still had loose sections and was overtight at others. Any minor little bump from underneath was eaily visible, it looked shocking and I noticed that the smell of the rubber was not wearing off and would possible stink out the car for the next ten years.

I hope you bought Louisa some flowers after you wrote that!

Got my custom tank mounted with brackets today. I tested it by jumping on it, it's not moving anywhere! Just need to pull it back out, leak test it again and paint it now.

I've cut rusted sections out of the bottom dash board and pop riveted new metal in it's place. Its then off to the trimmer to be recovered.

It's a while since an update so here's a fill in on what's been happening.

I have to get the green LWB S3 running and operating soundly before we take the Discovery off the road otherwise we'll only have the Porsche to drive around in.

I spent several days working on the brakes, pulling apart drums and rebuilding slave cylinders. I replaced the master cylinder and vacuum unit as well. No matter how much I bled the brakes I could not seem to get the air out of them. I talked to a local mechanic who said Series brakes were well known for this and said he could cure it with a vacuum bleed system he had. I booked it in for the next week.

Then... the unthinkable... well no actualy, it is a Series so anything is possible. The starter motor **** itself. I didn't want to muck around with anything second hand so I ordered a new one straight away for the holden 6. It arrived and I went to put it in. I noticed the two bolts holding the old one had become loose....I tightend then instead of changing it out and low and behold it started fine again! No problems!

Another two days later and the starter motor had popped again :-(
I took a closer look. The two bolts that hold the starter motor in had popped out again. I proved this by tightening them again then starting it repeatedly until I saw the starter motor pop out! On inspection I found that the two threads had been heli coiled. Because of the limited space I could not repair the problem so I made the decision to pull out the gearbox.

After removing the gearbox I found the alloy adaptor plate (Mark's Adaptors) had crossthreaded at some stage so heli colis were fitted. Now the thread holding the heli coils in had threaded also! I went to my local bearing shop and found the biggest heli coil I could get which would accomodate a bolt with the smallest head. If you go too big with the head of the bolt you can't get a ring spanner on because of the gap between the bolt head and the 186 wall. I found a UNC bolt achieved this.
After fitting new heli coils to the adaptor plate I fitted the new starter motor. It now starts fine again.

Now this conjured up another dilemma. The Series gearbox was on it's last legs, there was no second gear and it sounded like every bearing was about to fail. I decided to fit in the gearbox I had already built for the SWB S3 which is meant to be the subjet of this thread. The start of another dilemma.

You'd think that swapping a Series Gearbox from one Series to another would be a sinch, not in this case. I learnt that an original 6cyl box and a 4 cyl box have completely different clutch assemblies and bellhousings so I would have to change them over.

After pulling them apart everything looked as though it was interchangeable. I finished the good box with it's new 6cyl parts then went to reassemble the bad box with the 4cyl bits, then a problem hit. The 6cyl mainshaft extension that fits into the clutch and flywheel would not fit through the 4cyl clutch assembly because there was a spiralled groove along it's shaft. I realised this was becasue the 6cyl mainshaft and clutch assembly, instead of using a plastic type seal like the 4cyl, used a long metal sleeve around the spiral groove on the mainshaft. To make things seal on the good box I would have to use the 6cyl main shaft extension with the 6 cyl clutch assembly.

I pulled apart the good box again. To them find the two mainshafts had gears on them with one tooth difference. After much investigation I overcame this by swapping the layshaft gears around. I now have to wait for a new mainshaft bearing to arrive before proceeding further.

I also decided to order a high speed transfer case and fit it while it was all out.