Thread: What did you do on your Landy today?

Originally Posted by max.contador.96

Hello guys. I'm looking at buying a 1976 III Landy and need a hand finding a reputable mechanic in Brisbane area Qld. Apologies if I'm in the wrong area of the forum.
Please pm me.

Welcome to the forum

Leading ones include:

MR Automotive at Redcliffe
British Offroad on the Sunshine Coast
Rovercare at Slacks Creek

but there are others. Hope that helps.


Sent from my GT-P5210 using AULRO mobile app

I recently bought a decided that the sun-faded and cracked plastic grille on the front of the county had seen enough of South Australia and had to go. After a bit of investigation, I decided that none of the off the shelf upgrades that would fit behind the thin bulbar were much to my liking for one reason or another. The laser-cut stainless option was tempting but the reduction in airflow was a concern, especially given that the county is an air-conditioned model with the HVAC heat exchanger immediately in-front of the main radiator.

I briefly looked into getting a nice bit of interweave, heavy gauge stainless mesh cut to size and trimmed with some laser-cut plate but knew it would be a pricey bit of bling.

The solution that I settled on was a non-genuine (I think) copy of the original part. At less than $80 including shipping from Tasmania, it made the most sense and I knew it would fit without any issues.



Here’s the old (right) and new (left) side by side. The new appears to be ABS plastic or similar is a glossy black finish.

Given the placement of the screws holding the grille to the radiator shroud, I initially thought that I’d have to remove the entire bulbar to get the grille off. Fortunately, I discovered that unplugging the spotties and tilting them forward would make enough wiggle room to take the entire shroud up and out.

With the shroud out, it was simple enough to unscrew the old grille with the giant-arse posidrive bit from my ratchet set that I thought would never be useful for anything.

Tip: At least one of the captive screw chambers built into the (fibreglass?) radiator shroud was turning in is it’s hole. If you take the whole shroud off it makes it easy to put an adjustable spanner on the back of them so you don’t accidentally break any more of them.


The old grille was intact but very fragile.


The shroud got a quick wash with soapy water and then a bit of a tidy up with Isopropyl alcohol to get some mystery-gum off the top.


The original shroud was damaged when my mum showed a tree what’s what on a wet, clay-topped road. This one is actually off of a red County - you can see the original paint coming through the cracks in the sticker. Might have to get a new decal for that.


Fitting the new grille to the shroud. There’s that big-arse posidrive bit. In a socket.


The new grille on the cleaned up shroud, ready for re-fitting.

While I had the front off, I decided to shift the air horn trumpets from next to the alternator to the space between the AC electric fans. I used a bit of 12mm wide steel strap with four holes drilled in it to mount the trumpets and ran some fresh 8mm vinyl tube to the compressor.


I had quite a bit of 10mm split cable protector lying around so decided to see if it would fit around the air tube. Hopefully, this will stop it kinking or getting distorted by heat form the radiator too quickly.


After finding a few of these rattling about the place, I decide to check the all of the spotlight wiring and replace anything suss with new wire and terminals. Everything from the relay to the light then went in split-cable protector.


Whilst re-mounting the air horn relay, I found this paleolithic washer pump that no-one has ever bothered to remove. The new washer pump was hanging from the radiator mount by a glasses retaining string . It’s a wonder it wasn’t wrapped around the alternator pulley.


I decided to mask over the edges of the new grille before refitting the shroud to avoid scratching it on the bulbar. This did the trick but also led me to identify the aforementioned mystery-gum as duct tape adhesive. More isopropyl sorted out that little mess.


The new grille with air horns behind and freshly checked spotlight cables.


Not that you can really see it…

Along the way I did a bit of cable archeology and found that the CB antenna coax was still in place along with a PA speaker, under the right wing-top vent, likely last used in the mid nineties. The clean ends were hiding under the carpet in the cab.

It inspired me to dig out a little CBE UHF that I bought from my bro when he got his remote-head unit and mount it on the front of the centre console. I’ll be replacing the coax as the engine-bay end was actually brittle with heat fatigue.


Whilst fiddling with the centre console, I decided to remove some old, broken phone-holders and re-carpet the tray.


It was easy enough to pry the tacks out of the old lining and use the cardboard bits as a template for some fresh marine carpet. Will add a photo of the end result later.

Also, those scissors in the last photo are $3 from Bunnings. Solidly built and sharp as buggery, even after trimming old, sandy marine carpet. Just need to keep them either oily or dry to prevent them rusting.

Pt.