Norfolk Garage
On the one hand, rushed design and on the other, a parts-bin build
The tide’s turning against diesel, but can we convert back to petrol?
Ihave always been fascinated by very early and very late examples of the various Land Rover models. Early production vehicles often had design features that turned out to be inadequate and were hastily redesigned, while the last few off the production line used up whatever bits were left over. I have seen a very late (“B” registration) Series III 88 inch factory-painted in Stratos Blue (a Ninety/one Ten colour) and fitted with Ninety/one Ten seats which also appeared to have been the originals (and which are subtly different from the Series III County seats).
As for very early vehicles, they tend to illustrate that Solihull did not always get it right first time. Last month I wrote about a Series II which I have been asked to return to the road, complete with its crack-prone “swan neck” exhaust manifold, self-dismantling rotary air vent controls and overly complicated rear brakes. Since then, I have had another three early vehicles turn up at the workshop, all of them interesting in some way or other.
First up was what appeared on first sight to be a Defender 90, much modified for off-roading. I got in to move it and was confronted with a Series III dashboard. Huh? On closer inspection the vehicle turned out to be a good oldfashioned ‘hybrid,’ built up nearly 30 years ago when the regulations for such vehicles were much less rigorous, and consisting of the bodywork from a very early Series III (about the six hundredth off the production line) on a shortened and modified Range Rover chassis. Hybrids were very popular back then, when Nineties were nearly new and expensive, but rotten Range Rovers and Series vehicles could be picked up for beer money. They usually (as in this case) kept the identity of the Series body donor, on the not unreasonable grounds that the finished vehicle looked more like a Series III than an Range Rover. The introduction of the Single Vehicle Approval test in 1993, and the increasing availability of cheap old Nineties, pretty much killed off the art of hybrid building, and most of the old ones have rotted away by now, so it was nice to see this one, complete with the early Series III bulkhead with the silly little stubby rain gutters that channel water straight into the badly sealed top corners of the footwells.
Early vehicle number two was a One Ten High Capacity Pickup, built around six months into One Ten production and finished in Arizona Tan with door tops and roof in contrasting Limestone. I love these early One Tens with the two piece doors: they seem better-built than the later vehicles and somehow retain a bit of the old Series character. I once owned a pale green hard top of similar vintage to this one, originally V8 powered but with a Perkins 4.236 diesel fitted in the V8’s place. It was deafeningly noisy and flat out at 55 mph even with Range Rover transfer gearing in its four-speed gearbox, but would pull the side off a house.
This Hicap on the other hand would have struggled to pull a small child’s balloon on a string, being fitted with a worn-out example of the 2.25 petrol engine carried over from the Series III
into the early One Tens. This engine was coupled to the usual LT77 five-speed gearbox, with a 1.6 transfer box in an effort to give the vehicle a little more pulling power. A few very early vehicles left the factory with selectable four-wheel drive, for reasons I have never quite understood: as a catalogued option this lasted just long enough for Super winch to start making free-wheeling front hubs for the One Ten, at which point it was dropped. Most survivors have been converted to permanent four wheel drive by now, and I have never seen one with the part-time system.
The old beast has had a hard working life and needs a little fettling, but the main purpose of its visit is to replace the petrol engine with a 200 Tdi from a Defender. I acquired this particular engine cheaply after number two big-end bearing broke up and welded itself to the crankshaft: another victim of the tendency for the dipstick tube on these engines to work down inside the block and give a false oil level reading. With a rebore, new Kolbenschmidt pistons and an undamaged, reground crankshaft it should be fit for many more years’ service.
Finally, one of my neighbours bought a Series IIA Station Wagon unseen via the Internet and arranged for it to be delivered to the workshop so that I could give it an initial inspection and report back. This one has had an even harder life than the Hicap, and sports a glassfibre “Defender” flat-front conversion (once quite popular among Series owners) and a really rather awesome walnut veneer dashboard (shown left) with about twenty gauges and switches, completely covering the original Series IIA metal dash. Despite its scruffy appearance the old beast appears structurally solid with just small holes in the rear chassis rails, and the Series III petrol lump sounds quite sweet apart from a badly blowing exhaust.
Looking at chassis numbers, this one turned out to have started life as a diesel, and a very, very early IIA diesel at that – number forty-three off the production line. Returning it to anything like original specification is going to be a major challenge as virtually all the Series IIA bits have been swapped for later items – engine, wings, front panel, even the door hinges. The original instruments and switchgear are long gone and the wiring loom has been butchered beyond salvation. The first job is to get the old lady running and driving properly...