Ed Evans Talks Technical
The perfect way to approach a rebuild
“The trick is to keep your enthusiasm ticking over by doing one small job a day”
I’ve just spent four weeks doing bits and pieces to my Series III rebuild without any significant progress. In the same period a (retired) friend stripped and rebuilt his own Series III and drove off in it. That would be seriously frustrating, if I didn’t have a plan. The advantage of devoting a block of time to a rebuild and working at full tilt is that there’s no time to lose parts or forget how they go together. The disadvantage is the pressure of needing to get the project finished before that reserved block of time expires.
The more common approach is to complete the project over a year or two of evenings and part-weekends, integrating it with work and family. The timescale means that taking notes and photos during the strip-down is essential to avoid time-wasting head scratching during the rebuild. And parts need careful labelling and boxing so nothing is lost. Losing one special screw adds the time of sourcing, ordering and waiting for the replacement. It’s the little things like that that fill your head with stuff to remember, when the job is supposed to be straightforward.
But even this longer-term approach becomes stressful if work or family commitments step up a gear so there simply isn’t time to keep all the balls in the air. Sometimes the project just has to be put on hold – the Land Rover won’t deteriorate or become more complex (provided you’ve made the notes and taken the pictures) whereas work and family will suffer if they don’t get enough of your time.
This was my situation while my friend was completing his rebuild – suddenly, other commitments meant I had no time for my Series III, and I stopped the project, almost. The trick in this situation is to keep the job (and your enthusiasm) ticking over by, say, doing one small job per day. That might be simply fitting a windscreen frame, or even just getting the spanners and the seal ready to go next day (when I finish working on LRM today I will bolt the radiator in tonight, no more than that). By doing ten minutes each day, the job moves on, you stay in touch with the project, and everyone else is happy, too. And when life settles down again, it’s all still there, ready to go, and you haven’t forgotten where you were up to.