Progress At Last
With the garage build complete, Steve was finally able to turn his attention towards finishing the Ninety
WITH A semi-converted Ninety to Tdi power, a half built garage and an unfinished driveway that was so muddy, it was starting to look like a farm track, I desperately needed to get on and tie up some loose ends. What tends to be the problem is having limited time to get all of this done at once, and one job alone taking up far more time than expected.
Fortunately with better weather, I was able to complete the build of my timber workshop, along with coating the floor with grey garage floor paint. I also wanted it to have decent LED lighting and double sockets so I booked in an electrician for this. In order to install the electrics into the garage I needed a 75 ft long trench digging to lay the armoured cable from the front of the house and into the garage. As I wasn’t prepared (not fit enough) to dig this by hand I hired a man with a digger for the morning. He turned up with a 10 tonne digger which was a lot bigger than expected, and it didn’t help much that I had a Ninety in the way I couldn’t move. Fortunately, he was able to work around it, but only just. With the garage build now completed, I added the finishing touch – and topped it off with a Land Rover weather vane. My attention could now finally turn towards the Ninety’s completion.
The list of incomplete tasks wasn’t exactly exhaustive but were mostly all the fiddly bits. However, with my good old mate Pete coming over for a weekend, together we soon had it fettled. I lined up all the remaining parts we would need to have it finished over the next couple of days, so Pete got cracking. He started by neatly mounting a new cone-type air filter, which I’d bought from Car Builder Solutions to some aluminium tubing, cut to length. Some conversions I’ve seen don’t leave enough room to fit both the original air box and washer bottle in its original place and require the bottle to be moved elsewhere within the engine bay, so we opted for this setup instead.
There was one more significant thing to worry about. The 300Tdi is fitted using a Steve Parker conversion kit, mounted to the original LT77 gearbox, and the engine sits further back from the radiator than it would have done in the Discovery from which the engine came, leaving the viscous fan useless. I opted for a new electric Revotec fan, which came with the complete fitting kit. Following the simple instructions, it was quickly installed with the frame bolting to the face of the radiator, and then it’s wired up. I’m sure that the Tdi won’t get hot enough to ever really need it but it’s good to err on the side of caution in case of ever working it hard off-road or getting stuck in traffic on a hot day.
As the bonnet wouldn’t shut properly (it kept springing back, even after a good slam), I had to order a new bonnet release mechanism. The original was completely worn and no amount of grease would change its mind. This proved rather expensive as the part is now obsolete and very few people stock it. I had to pay just over £90 for a new one from PA Blanchard which I believe only fits the early Ninety, One-ten and ex-military variants.
The floor and transmission panels were also bolted back in along with new gearstick and handbrake gaiters. I also decided to replace the original Britax seat belts, which you had to manually adjust to whoever was in the seat at the time, for a modern inertia type, from Britpart. These alone have transformed the feeling of safety and the belt no longer slips off my shoulder.
A few months ago, I sourced a pair of the original type Brushwood cloth seats from ebay. These have now replaced the non-original army-type seat swabs, despite being a little bit grubby and thread bare, they again transform the overall driving experience and help with creating an original look.
Having gone over the Ninety in preparation for a fresh MOT, the only visible problem was one of the headlights had decided not to work. The bulb appeared not to have blown and the connection was showing 12 volts on the test metre. I nipped up the road and bought some spare bulbs anyway and remarkably that fixed it. We shut the doors and packed away the tools and declared it finished. The next morning was Monday so thought I’d see about booking it in for the test for that week. My local garage said: ‘no problems, bring it down now if you like and leave it with us’. So I quickly phoned my insurer, Adrian Flux, to declare the engine modification as I’d effectively doubled the horsepower, and they simply doubled my premium. It wasn’t all bad though as I only paid £92 for fully comprehensive cover.
So, off for the MOT I went and blimey, for the mile or so I drove to the garage, it sure did pull well. It’s been transformed. It briskly accelerated up to 60 mph along the main road, a speed rarely seen before the engine conversion. I honestly thought that I’d get a call later that day with a list of minor fails but much to my surprise it passed! The MOT inspector actually wrote under advisories/mot inspectors remarks ‘good condition for year and mileage’, which was nice.
That evening I rewarded it with a very enjoyable drive around the Lincolnshire countryside and that made me very happy indeed.