SHED: 1988 LAND ROVER 110 PERENTIE

MESSING WITH WOODY’S MORNING COFFEE IS ONE STEP TOO FAR.

CAFFEINE is the capital letter, comma and full stop to my daily grind. At risk of sounding like a complete tosser, I even go bush with freshly ground coffee and a pneumatic espresso machine. So it’s kind of fitting that coffee was involved in the diagnosis of my latest Land Rover ailment.

A rarely touted feature of the Land Rover Perentie is the Steyr rifle butt cutouts between the front seats. They actually make excellent coffee cup holders as they are deep enough to stop lateral movement as well as being angled back to prevent my freshly brewed latte from pitching forward into the footwell.

After finding the lower half of my morning-commute coffee soaked in transmission fluid while winding my way to work, it became immediately clear that I needed a new rear output shaft seal. You see, the rifle butt cutouts have little drain holes; so while the Perentie’s handbrake drum had filled with transmission fluid which was now being sprayed around the underside of Landy in a fine mist as the tailshaft rotated, this fluid was now seeping up through the drain holes and consequently desecrating my morning brew.

Cue Land Rover oil-leak jokes… I considered tackling this job myself, except a couple of factors came into play. One, my tool kit is pretty much made up of the kind of cheap crappy tools that have a habit of rounding off/and or splitting when used in a harsh manner. Second, this truck spends a lot of time at the beach, and even with a lot of diligent Lanotec-ing, stuff underneath has a habit of rusting into place. Those two factors alone would’ve probably seen me with broken knuckles and buggered spanners.

So back out to MR Automotive at Redcliffe my Landy went. And while

I was at it, I thought I’d complete the Maxidrive axle upgrade process I’d started last year. The fact that I’ve been wrestling with some wiring issues and currently had no windscreen wipers or headlights didn’t rate a thought. You can’t put 35-inch tyres on wiper arms! It’s a matter of priorities.

The wiper and wiring issues are most likely a result of me taking the truck for an unplanned dunk in a lagoon on Moreton Island last year. The resulting bow wave rolled up the windscreen, through the bulkhead vents and saw my wife and I driving down the beach with both doors open to drain out the gallons of brackish swamp water and reeds. Yep, she’s a keeper. The wiper motor is probably now a solid block of rust.

I thought my headlight issue was a burnt-out light switch, but once replaced I still had no low-beam lights. I have a long and not-so-proud history of throwing parts at problems before being forced to use my noggin. I may have to dig out the multimeter on this one.

But, hey, I’ve now got heavy-duty axles front and rear along with heavy=duty drive flanges and oil bath hubs all ’round. And the plan is to eventually go for 35s because … well, just because.

The 31-inch Mickey Thompson MTZ P3s the Perentie is currently sitting on are wearing pretty well and are a great choice for beach driving, though for an all-terrain they do have a definite offroad bias (noise, on-road traction etc.). They suit me down to the ground, so the new shoes may be a while off yet.

I’ve now got to get my butt into gear and fix all the small stuff, as we’ve got a trip planned. Busted knuckles ahead.