Pandemic perfection
Lockdown needn’t be all doom and gloom. Alisdair Cusick looks at a dream Ninety built during the Covid-19 restrictions of 2020
IT is November 4, 2020, and there’s a strange mood hanging over all of England. Across the country, people are rushing about, hurriedly sorting all the jobs they need, to keep them and their loved ones contented at home for the next month. In London, the Prime Minister is, this very afternoon, seeking agreement from the Members of Parliament to pass another lockdown order, due to start at midnight tonight. After 12 noon, the country is under national restrictions once again. Further north, unaffected by all this hustle and bustle, two people are high up, in the glorious open scenery of the Peak District moors, looking at a beautiful 1986 Ninety. Whilst the rest of the country is uniformly occupied with the imminent second lockdown, LRM is here to sneak in the latest cover shoot at the eleventh hour, neatly dovetailing the new restrictions. For whilst the rest of the country may be about to shut down, our cover star was built during the last lockdown.
The man behind it is Nick Weatherby, from Staffordshire. A joiner in his family luxury coach conversion business, he already had one Ninety, an ex-military one. He didn’t particularly want another Land Rover, which is why when a phone call from a friend about a local Ninety for sale wasn’t on his radar, certainly not in a virus-induced national lockdown. Not interested, he declined, hung up, and carried on working. Mind casually wandering, he thought about it, realising he’d pass it on his way home. “I ended up nipping in, buying it – and giving the seller a job at the same time,” says Nick.
A relatively tidy car, the Trident Green Ninety already sported a recent 300Tdi and replacement bulkhead. The plan was just tart it up and sell it on. “I’m not very good at that,” admits Nick. “If I start something, I like doing it right.” He’d only driven it a couple of times, before one evening it went into his garage and the roof was removed. “I thought I’d start cleaning bits,” says Nick. Come the weekend, the car was down to a rolling chassis. The plan was just to get a half chassis, make a repair, and rebuild the car to sell. Previously owned by an engineer, the car had received some repairs in the past – a crossmember, many welding repairs – but as Nick points out, with a bare chassis, you can see everything.
Roll on a few weeks, and Nick was at XD chassis, collecting a new galvanised frame for his car. “A couple of weekends later, and the car was sitting back on its rebuilt axles again,” says Nick. Not one to waste time, he’d stripped both axles, after having them blasted, welded in new diff pans on the rear and replaced a few brackets, before painting them in epoxy and rebuilding them. New AP calipers and EBC discs and pads up front, the rear axle was on original-spec drums with fabricated copper brake lines all round.
When it came to the health of the ex-discovery 300Tdi, a brief drive confirmed everything he needed to know. “This is a good engine, it was so sweet I didn’t have to do a lot,” insists Nick. “I just can’t make it smoke, it is brilliant.” Knowing this, remedial work was merely crank seals and belts, plus normal service jobs and a repaint. “As far as I know, the Ninety is on its fourth engine,” he says. Coincidentally knowing the previous two owners, Nick knows the earlier owner stripped it on his drive, trying to put an early Transit engine in. The car ended up having a 200Tdi, which was how it was bought by Nick’s seller. “That ended up snapping the crank, and so this 300Tdi went in only about a year ago,” says Nick.