It's been a long time since my last update - busy times at work, cold and or wet weather and short days all conspire to slow progress and - since my last update I have done painfully little really..
I decided to have a go at the leaking bottom pulley seal - necessitating a front end strip and rebuild. In the end I didn't renew the seal - just cleaned up and re-seated the pulley. Hopefully that will sort it.. I am not truly sure whether I actually tightened it up the first time I put it back - it certainly came off easily with the rattle-gun this time.. I am hoping that it was loose and that's why it was leaking - I guess time will tell.
Welding the footwell and the body-mounting that is part of it and the inner wing, turned out to be a bit of a nightmare - in the end the whole area forward of the sill body-mount was replaced and rebuilt like a patchwork quilt. Now that I have decided to scrap the Disco I will cut the footwells out of that for future use rather than have to do this again. One problem with what I have done here is that I assembled the rubber mounting before welding it (so that it was correctly located), but I put the 'top-hat' washer on the bottom. Don't know if you can visualise that, but it means that I now can't get the rubbers out without cutting out the mounting or lifting the bodywork. I certainly had to be careful welding it in - lots of wet rags and air-line usage to keep the rubbers cool..
One totally avoidable delay is that I have decided to use the through-bulkhead connectors from the Disco in the RRC too - at the moment that means at least 36 well made joins (18 wires) to be done in the loom - however I will probably be putting more wires through these connectors soon. There are 33 wires available (or 40 if I get another plug for a socket that is not used) so there's plenty of scope. These appear to be a very effectively sealed type of through-bulkhead connector and they just have to be a lot better than passing wires through grommets! I commend them to the house - or anyone else doing electrical mods!
Work still to do:
The wiring (mentioned above).
Welding two straight-forward holes in the front of the inner wing - each about fist sized - no problems expected there (famous last words?)
Weld all along the inside of the nearside box-section sill - the outside is all done but the crawl-about-setting-fire-to-yourself inner face is still to be done..
Squirt bit of black gooey stuff on all the (now) rusty metal I have welded on it.
Get the fuel-tank breather fitted (I'm taking it all the way to the snorkel) and then fit the rear floor - which could be a bit of a pain actually, because the two supporting ribs (top-hat sections) are very weak and the corrugated aluminium is corroded through in multiple places and needs patching with multiple bits of the same I robbed from a scrapper a while ago.
Then there's the brakes. From what I have noticed while moving around the car, I think that three out of the four are ok, but I will only really know when I strip them. I am hoping that whatever I need to replace will be available and in decent condition on the Disco.
Recently - after once curing the engine's rich running due to a split vacuum tube, it has started doing it again. Luckily last night when giving the engine loving looks before shutting up, I noticed that there is another split - this time in a bit of tube I have already cut back and re-placed on it's T piece not so long ago - so I think that maybe I need to replace all of the vacuum pipes since they are obviously getting a bit weak.
Oh - and one more thing - I was looking at the front wheel-arches tonight and wondering if I extend the inner arch shape out through the wing what it would look like. It would certainly make an effective extended arch for zero cost, but might look a bit stupid. Hmm - knowing me, I'll probably end up doing that then
Well I guess that's it for now. Vet's bills used up all of the overtime I earned before Christmas (and then some), and now the Honda (my only transport) needs tyres and a chain & sprockets, so it's still a shoestring build and even when it's done I probably won't be able to insure it, but hey-ho - I still have a job which is a better place than I expected to be in right now
and I still enjoy working on it
and Sam is recovering well (for a 15 year old dog).
Hope to see you all soon, but you'll have to forgive me for not attending the club-nights for a while.
Rog