Dicing with danger

Buying an old hybrid is one of the riskiest things you can do. But if you’re handy with the spanners and know what you’re looking at, someone else’s creation can be a bargainous way of getting yourself a specced-up Land Rover for a fraction of what it would cost to build. That’s what Paul Fisher did when he picked up a coil-sprung Series II – and many playdays later, he’s as happy as ever that he took the plunge

Words: Paul Looe

Pics: Harry Hamm

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Buying someone else’s old hybrid? .A. . . .R. ut that’s what aul isher did and he’s never looked back.

aul’s Landy is the kind you don’t see people building any more, now that the Ministry of onformity has done its bit to stamp out this particular form of individual e pression. It’s a classic of its breed, being a Range Rover with Series II body panels and a efender front end.

Like most hybrids, it was built to be not ust a poor man’s , but a poor man’s and then some. aul bought it to use mainly as a playday wagon and you don’t see many Landies put to that use which haven’t had at least some kind of mods to improve what they’ll do off-road.

aul, whose other e perience of Land Rover ownership comes from being the driver of what he cheerfully describes as his aylander’, bought the hybrid pretty much as you see it here. I know nowt of its history,’ he told us. Most of the work was already done when I got it.’

In that case, what would he have done differently? owt. I love it.’

It’s rare to hear someone saying such a thing about a truck with Land Rover’s old . -litre naturally aspirated diesel engine under its bonnet. ut aul’s not interested in going fast, so it does the ob fine.

Above: There used to be a six-pot Perkins in here, but after it went the L R ’ in the shape of a 2.5-litre naturally aspirated military unit

Below: What looks like the top half of a Mantec snorkel has been hybridised to suit the air intake for the T ’ ’ as it looks before you check under ’ ’

Land Rover chassis

The . actually replaced a erkins . , which is one of the few big changes since the original build was completed. The old slugger retired from service after a cylinder let go, so another old slugger was an obvious answer. iven what he’s already told us about the truck, it’s no great surprise that aul kept it the way he found it. e did, however, confess to wanting to make one change which we can all agree would be for the better to replace the efender nose with a properly recessed Series II front end. That would return matters to , when the vehicle first saw the light of day as a . -litre petrol-engined . A decade and more later, a Range Rover followed it out of Solihull and nobody could have known that they were destined to end up stuck together as one and the same vehicle.

In time-honoured fashion, the Rangey’s chassis was shortened to and cut down behind the back a le, to be finished off with a efender rear crossmember. nusually, though, its builder dressed it up with fabricated protection which also runs round the entire bottom edge of the truck’s body. More unusually still, this was done using steel bo rather than tube. It blends in nicely enough, thanks in part to the non-rigid wheelarch e tensions obscuring it, but it’s definitely a look you don’t see every day.

It’s also something you couldn’t imagine working on any other kind of vehicle. ut that’s the beauty of the basic Land Rover it’s got so little in the way of airs and graces, there’s almost nothing you can do to take any of them away. Aside from fitting ghastly huge alloys and low-profile road tyres, obviously, but there’s not much danger of that happening here. aul’s hybrid actually runs isco steels, and you’d go a long way to find anyone who regrets buying a set of those. They’re wrapped in a meaty old tyre the time-honoured Insa Turbo Special Track but whereas it’s become commonplace perhaps worryingly so to see these in si es on mere’ playday trucks, aul’s happy with a good old R . That’s the metric e uivalent of a . how times have changed since a set of SATs in that si e was the limit of every Landy owner’s off-road ambitions. tranny tunnel and fuse box. The D LT looks positively modern in here es, of course, there are plenty of barge-pole motors out there. ut for every stinker there’s a gem and aul is living proof of that. eing able to work on it yourself is pretty much essential in almost every case but you won’t own an old hybrid for long before learning most of what there is to know about that.

Talking of ambitions, when we spoke to aul he said he ust wanted to keep on en oying his truck. That’s both offroad and in the workshop, where he might not have built it but he’s not shy of getting his spanners out.

Which goes to show that buying someone else’s old pro ect doesn’t necessarily mean you couldn’t have built it yourself. If you know what you’re looking at, in fact, it can mean unbeatable value for money, because there’s no such thing as a modded that’s worth more than it cost to build.