The Mud Life - #53 - November 2023

Our itinerant wild camper, wanderer, hedge-botherer and semi-feral woman of the woods, Lauren Eaton, talks us through some of her 4x4 adventures out in the big wild world.

Going with the flow

Sometimes, things don’t go to plan. When you own multiple Land Rovers, this is something you quickly learn to live with but, for a change, it’s not the cars that are causing the problem, although the problem is prohibiting me from finishing those.

The issue is that the workshop has broken down. All of it. "How can a workshop break down?" I hear you say. In short, the electricity feed that runs underground has failed in some way, and that isn’t going to be an easy fix.

I live in an unusual property, nothing about it is typical or simple. There are 13 rooms, four brick or concrete outbuildings, a few sheds, half a dozen fuse boards, and lots of cable running to indoor and outdoor electrical stuff over a significant area of land.

When the electric supply to the workshop failed, I was in there shot blasting parts for the 300tdi build. My initial thought was that it was either a faulty piece of equipment, I’d only just bought a new extractor among other things, or that I’d overloaded something running compressors, extractors, heaters, etc., but nothing had tripped on any of the fuse boards.

There is literally no power at all reaching the workshop, and my trusted sparky is on holiday, so I’ll have to wait for him to return. The other two who looked at the problem have not been very helpful, other than to say that the problem appears to originate from the underground cable feeding the workshop, and neither of them want to even contemplate fixing it.

What is even more infuriating is that I’ve bought lots of new toys to play with. I’ve added a shot blasting cabinet to the workshop complete with new dust extractor.

I’ve also rearranged the benches and racking and added another bench, a bench grinder and polisher, and I have a new larger compressor to add to my growing collection; I appear to have a soft spot for them.

All these items will of course be very useful for the rebuild, the queue of items waiting to go through the parts washer, blast cabinet, and/or be cleaned/polished and/or sprayed is growing by the day.

As are my ideas for the 110…

It started in the usual way, ‘I’ll just do these jobs and then head off on a trip’, then suddenly you find yourself waist deep in an engine bay surrounded by many bits of the engine while muttering semi-incoherently about chassis swaps.

I suppose this is the 'sensible' way to do things, rebuild things on a new chassis.

The 110 was running well the day I bought it, but I did buy it as a running project. There was no real urgency in either doing the work or getting away, and I have done several short disappearing acts just to bond with it, but now I literally am waist deep in an engine bay surrounded by bits of 300tdi.

I’ve decided I’m quite happy here for now, and I also like snow, so why not head north, with a fellow Landy and snow fanatic, in January after I’ve done most of the work?

I have three MOTs coming up in December and January, the 110 included. Each truck has an issue that needs to be addressed before then too, and the L322 needs to be readied for sale once it has a new test.

The Freelander audibly needs a CV joint, and this will be done very soon, probably with the addition of new wishbones too.

The L322 will probably be fine, but it needs its interior putting back in, a service, and the new entertainment system screen I have purchased installing; this requires removal of a fair amount of the dash which is why I haven’t done it yet.

The 110 needs its engine putting back together, two outriggers, a small bulkhead repair, and a new rear cross member; anything else is just cosmetic.

The 101 doesn’t need an MOT, but it will be getting all new fuel lines.

And now we get to the point where I started mumbling about chassis swaps…

I can’t weld, yet at least. I plan on learning, but for now I have been busy approaching various businesses to do the work, and the prices have been considerable. This is understandable but, I then thought, I can do a chassis swap, and a new galv chassis isn’t going to cost me a prohibitive amount more than paying someone to weld new bits onto the current one, and while I’m at it I may as well throw on a galv bulkhead, so why not futureproof it completely?

What remains to be decided is when this swap will take place. The MOT is due at the end of January, so welding or a swap needs to have been done by then to pass, but I also want to take it away in January.

It could well be that things will end up being done a bit backwards, as in rebuild the engine and other components on the old chassis before swapping them to the new one after I’ve returned from a trip and the test expires. Not ideal, but hey, it will give me something to do over winter, and I’ll be ready for spring, when the 110 will be heading north for a considerable period of time. I suppose now the workshop is out of action for a while, the decision has been made for me. All I can do is continue on with jobs like the CV joint on the hippo, more dismantling of the 110, and putting the L322 back to its non-camper self while I line up more parts to clean up when the workshop is back in action.

Thankfully, going with the flow is something I’m pretty good at. The problem can’t be helped, nor can whatever work it takes to fix it, so I’ll just work around whatever happens when my favourite sparky comes over to assess the situation.

Problems I knew about…

As I said the 110 was bought as a running project. The main jobs to do were no surprise: leaks and rust, with the addition of the fun stuff like putting all the military stuff back into it. I’ve solved most of the leaks in a logical order, top down, and I’m currently replacing the crank seals.

Both the front and rear are leaking, and when I drop the transfer and gear boxes to do the rear seal, I’ll give both of these an overhaul while I’m at it.

At the moment I’m taking the timing case apart, cleaning up/replacing all the pulleys, and replacing the water pump. This is on top of a new radiator, intercooler, and frame, hoses all round, new power steering hoses, drive belt, and tensioners (or replacement bearings as applicable).

Being a 300tdi conversion, things aren’t as simple as they could be as the engine sits towards the rear of the engine bay. Off the peg hoses don’t fit, unless you pay a premium and buy ones that have been fabricated to fit, or you fabricate your own; I’ve done a bit of both.

Timing is a job that scares quite a few people and rightly so; get it wrong and it could cause catastrophic engine damage. But it isn’t a particularly complicated job, the main issues tend to be the usual ones like removing bolts that really don’t want to budge.

The large crank bolt has become notorious, but I didn’t have much trouble with it, although I do own a very large ugga dugga and a new set of chonky ¾" drive hand tools. The timing cover bolts, which are far smaller, also like to cause a problem. In my case two really didn’t want to shift, and had been rounded by someone in the past, but, other than that, the job went smoothly.

There are many hacks when it comes to avoiding buying ‘special tools’ for the timing job. A 9.5mm drill bit can be used to lock the fuel pump for example, but I just bought a cheap timing tool kit. I don’t usually buy cheap tools, but it’s not like these need to take much force or be used every day, the kits off eBay do the job just fine.

Up and running!

As I was writing this, my usual sparky rushed over as soon as he came back from holiday. Within a couple of hours, he had checked the whole property and all the outbuildings for me, and reinstated the power to the workshop. The relief that I didn’t need to dig a 60ft trench to lay a new armoured cable was huge!

I spent the dark evening reorganising and setting up the workshop to play catch-up with parts cleaning and blasting, and will continue to work through that for the rest of the week.

I do most of the big work at the weekend when a friend comes over to help, but this weekend we’re off to bring him a Landy home so I’m going to crack on to get as much done as possible, now I have new tools, electricity, and motivation brought by the relief that I don’t need to do some serious digging up of the garden!

That’s all from me this month folks, as I’ll be mostly on the spanners for the foreseeable future.

Pop back next month to see what’s been happening on the drive and in the workshop. I’ll detail some of the work I’ve done and share any tips I discover along the way, and probably a few things I wished I’d done differently, so you don’t have to.

Drive safe, Lauren and Celyn x

For some reason it wouldn't let me upload most of the photos that go with this article, so if you want to see the complete article read it in the magazine - https://www.themudlife.co.uk/magazines