Land-Rover Antics - Part III

In Part II of this short series, I mentioned that being an ex-military vehicle, the wiring arrangements were rather different from standard. One might add “and how”!

Bill pointed out that the vehicle was fitted with a heated windscreen which had never worked. Indeed the windscreen must have been a costly item: it had very fine (for obvious reasons) heating wires inside the glass running from top to bottom. SII Fulvia owners will recognise the idea as it is similar to the heated rear window fitted to those cars.

The Land-Rover had been an army radio vehicle, so there were many now unused fuse places in the large fuse box – find that fuse!. I knew also that there had to be a relay somewhere – I had already checked the windscreen heater for continuity and it was fine. Bill has a factory workshop manual which showed some details but not all – and no locations!

As is quite common with electrical faults, I spent many hours trying to trace the circuit. This was subsequently found to be even more complex as there turned out to be an internal short-circuit to ground somewhere inside the military wiring harness which is practically impossible to dismantle. Secondly, the control relay – a very special high-current item, which I eventually found buried in a stack of wires behind the instrument panel was controlled by a voltage level unit. Quite ingenious, as this means that one cannot drain the battery since once voltage drops to a certain point, the relay will be shut off. Typically, the damned thing didn’t work!

So I rewired everything behind the instrument panel and ran additional cables to the windscreen heater with an in-line fuse. The ammeter confirmed that all is now well.

I then did quite a lot of the same concerning the heated rear window!

From time to time Bill had experienced a fuel starvation problem. This is nasty on diesel-engined vehicles as of course once there is air in the system the engine stops and that’s it! The installation as I mentioned in Part I was not very nicely done, and this included some rather hit and miss “modifications to the fuel lines not to mention something similar in the turbo piping (more on this later). Bill decided that he would take no chances in future and so he purchased a Facet electric fuel pump to assist the lift pump that is installed in the injection pump unit. I managed to fit this (just) on the bulkhead under the driver’s seat right above the fuel tank, together with a relay and a small fuse box which will provide a useful additional source of current should this be required in the future. There is a reassuring lack of air visible in the piping now.

A useful feature on an expedition-type vehicle is an inverter to provide 230v A.C. so that e.g. a laptop computer can be run. The one installed had packed up, so Bill bought a better-quality one which inevitably was rather bulkier. With the amount of accessories fitted space was becoming increasingly in short supply. I devised a neat solution: behind each of the windows is a security grille, so we hung the unit from one of these. The installation which Bill did, is very neat as may be seen in the picture below.

The final electrical task was to persuade the front side lights to work. This turned out to be due to the horrid “bullet” connectors so beloved of British manufacturers – I have experienced vast amounts of grief with these on Jaguars, Austin-Healeys Triumphs etc., etc. As usual one or two had corroded – not behind the lamps where one would expect of course, but once again buried underneath a pile of coloured “spaghetti” behind the central switch panel…

Next time: Turbo pipes, half shafts and other bits and pieces.

Land-Rover Antics In England

Or:

“It’s never too late to learn something new”.

So often when searching classified advertisements for “Lancia” I have found myself in the Land-Rover listings, they being obviously the next in an alphabetical sense.

Well this time the proximity is more than alphabetical.

I have mentioned elsewhere on this blog that I had to journey to England to attend to a Land-Rover. Well so I did and now back in France I propose in relating the story also to demonstrate a degree of versatility on my part!

Background

My client, Bill, purchased in 2001 an ex-army Land-Rover Defender 90 intending to equip it for expedition use. The arrival of the vehicle meant that he now had two Defender 90s, the other being a production “County” model.

The ex-military Defender 90

As standard, both were fitted with rather gutless 2.5 litre normally-aspirated four-cylinder diesel engines. Whilst these have good slogging power, performance is really rather underwhelming. The first step was to replace the engine in the newly arrived vehicle with a Daihatsu 2.8 litre turbo-diesel that was originally fitted to the “Four Track” model. Unfortunately the company that performed the conversion made a pig’s ear of the job, resulting in clutch failure due to a poorly designed adaptor plate. A visit to another firm provided a better job. Subsequently the gearbox failed so an uprated one from Ashcroft was fitted. After these expensive adventures, Bill proceeded to modify the vehicle himself with long trips in mind.

Chassis Plate. Note "Winterised" and "NSN -
Nato Stock Number - "99" means UK manufactured

I came into the picture last year – in September – when Bill arrived here visiting us on his way back from Greece. Naturally, he invited me to look over the Land-Rover. This I did, taking in many of the elaborate modifications, such as the split charging system for the two batteries, roof rack with tent on top, additional instruments, GPS system and so on. He then showed me the newly fitted oil cooler. He had fitted this since he had noticed the oil getting very hot when climbing Alpine passes. I remarked that I didn’t like the way the hoses were fitted with worm-drive hose clips and also that I considered the tubing to be very hard – especially with that type of clip. I showed him the installations on my Fulvia and also on the Fanalone we have here and he agreed that he would adopt this approach on his return to England.

He set off for home, but was back after about 40 minutes. He had stopped to fill up with fuel and had noticed a film of oil on the back of the vehicle. So we took the Land-Rover up to our garage to have a look. We found three things: first a blown damper that had sprayed its oil around (the cause of the oil on the back) second a weeping brake wheel cylinder and third a pool of black oil under the engine – one of the oil cooler hoses I had criticised had blown off! He is a very lucky man; there was about a litre of oil left in the sump. Had the damper not failed when it did, then the engine would have packed up about a kilometre later! I observed that a rethink was going to be necessary if the vehicle was going to be used for serious expedition work.

He was able to source a set of special Australian dampers (“Old Man Emus”) locally from an expedition vehicle specialist at Sallanches so we fitted these together with a steering damper of the same make. We renewed the rear wheel cylinders and bled the system. I remounted the oil cooler hoses as best as I could using double clips where possible and renewed the oil and filter (a real pain in access terms – frequently encountered with engine changes). Finally I persuaded him to drive to England via Paris – this I way I got a lift to see my girlfriend who lives there and of course I was able to monitor and check things on the 550km (350 mile) journey.

All went well on the trip and I was duly dropped off at Porte Maillot. Later I heard that Bill had reached home in Suffolk without problems.

From time to time I received some progress reports and then I was invited to go to England to do some work on the vehicle; there was quite long list. How this went I shall cover next time - or perhaps the next TWO times! I can say right now that I found the experience interesting and instructive.