1972 Land Rover SIII 109" Prima- Help needed, poll attached!

[georgexs]

Hello all, been joined on here for a while and have lurked before that for a long time, I figured its probably time I put up a couple of readers rides threads for my cars.

So as the per the title, I have a 1972 Land Rover SIII 109" which is my second car used for carting mountain bikes and other big stuff, my daily driver is a Mazda MX5 (which I'll make a thread for soon).

This was it on the day I picked her up:



So it's not very standard (like every old LR ever!) started off as a 6cyl petrol van, now running a Perkins Prima 2l turbo diesel from an Austin Montego, intercooled as well.

Picked it up unseen from Radstock in Somerset off Gumtree and drove it back to Chester in November with no real issue, but since then it has been nothing but trouble! 

It overheated quite badly in December, which unfortunately I didn't realise was happening, as the gauges have proved to be very unreliable. It overheated due to a burst radiator, split between the core and the bottom tank. Got the rad recored, new 'stat and just last week a new pressure cap, but the damn thing is till using water so I suspect a hg failure. Been doing a bit of reading up on hg failures on these engines, apparently its a reasonably common failure just on the water jacket, as there is no oil & water mixing. New pressure cap (with the correct pressure) has reduced the loss a bit, took 2 litres in 150 miles of driving recently. It's still driving very well, engine pulls well and getting near 40mpg which is great in such a big draggy lump!

Replaced the (utterly pitiful) headlights with a spare set from the mazda, acquired a load of ally checkerplate from work so that is now lining the roofrack.

Other issues include a ruined heater matrix and housing, so it currently rerouted to avoid them. There was a tremendous amount of dodgy wiring until last weekend, with the help of my dad we removed 11 seperate sections of wiring that were completely pointless and led to nothing (mostly live), 2 toggle switches that served no purpose, rewired in the glow plugs so they work now, fixed lots of terrible earths, fixed the headlight stalk which had an intermittent fault and reinstating the speedo backlight which was missing!

Another issue is the braking, which was pulling drastically from side to side with no real warning as to direction, quite disconcerting! Adjusted them as much as I could (one seized adjuster, one ran out of adjustment) but it was still terrible, took the front apart last weekend, cleaned them up, free'd the adjuster but alas this was in vain. Tried bleeding all around as the pedal was a little squishy and in doing this the master cylinder sprung a large leak into the cab! Bloody old cars!!! New master cylinder on order, will fit this in the coming week and go from there! 

Future plans include repainting it as I got 15 litres of enamel with it from the previous owner, keeping a very close eye on the water levels and trying to sort the brakes. Selling it sometime in the near future may be on the cards as tbh it has been curse word me off, was meant to be a cheap daily driver whilst the mazda gets a supercharger strapped to it (coming soon!) and it hasn't really lived up to that so far.

A bunch of photos, mostly from a while ago, so the curse word wiring and heater rerouting has gone now.









Cruising along at 55mph, could really do with an overdrive!

[tonybmw]

welcome aboard

[metroman]

Good to see a thread at last, does this mean you are going to be keeping it?

[georgexs]

Apr 12, 2015 15:40:17 GMT tonybmw said:

welcome aboard

Thanks Tony,

It's because of you I joined this forum, my dad had a silver e12 m535i when I was a kid which was what got me into cars, so seeing your beautiful restoration work brings a smile to my face!

[georgexs]

Apr 12, 2015 19:10:03 GMT metroman said:

Good to see a thread at last, does this mean you are going to be keeping it?

Not sure yet James, master cylinder should get here this week, i'll get that put on and start using it for a bit. It will stay for a while at the least, certainly for a repaint and whilst the mazda gets supercharged. After that? We'll see how it goes reliability wise.

[jonk]

Another lurker here - I'll look forward to updates on this thread as I have an mx5 almost exactly like yours and am hoping to get a 109 as my next classic. Love the light grilles, remind me of the Land Rover in the Italian Job. Good luck getting it all sorted.

[smart]

Great to see another prima conversion on here! Someone to share a list of problems with!


Ours was a 2.25 petrol with HGF but now is a turbo prima which apart from a leak from the crankshaft and weeping fuel pump bolted straight in and has been 4-5000 miles trouble free!

Good luck and stick with it

[PHUQ]

Nice looking landy is that- looks "right" somehow. Not entirely convinced it needs painting either, looks fine in the pics. If you do, don't paint the galv edging trim

Not an expert on Primas but someone I know had HGF on one with similar symptoms.

[georgexs]

Apr 12, 2015 21:19:20 GMT jonk said:

Another lurker here - I'll look forward to updates on this thread as I have an mx5 almost exactly like yours and am hoping to get a 109 as my next classic. Love the light grilles, remind me of the Land Rover in the Italian Job. Good luck getting it all sorted.

Think long and hard about it! I'm not in love with mine, its hard to when it's being a curse word! 

Apr 14, 2015 5:43:34 GMT smart said:

Great to see another prima conversion on here! Someone to share a list of problems with!


Ours was a 2.25 petrol with HGF but now is a turbo prima which apart from a leak from the crankshaft and weeping fuel pump bolted straight in and has been 4-5000 miles trouble free!

Good luck and stick with it

Yours is clean, looks lovely!

Apr 14, 2015 6:00:23 GMT PHUQ said:

Nice looking landy is that- looks "right" somehow. Not entirely convinced it needs painting either, looks fine in the pics. If you do, don't paint the galv edging trim

Not an expert on Primas but someone I know had HGF on one with similar symptoms.

The pictures are deceiving, the paint is terrible, many colours, patches textures etc. I'm not looking to make it a really nice example, but a single colour would help it massively, and free paint is free! And don't worry, wont touch the galv, I hate it when people do that!

[PHUQ]

Can't argue with that logic

[georgexs]

So new master cylinder is on:


But not bled, bought an eezibleed thinking it would contain the right size cap, it does not. I have the spare one off the old cylinder though so i'll drill a hole in that to bleed it.

Old cylinder, definitely past its best!


Took me 10 mins of prying to get it off the servo, the bore being so rusty.

Some more pictures, because everybody loves pictures...




Freshly shutzed underside of the bonnet, kind of curse word in the wind though seeing as I couldn't be arsed to fix the rust hole in it...And that it isn't actually meant to carry the spare but has some lovely bodgery allowing it.



Some high quality repairs to the back door by a previous owner...


My freshly resealed and painted door top


Its been nicknamed before as well:

Rex coming from the numberplate...loosely.



MOTs from the last 15 years backing up this mileage, but i still suspect its been round the clock.


We have a lot of spare ally checkerplate at work, so the roofrack was lined, transforming it into my deck of contemplation.


Front panel sprayed when I last went back to my parents house to see how it would take, well it turns out.

The paint on the drivers door consists of a failed brushing attempt...

[PHUQ]

Thought it looked vaguely familar. Rex the Rat was the reminder I needed!



Used to belong to a chap who posts on a couple of the Landy forums. Think it had a V6 in at one point which probably explains why the bulkhead looks like it might be modded to me.

[georgexs]

Aye i've seen some of its previous incarnations, its had 4 different roofs in the last few years alone!

Found a photobucket gallery showing some of the various guises it's had just over the last few years.

s1262.photobucket.com/user/elisencooper/library/?sort=3&page=1

[georgexs]

Well after some deliberation, I have decided that i'm not going to keep the Landy for too much longer. It's just too agricultural for what I want to do with it (mountain biking, general hauling of stuff), too slow and more importantly not proving reliable enough so far.

Its replacement has been bought, but it is not ready for the road, rust issues!
A Subaru MV!



The MV needs some work so I think the Landy will stick around until the Subaru is at least roadworthy, which won't be for a while as i'm supercharging my Mazda MX5 and going to China for a couple of months for work etc etc.

The plan is to tidy up the Land Rover and fix all of its current problems, should return a tidy profit if I do a good job, as it's mostly cosmetic that let it down currently.

[georgexs]

Ok I need some advice from fellow Retro riders!

The Prima has been suffering HG failure symptoms for a little while (using water, overheated a while ago when the radiator burst) and I have foolishly put off doing anything about it for a couple of months as it was still driving very well with a recored radiator in it.

Problem is in the last few days the HG failed in a much larger way, the water consumption got properly tragic (3 litres in 7 miles!!!) and it started running on 3 cylinders. I realised something was very bad immediately when this happened, so I abandoned the car at a friends house for a few days until I got another car working (MX5 happened to be in pieces at the time! Couldn't have picked a better time  ). Being abandoned on a random street in Chester I had to do something with it, so at the weekend I decided to limp it to work.

When I tried to start it however it wouldn't turn over, there was enough water in cyl 4 that it was hydraulically locked  , the starter motor had enough torque to break a tooth off the flywheel in the process (mega cringe ). I took the glow plugs out to turn it over by hand to eject the water, which worked very well, put the glow plugs back in, started up fine but still running on 3 cylinders, so I limped it to work where it has resided since.

Now I know that hydraulically locking it is a very poor thing to do and there is a possibility i've bent a conrod trying to start it against the water, I haven't checked to see if that is the case yet, was going to remove cyl 1 & 4 glow plugs, stick a rod down mark the level and compare it against the other to see if there's a difference in height, should tell me if a rod is bent. If it hasn't bent a rod, then i'll take the cylinder head off to see if it's just a monumental HG failure making it run on 3 pots. Any thoughts on this?

My real dilemma is that I was planning to sell the car soon anyway (see post above for subaru pickup replacement), so I need some advice on what course of action I should take. I was already planning to repaint it before I sold it and generally tidy it up in an attempt to make a bit of a profit as I got it quite cheap and I had the paint.


So now this has happened what do I do? Having a think about it I have come up with the following ideas:

Replace the Prima with another (little bit hard to find now, not the cheapest, but sought after for MPG reasons)

Replace the Prima with a standard Series engine (easy to find and cheap, car is more original, can sell my Prima conversion parts)

Replace the Prima with another Landy engine 200/300tdi, 2.5td (lots about, possibly expensive, quite sought after, mods required to chassis to fit for some)

Cut my losses and sell as is (no work required, get onto other projects quicker, lose money)

Replace with NASP Prima (I know of a good one that's local and for sale, but less power, less desireability)

Use NASP Prima and my engine to make a good turbo Prima (only pistons are different so I've read, lots of time in engine rebuild)


That's what i've thought of so far, what are peoples thoughts? I'm really not sure what I should do!
All suggestions welcome!

Thanks
George

[Kierenbrown]

Sell it as is to me immediately! ;-)

[georgexs]

 If you're genuinely interested, PM me an offer.

Can you edit a poll once its been started?

[PHUQ]

I think it'd be a bit miserable with a N/A Prima in! However, if your bottom end is good (I think major HGF tends to warp the heads) and bent rod free and the replacement engine is the right price I'd look into getting it, swapping the head & anything else you need off the N/A engine (not sure which flywheel the Prima conversion use). This is assuming the heads are the common between turbo & N/A engines of course, I think they are.

Failing that- 200tdi all the way, although they are more expensive to get hold of now I expect it'll be cheaper (by the time you've stripped and weighed in the rest of the donor Discovery) than trying to build a good turbo Prima from bits. 300tdi is more work to fit, you'll struggle to find a good 2.25d or turbo Prima, and a 2.25p is a bit on the thirsty side especially in a 109", it's nowhere near tidy or original enough to appeal to the "collector" market and it'll be a lot more appealing to the "user" market with a diesel in.

[dodgerover]

We've a good 2.25 petrol, 3 bearing crank, was showing about 80k when we swapped it for a diesel. Could probably find most of a lpg conversion too. It's near Chesterfield.
Oddly I always thought a swb with the prima engine would be a cracking thing.

[georgexs]

Thank for the replies so far, the poll is heavily in favour of the 200tdi!

Jun 3, 2015 9:25:53 GMT PHUQ said:

I think it'd be a bit miserable with a N/A Prima in! However, if your bottom end is good (I think major HGF tends to warp the heads) and bent rod free and the replacement engine is the right price I'd look into getting it, swapping the head & anything else you need off the N/A engine (not sure which flywheel the Prima conversion use). This is assuming the heads are the common between turbo & N/A engines of course, I think they are.

Failing that- 200tdi all the way, although they are more expensive to get hold of now I expect it'll be cheaper (by the time you've stripped and weighed in the rest of the donor Discovery) than trying to build a good turbo Prima from bits. 300tdi is more work to fit, you'll struggle to find a good 2.25d or turbo Prima, and a 2.25p is a bit on the thirsty side especially in a 109", it's nowhere near tidy or original enough to appeal to the "collector" market and it'll be a lot more appealing to the "user" market with a diesel in.

I agree about a N/A Prima, might be ok in an 88 with less weight but in a 109 it would be slow. I took a look at my engine tonight, took glow plugs out of cylinders 1&4 and measured the depth to the piston with a welding rod, exactly the same distance for both! So this gives me hope that I haven't bent a 'rod and that the current engine is worth changing the HG on, I'll take the head off it this weekend and see what I find.

Seeing as my series was originally a 6 cyl, the bellhousings on the gearbox are different to 4 pots, now I don't know if when the Prima was put into my Landy it done using an adapter off the shelf with a 4cyl bellhousing or whether it is a homemade effort on the 6cyl, I'll have to give it a check. If its still the 6cyl one then i'd have to change the bellhousing to fit a 200tdi as well as the usual chassis mods to clear the turbo, although i'm not sure if the 6cyl chassis is different in this area to the 4cyl.

Jun 3, 2015 19:57:33 GMT dodgerover said:

We've a good 2.25 petrol, 3 bearing crank, was showing about 80k when we swapped it for a diesel. Could probably find most of a lpg conversion too. It's near Chesterfield.
Oddly I always thought a swb with the prima engine would be a cracking thing.

Ok thanks, i'll bear it in mind if the Prima does appear to be beyond economical repair!