Tidying up some wiring.

As with most modified vehicles, they get additional electrics.

I added a second alternator to give me stand alone power supply to my winch and auxiliary circuits.

Installation of the dual alternator kit can be found here Dual Alternator Fitting

I looked at lots of potential solutions and found a combination relay and fuse box that pretty much fitted my needs exactly.

Very time consuming work to build it all up but very satisfying.

I routed the 35mmsq cable up to a connection box where I split the cables down to the fuse supplies and relays.

Gotta have a legend, can't fault find if you don't have any means of knowing what goes where and what colour wire goes to what supply.

Here it is in the engine bay all fitted up and the cables routed to my liking, very functional and much better than janky old individual relay holders screwed all over with self tapping screws and having to try and remember what it does and where the power feeds come from.

All works as it should and I will no doubt have more to fit as more accessories are fitted over time.

Back seats for the first time in decades

When I bought Rusty back in 2012 we lived in Belgium, it was very common to find 4x4s converted into "lichtevrachtwagen" which translated into English is light commercial vehicle with only the two front seats and a bulkhead behind to segregate the load bay from the cab.

You can just make out the silver of the aluminium bulkhead in the centre of the truck.

Well over a year ago my girlfriend found a seat of back seats for sale on a facebook group, made an offer and off we went to East Sussex to fetch them.

Quick test fit of the first single seat just to get a feel for them.

needless to say, I'm happy.

The seats are ordinarily held down to the floor pan with M6 bolts into captive nuts in the floor itself, these have not had seats fitted and the people who removed the seats just left the bolt holes empty so they ended up rusted out, I ran a thread cleaning tap through them first and when I put bolts in the threads pretty much instantly stripped out.  Hey ho, drill out to 1/4" imperial and then tap them out to M8, job jobbed.

Both seats all fitted up and folded while I fit the seat back catches and the seat belts.

You can see the little black latch box on the side at the C pillar, these both had to be fettled a little to get them to fit after the mammoth rear end rebuild, things were not quite an exact fit and needed 10mm trimmed off the bottom, no drama, that's why we own a grinder lol.

Other side seat belt fitted and just getting the latch box trimmed to fit.

After it was all fitted and ready, it was time to go out on the first day of the new year to go have new years day dinner with mum.

Proper family outing with baby and puppies.

Thanks for looking.

Passed at last.

So in the last days of 2019 I managed to get all the work done and get the Rusty one through yet another MOT inspection.

A couple of advisories on the sheet but nothing to worry about.

Instrument binnacle lamps are fine but dull compared with the centre aux lamp illumination but all bulbs work as they should.

The LT230 transferbox needs to be replaced at some point in the near future as the intermediate shaft is leaking, I see no point in doing the O ring bodge as you have to remove the transferbox anyways and I might as well do it once and just replace the darn thing than remove it, tinker and then remove it again in a years time to replace it.

Well then, what next...............

Little Bit More Rot

So the MOT was all bad.

Well not all bad but pretty bad considering how much I have done to this thing in the last year and a couple of months.

My own faux par was the fact that I forgot the little rust hole in the chassis tubular cross member side plate, I forgot to plate it, my bad 😢

But oh my it was all bad, much worse than I thought.

I freely admit that I did't even look at this bit of the chassis, should have done now I suppose.

Yellow crayon says it's bad.

Got the die grinder out and cleaned it up a bit to see how bad.

Ooops, that's a new hole, not good.

Had to cut the angle of the rear foot well to gain decent access to get it sorted.

In we go, cut out the rot, weld in some fresh 2mm plate and get it primed and seam sealed.

Side triangle got a fresh plate and that hole on the inside got plates too.

Primed and seam sealed with clear PU adhesive sealant, just need a top coat to make it pretty lolz.

MOT and it was bad, all bad.......

MOT time after 14 months of hell.

So after 14 months of hell on the sporadic rebuild it was time, or at least so I thought to take it for the MOT test (here in the UK we have an annual Ministry Of Transport test for road worthiness).

Booked it in and got a great date, Friday the 13th 😟😟😟😟😟

Oh yes, it was as bad as it sounds.

Seems the tester is a bit more thorough than his predecessor and hammered just about everything to within an inch of it's life.

Oh deep joy, all doable but some shockers in there I can tell you, getting tired of this project now and it's starting to take far longer and becoming far more involving than it seemed at first, guess I'll just keep plugging away.

Salvage door post to fix the Rusty one.

With the serious rot in the back door post of the truck, looked a bit like this.

So the rot is bad, not just there, but this is the worst bit to fix.

The rot came to light once the rear quarter panel was removed from the body shell to fix some rot that I knew about.

So what can I do?  Can't scrap it, spent too much time and too much money on it for that, I was blessed with a bit of time to think about it and maybe I would have to do a cut and shut sheet metal welding repair with some 1.5mm plate with extra strengthening plates to help stiffen it up.

The better half was browsing the Land Rover parts pages on FaceBook and happened upon a late model 300Tdi Discovery that was being broken for spares.  It was only 15 minutes from home and I grabbed the reciprocating saw and disc cutter to get it removed should it have turned out to be a good one.

It's in perfect condition and I am very happy with the find, bit of work to pull the body panels back and get access but it was worth it, time to get cutting.

Choppity chop chop chop.

Ha, I win.

Chuck it in the boot and time to head home.

I still have to separate the inner and outer panels but this is a right result for me and a good omen for the Rusty one.

Keep up with the box section sills post for the updates on getting it fitted.

Fuel tank sender and feed replacement.

With so much clambering about in the back working on the old bus and with it being 27yrs old and all that, the pick up and return pipes on top of the sender have rotted through and were leaking fuel all over the top of the tank.

Not pretty but relatively straight forward.

You need a new sender unit, readily and cheaply available for a 200Tdi Discovery, 2 new 8mm sealing olives and if you're feeling flush then really go to town and get two new pipe unions to replace the old ones, mine were grotty but would go again.

New sender unit, it comes bare with no seals or sealing olives so be warned!

The old sender with porous pipes.

 Grab 2X 14mm spanners and undo the unions.

Ooops, but yeah it was expected.

Now then, remember where I told you that the new sender came bare, well this is the part where you need to get yourself 2 new sealing olives as your's will be the same as mine and they'll be rusted solid.

I didn't have days to wait for new ones to come via mail order and my local hardware stores didn't have the olives that small on the shelf so I had little choice if I wanted to get it up and running quick smart but to buy an 8mm in line coupling just for the olives.

Turned out just fine to be honest and just as cheap as buying a pack with more than I needed that would go to waste as I only needed 2 olives.

Just undo the small wiring plug and pop the earth wire off the sender.

Undo the big plastic nut and as you pull the old sender out the rubber seal will do it's best to swan dive into the tank just to piss you off so be prepared to grab it and pull it out with the old sender.

 Clean it all up and smear a bit of grease around the seal and pop it back in the neck and grease up the sender ready for fitting and pop it in from the top, making sure it is pointing in the right direction and wind the big nut back on and refit the unions and electrics and job is a good un, the best piece of advice I can give is that you need to fit the big plastic nut and just before you nip it up, turn the sender counter clockwise about 30 degrees and then as you nip up the plastic nut, it will spin the sender and when it is pointing correct then it is tight enough.

 So that's that jobbed, still got more welding on the horizon on this project but we are getting there bit by bit.

Thanks for looking.