Introduction

THE LANDY FILES

The following blog is a record of the trials and tribulations of restoring a short wheel based1968 Landrover 2A.

My background in car restoration is somewhat limited. In my younger day, I restored a Morris Mini 850 and a Nissan G60 Patrol.  They were done in my parent's garage with a minimal budget. These restorations were done on the cheap and in the end, the results were less than inspiring.

This did, however, spark my interest in one day doing a proper ground up restoration in an old classic and bringing it back to its former glory. A couple of decades later, I celebrated my 50th birthday and  I comfortably settled into my mid-life crisis, I have now decided to give it another go. This time with my own workshop area and a bit more of a budget behind me.

50 Years of mud

After removing the majority of the body panels, I thought I would give the chassis
a pressure blast clean to see what was underneath the mud.

I think this was the first time the chassis had been cleaned in its 50 year life. As you can tell by the mud on the driveway underneath in the after photo.

The clean up revealed a chassis that was in reasonable condition.

Rusted nuts

As the Landy is pretty much bolted together, I thought it would be a simple case of undoing the bolts with a 1/2" or a 7/16" socket to strip it down. However, this was not going to be the case. After several skinned knuckles trying to undo 50 years of rusted bolts it was decided to bring out the rattle gun. Although it simply snapped of most of the nuts, it made the process a hell of a lot quicker.

Operation Landy

Buying the landy worked out to be the easy part. Getting from the Central Coast back to the Blue Mountains proved to be somewhat more difficult.  After getting various quotes from towing firms it was starting to look like it would be a very expensive exercise. Then came an offer from from brother inlaw who had a large trailer and a four wheel drive ute to go with it.  He said I could borrow them as long as he came along for the ride.

After a full day of driving the Landy was safely backed into the shed.