Taking the head off the new engine

 It was always going to b e a scary prospect taking the cylinder head off a 64 year old engine. However I wasn't expecting to see quite this much rust in the cylinders.  After YouTubing it I came up with the hack of filling the cylinder up with plain white vinegar.  After leaving it for a couple of days then hitting it with a plastic scouring pad and WD40 it came up a treat.

 

 

 

 

New engine

 

 

After weeks of checking on Ebay & Gumtree, I have finally found a genuine Land rover 2.25 litre engine for the tidy sum of $100 

Final strip down

 

 

 Snapping rusted bolts left right and center but but getting it down to the bare bones

Getting rid of the engine

 

 

 After much procrastination, I finally decided to get rid of the old Holden 202 red motor and take the gear box out while I am at it

 

 

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.