Inverter for the middle row

A couple of weeks ago, I ran both positive and negative 6 gauge wire from the battery box under the passenger seat box, up through the B pillar and into the cab. Yesterday, I used those leads to power a 400watt inverter for the middle row.

I installed the inverter on the back of the Tuffy Box, under the drink holder using two stainless steel straps left over from the venting kit on a tankless water heater we had installed. This location, while not ideal under a drink holder, was the only one that made sense and kept the inverter out of the way. I am going to fabricate a shield of some sort to divert any liquid away from the inverter.

I am still working on the inverter for the front seats.

In the garage:



Installed and operational:

Carburetor issues

One of the final issues to address was the wonky throttle linkage that was on the truck. It looked like that Mousetrap game once you have it all assembled--lots of moving parts, cables stretched at weird angles, etc. We used a Lokar universal throttle linkage.





So, we have the cool linkage, but if the engine won't catch and stay running, it means nothing. Now the search begins to find a carburetor to replace ours--preferably a very simple, basic carb.

Electrical Work

Although this picture (which shows the "almost final" product) makes it look like a mess, the new wiring in the 109 is beautifully done.







A closer view reveals a new auxiliary 4 circuit fuse box mounted on the right hand footwell. In the upper right corner, the red you see is a power post since the starter was getting overwhelmed with power leads.





A closer shot of the new fuse box.

Exmoor Middle Row Seat Surprises

First, the worst surprise--three seats were damaged. One with a razor cut and two with abraded or popped seams.

Second, the middle row seat bottoms needed woodserts to be bolted to the frames. We tried lag bolts first on one seat, but they just pulled out.

Third, the middle row seatbacks were at an odd/uncomfortable angle--vertical to slightly forward. In the picture below, the near and middle seat backs show how they sit upright. The far seat back is resting on the "Oh Sh*t" bar (what we call the combo front seat back rest bar and middle row grab bar).

This shot shows how close the new seat bottom and back sit to the rear 3 man bench seat--about 1/4 inch gap.










This shot shows how far the seat back is leaning forward at its most upright position--see how the line of the seatback is not parallel to the vertical line on the 3 man bench seat?











The solution was to cut off the tabs shown on the far left and far right in the picture below and reposition them lower and at a different angle.







Here is the result. Now all three seatbacks are slightly reclined. We may end up swapping the 3 man bench seats in the rear for 2 man or individual jump seats and converting the middle row to be able to fully recline.

Deadline missed, disappointment rampant...

Despite a valiant effort, the 109 did not attend the All British Field Meet in Bellevue, WA on Saturday, July 24, 2010. Perhaps if the final reassembly work had started a little earlier, we would have driven her there Saturday morning...

T minus 3 days

Here are some shots from the work that was done yesterday.

MORE FOAM! It looks terrible, but if it the result is a less noisy ride, I say its worth it! This is the middle floor.

And even more sound deadening material. This is Dexdamp (from Hamilton Jet) applied to the bulkhead. Right hand side still to be done, and probably some of the interior as well.

Since the drivetrain was moved a few inches back to accomodate the R380, the transmission tunnel is now very short. So, the transfer case had to be modified a bit.

Like them or not, we've got some big ol' side steps and to make sure the chassis was not crushed when they are bolted on, Gord'n welded in galvanized tubing and then dressed all the weld points with "Galv Ez" (?) to prevent rust.

Packing up for reassembly!

Mini full of Exmoor seats



Roof rack remounted after languishing 9 months by the side of our house:

And the Toyota gets all the rest...

Roof

As long as the roof is off, why not compound out 33 years of crud?

Roof Drip Rail & Seam Sealer

After finishing the new headliner, I flipped the roof "right side up" and put it on our trailer for the trip over to Gord'ns and the long-awaited final assembly. Thats when I remember the paint on the roof wasn't in the best shape so I used compound to clean it up a bit (separate post). In the course of rinsing off the compound, I discovered the roof leaked along the drip rail. This should not have been a surprise since the original headliner frame was badly rusted.

This meant re-sealing where the aluminum roof is riveted to the galvanized drip rail. The first step was to chip and scrape out the old sealant. Most of it popped out in big brittle chunks by there was some that was still gooey. This suggests to me that spot repairs had been made over the past 33 years. Once I had nearly all of the old sealant out, I used the drill and wire wheel to remove the rest.

I found some 3M "Fast'n Firm" seam sealer at a local auto body store (Wesco) and had the choice between clear or beige. Since the first ingredient in the beige seam sealer is limestone, I had to chose that one! As you can see in the pictures below, it is actually a pretty close match to the original limestone paint.

The seam sealer is applied with a regular household caulking gun and is not quite as thick as household caulk. It took me about 45 minutes to apply it all around the roof and "tool" it with my finger. I will wait a full day before mounting the roof rack just to make sure it is fully set.

New Exmoor Seats!

Trakkers Extreme with Seat Heater installed plus harness


Seat bottom comparison between Trakkers Extreme and Classic High Back

I've spent too much time over the past couple of years trying to figure out how to get better (and hopefully somewhat safer) seats in the 109. I had always wanted Exmoor seats but due to excessive dithering on my part, I missed the last time the dollar was strong against the pound sterling.

I tried fitting Volvo seats ($20 for the pair off Craigslist--with seat heaters!) but they were too tall and made it a real hassle to climb around the steering wheel. Then I started looking at Porsche 914 seats. I think these would be the best and easiest seat to fit in a Series truck. They are one peice with a high seat back and they have a thin seat bottom--around 4 inches. Plus, they can be found in black vinyl and they are from the 1970s so period-appropriate as well. Just when I had located about 8 seats across the country, ranging in price from $35 to $150 per pair, the dollar began gaining strength against the pound and hit the magic exchange rate I had set in my mind.

So, without further dithering, I placed the order from Craddocks. Two Trakkers Extreme for the front seats, both with seat heaters and three Classic High Backs for the middle row, two with seat heaters. Then I learned that Craddocks does not charge until the seats are ready to ship--which is nice, but meant that the dollar had weakened slightly over the one month it took for Exmoor to build the seats. So, in the end, I paid about $70 more.

I received 2 of the 4 total boxes within 2 days! The other 2 boxes arrived 2 days after that! Very fast delivery!

Front Sway Bar

Months ago, we came to a point in the project where it appeared that we would have to modify the chassis to military height in order to provide enough room for the front axle to travel. Part of that plan included installing front and rear sway bars to help offset the increased body roll that we expected would happen with a higher center of gravity.

As it turned out, we did not have to modify the chassis, but we decided to install the sway bars anyway as a hedge against what we expect to be a faster (pause for laughter) land rover. The 109 already had the tendency to lean away from turns before we started all of this.

The pictures above show the test fit on the front sway bar. Note the newly galvanized parts! All that new zinc made the bushings not fit so easily so Gord'n and his assistant Erich created an adaptor to use with a large C clamp (called G clamps in England, apparently) so that they could slip the cotter pin in place once the clamp was cranked down.

Nut plates will be installed in the front frame horns when the new RHD front crossmember is installed.

There will be a separate posting on the rear sway bars.

The KILLER BUMPER

Prior to this project, we did not have an actual bumper on the 109. Instead, we had a rover brush bar--which we discovered is like a rain stick because when we removed it last October, it was so rusty on the inside that when you tilted it, it sounded like rain.

Among the many things Gord'n picked on us about was the lack of a proper bumper. I kept asking him what was the rush? The 109 has been in 1000 pieces for several months with no completion date in sight, so why rush out to buy a bumper?

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I thought I saw light at the end of the tunnel and that happened to coincide with a listing on eBay for a custom bumper that was produced by a shop down in Olympia, WA. Since this is my wife's Rover, I had to get her approval--she liked it. We won the auction and this is what we got:

It weighs about 130lbs!

It was painted but since we were about to send our bulkhead etc to the galvanizer (only 5 months after we got all of that back from the chemical stripper...) I spent a couple of days trying to strip off all the paint. I used the orange/citrus stripper. It was about 60% effective. Lots of scraping and wire brushing later, and it still had too much paint on it. So we got it sandblasted.

Here is the finished product, back from the galvanizer and installed on the 109:

New Headliner for the Roof

The headliner was in very good shape considering its age. There was only one small tear in the rearmost panel, about 1 inch in length. But a big part of this re-framing project was to minimize noise as much as possible. I had read last year a post by MercedesRover on the Guns & Rovers forum about how he replaced his headliner with closed cell foam and felt so I decided to do the same thing.

The first step was to remove the original headliner and clean all the black tarlike glue Solihull used to stick it in place back in 1977. When I removed the actual headliner, I learned it was not in nearly as good shape as it appeared--most of the metal framing along the drip rail had rusted and the fabric in those areas had disintegrated (nevertheless, I was able to find a buyer for the old headliner "as is" for $40). I had to drill out the rivets in the roof vent surrounds to remove the center panel. The black tar glue came off pretty easily with a wire brush on a drill but there were some thicker bits that took a little more work and provided justification to buy one of those vibrating scraper tools from Harbor Freight. The tool is loud as hell but it did get the job done.

Then it was time to cut the closed cell foam. A tip on work like this--measure and re-measure alot. Then make one cut and test fit. Then repeat until done. Hear are the three panels ready to be glued in place.

My wife (the 109's owner) thankfully removed one level of complexity from the project by deciding that the new headliner could just follow the lines of the original liner. This meant I did not have to deal with cutting and fitting the materials around the alpine windows. As for the roof vents, I cut the closed cell foam so that the surrounds are countersunk into the foam and, when riveted back in place, will pinch the hull liner material between them and the roof.

PerfectFit, the shop where I bought the foam and hull liner, recommended that I use this Wilsonart contact adhesive, which can be purchased at any Home Depot or Lowes. It is, they told me, the same adhesive used in the 3M spraycans but you get a full gallon for the same price as one spraycan. Since I was using on the headliner as well as the sound dampening materials for the seatbox, footwells and floors, I bought the gallon and a lot of brushes from Harbor Freight.

Some lessons I learned about painting on the adhesive: if you wait the full 20 minutes to adhere the two parts together, you had better get the positioning right the first try. A small foam roller works best to spread the adhesive on the bare aluminum roof and on the foam. It does not work so well speading the adhesive on the hull liner--neither does a brush for that matter. In hindsight, I would have used spraycan adhesive on the hull liner for a more even, easily applied coating. Another lesson I learned is that both the foam and the hull liner material stretches when you glue them in place so wait until they are glued down before cutting out the vent holes. I also cut holes in the foam around the sunsheet bolts (before gluing) to avoid having big lumps in the finished product--if you do this, cut the bolt holes after gluing. Wirecutters work better at cutting the hull liner than scissors or a razor knife.

Heeding MercedesRover's advice, I ran the dome light wire first! I also ran a power a separate set of power and ground wires through the rib between the front and middle roof panels "just because." I don't know if I will ever use them, but I did not want to regret not taking the opportunity to run them when I had the chance. This extra set of wires are tucked under the dome light mount and in the drip rail.

Here is the finished product. As MercedesRover said, all-in-all, an easy project. Mine stretched out over about 5 months because the frame swap project as a whole was taking soooo long, I did not feel the need to work faster. If you have the desire, drive, focus to get this done quickly, I think you could easily do it all in one day (assuming the roof is off your truck and you have all the materials ready).

I am also nearly done wth modifying the dome light to run a total of 12 white LEDs. There will be a separate post on LED lighting.