Merry Xmas

It looks like the Disco has been a good boy and got new shoes (Cooper STT on 235/85R16).

Also, I found one of the old front tires has uneven wear, I did check for play on the front wheels and there is none, so it must have been some other issue maybe with the tire or something. I’ll keep an eye on the new ones.

Merry X-mas or whatever it is that you celebrate, wishing all the best for all those Land Rover nuts out there!

Oil levels

This week’s work on the series III: I’ve been working on the oil levels. Quite a ride, I must say!

The engine oil, was well over the “high” mark, like 3 L. overfilled, I want to remove the oil sump later on, so I didn’t change the oil just yet, but made sure the level is correct for now (I barely move the LRS anyway).

After that I moved to the gear box, … *empty*, I mean it, just empty, no wonder the gears were a little hard when warm (good thing I don’t move this truck much). Of course all the oil had transferred to the transfer box (I am wondering if that is why it’s call that J), there was well over 1L. of overfill, very possible it’s just the gearbox oil moving here. All the nuts holding the bottom of the transfer were loose, no wonder it was leaking a bit.

And to finish it up, the overdrive, was…. Well, you can say it with me *empty*, I am puzzled with this one as I don’t see any visible leaks (yet) so we’ll see what happens with the oil I put on.

I can’t find EP90, so I had to use EP80/90 which is better than no oil anyway.

I also have used this combination of a 10mm ½” socket and an Allen wrench (10mm obviously) that works well on the square level screws on the boxes. 

I am going to make myself a tool from a big screw to be able to drain the boxes and diffs as I haven’t seen many drag link sockets here and I doubt there is one this big (22x11x7 mm the rectangular part I believe).

On to the differentials, the front one, a tiny bit overfill and clean, so far so good and the rear one…. You are right, *empty* and to make it even more fun the square screw on the diffs is slightly bigger than ½” so I was not able to use my ad-hoc tool for this… LR couldn’t use the *same* screws everywhere, could they?... plus whoever did the screw last time over-torqued it and the square was barely visible… way to go, whoever did that!!

Well, it looks like all the liquids are correct for now, down the road, as I see what is wrong with the LR, I’ll be changing oils, brake fluid and so on, but for now, I just want all the levels correct, so I can try the truck a little bit and see what is broken and what seals need replacing.

A few more parts will make their way this coming week and then I should be able to do some serious maintenance on the engine (valve’s clearance, air filter, diesel system, sump clean up, coolant and cleanup of radiator, ….), of course, I won’t do it *all* next week, it will take me a little while, but at least I should have all the stuff I need to work on it, whenever I have the time.

That’s all for now.

Electrics, check.

I finally sorted out the vacuum pump/depressor thing, in the end, I replaced the valves from the donor unit instead of trying to change the pulley, too much work and probably I’ll end up with a broken one anyway, too many years in there… I see the diaphragms in good shape, this is the donor, so I’ll keep them around, I may need them later.

This is the refurbished unit, ready to install.

And pictures of it in place, ready to test!

I’ve been working on the electrics too, first, try to find out what the loose cables are and then removing them, I need to sort out the signal lights and the rear left light set, as none of them work. I had to pull the whole dashboard out to be able to see the cables and their connections, at the end, probably I didn’t need that, but it helped a bit plus a clean it out well, that helps too, here you see the in-progress.

And done (for now) pictures.

I want to fix the basics so I can take the Series for a spin, to check how the engine goes when warm and what needs to be done in the dynamic section, I bet at least a tune up of the injector pump and/or maybe injectors may be needed.

What I realized today is that working in the Land Rovers is a hell of a workout, this of course, after finding sore muscles, some of them I didn’t even know they were there :P, but seriously, working in my Land Rovers beats a Gym any day and it’s a lot of fun (well, sometime is frustrating).

As part of the “getting to know each other” phase, I took a bunch of things apart inside, I found the funniest things, like whoever installed the overdrive, did it by “biting” the metal, to make the hole in the cabin…

I’ve also found 100 pesetas, which haven’t been in use since 2001 or so. I guess I got my investment back already :P

Well, the Santana is ready for a little drive around here out of the road, as it hasn’t passed the ITV yet, but I need to test all the new stuff I’ve done to it. So far, the electrics work, although I will need a new brake switch, this one is kind of “moody” and I discovered something interesting, the directional blinkers, are actually in series with the emergency lights, and the old little weird Lucas switch (the one you pull out) can make bad contact, so in short, the one to blame for the blinkers to not work was actually the switch that would go beyond the stop point.. fixed screwing it in, but the plastic is brittle and broke a bit. Also found a loose earth point in the back, reason for having no lights or signals on the back, left side.