4: Some Assembly Required

...Continued from previous page

In the words of Marshall Mathers, it's back to the lab again!

Welding a spring plate onto the axle - it may look a bit thick but that's accounting for the curve in the casing near the banjo.

Series 3 gearbox crossmember was in an inconvenient location and also not removable… except with the grinder:

The sacrifical V8 is bolted to the gearbox & transfer box and offered up, measured up to compare prop lengths and positioning;

And then some engine mounts are fabricated:

We used bog standard V8 engine mounts on the block and standard rubbers so it's as standard as can be.

Same goes for transmission mounts:

Chassis was drilled, sleeved (AKA crush tubes) and welded to accept standard LT230 mounts in standard-ish location.

Headers bolted on to check clearance & location for cross-member.

Here's a flash from the future showing the position of it all - it sits quite far back compared to some conversions:

And this may sound like utter bobbins but we really did move it that far back for better weight distribution and to try and keep the props similar if not equal lengths.

Now, we had a pretty damn good 200A industrial MIG welder at the lab, but you really really don't want your axles falling off so they were transported to Vince's work where the Big Toys live - mounting brackets laser-cut from ~1“ thick plate and welded in with a 500A 3-phase MIG set to “not mucking about”.

I always knew I'd want to run a remote oil filter, not just because it's fairly likely the axle will clout it otherwise but also because it just makes filter changes so much nicer.

The Flotec remote is far nicer than the spin-on adapters but (I discovered) are not designed to fit cross-bolted blocks, which the 4.0 and 4.6 are:

People fit PAS to Series land rovers quite often, I knew with portals & large tyres I'd definitely need to. Discovery 2 boxes are allegedly stronger than the alternatives so a mounting was contrived - chassis is sleeved/tubed as are the holes on the top of the mount before being boxed in & smoothed. It came out quite neat I think.

And with the D2 PAS box bolted on:

You can see where the front crossmember was removed and a temporary bar was welded across the front of the chassis to hold it - weld the support bar before cutting the old bits out!

Onwards to Winch Me Up, Snotty!