If I could time travel backwards, this is what the next instalment would be about. But it is not. I do not have a nice new galvanised chassis, and am not about to smugly fit it. If you were hoping for a rivet count and a good look at some chassis porn this is not the segment for you…Move on..unless, of course, you would like to have a bit of a gloat instead.

To business. We all knew there was some visible crisp areas that could do with fettling, but what awaits the intrepid explorer with an eye for battling the oxide?

We start at the back, and work forward. A 109″ Land Rover is 179″ from back to front. Bumper to bumper. This gives around 170″ of box chassis that is available for corrosive fun, all encouraged by a lack of drain holes, poor steel and, in the case of Beelzebub, a liberally applied anti-corrosive covering. The irony. More later on this divisive topic.

Anyway, the best way is to approach the expedition is inch by inch, repairing as you go. Never look forward at what is coming! The immensity of the entire challenge is too much for the monkey brain to bear all at one time.

Firsters, lets get an easy 18″ under our belts…

The back cross member is shot. Luckily for £250 you can buy a new one with extending legs that also replaces the rear spring hangers.. What are we waiting for? Lets get cutting…It just welds straight on.

Oh. Gravity. As part of the amputation the spring hangers need to be removed which means that Beelzebub cannot sit on its rear wheels. My solution is to weld some supports to the nearest outriggers each side…Never has the internet chatter about the strength of DIY MIG welds been more prescient; the entire weight rests on four runs of my proudly created seagull shit.

With this done, the wheels can be removed and then the spring hangers. leaving the axle supported on axle stands

You also need to free the wiring from the tub which arrives at the back of the vehicle inside the drivers side chassis rail…very easy to cut straight through if you forget about it. Which needless to say, I did.

A bit of careful measuring and then out it comes…This is a prime example of measure twice and cut once, and still fucking up. Cannot recommend typex pens enough for this sort of bodgery. Oh, and the exhaust hanger needs to be replaced too. You cannot see it here but the box for the spring hanger is uber crisp.

With the tub on, its not too easy to grind all the way round, so you need to take bites out of the bit being removed to get the death wheel in….

Success!

What next? Well that new cross member just needs to be welded in, right? Unfortunately not. Against my previous advice I had to take a small peek forward and avail myself of the horrors to come…

Turns out that the corrosive fun did not end at the extent of the new cross member! How dare it! The bottom of the chassis rail was rotten for the next 15 inches or so each side. So I cut it out. Notice the delicate removal of the exhaust pipe behind the silencer. This gives a window on my delight at discovering this further corrosive joy.

To compound matters this part of the chassis appears to have increased strengthening inside the box section..How best to resinstate? (and also considering the side walls are a little thinned too). My solution here is not elegant, nor supported by any earth based engineering principles, but makes me feel better. And so…

My first foray into templating. The idea being that I weld a new shoe over the existing box, thereby enbuing magical strength and longevity. This template describes a piece of metal that will fit over the base of the box section, and navigate round the welded on obstacles while offering an upstand to weld to good metal.

Which with much typex and grinding and use of these..

Turns into this…

Which then fits so..

And then after many ruined flap disks from wax-oyl interactions and some sweary welding it turns into this…

It was the same gig the other side, I will not bore you with that one. You get the idea, as I certainly had at this point.

Still onwards, or even backwards as it was in this case…Lets get that cross member fitted.

First tho, it needs to be notched to get round the tub supports, and in my case i tapered the overlapping flanges to ensure there was space to convincingly weld each edge to the existing chassis.

Notice that blue hose there? That is the most durable purchase so far in terms of garage equipment. It’s fiercely durable and intent on supplying unwanted guidance when you are doing precise air driven bodgery. 10 years in and it still doesn’t leak. FFS. I want a rubber one on a cable retractor.

Anyway. Finally welded on…

We move forward, next instalment will have philosophy of sorts. Your choice if want to indulge…

Well after a fairly length hiatus, during which I single handedly saved the world, fixed my ailing t5 camper and built a shed; I am back to do battle with Beelzebub. This time armed with some more elaborate weapons, but no more sense…

The new shed formed the repository for the ‘all-crap*’ around which the garage universe revolves.

*Thats a clever Transformer reference kids.

With the ‘all-crap’ contained safely in the shed the garage is free for the next battle with Beelzebub. This battle will be epic, physically hard, emotionally wearing and in a confined space. No where to run for either of us Beelzebub.

Above is Beelzebub docking (ho ho) with the garage. And lo..

Docked, like a lamb to the slaughter. To be clear I pro-actively removed the roof – the various low hanging metal work pieces dangling from the roof did not remove it. Thats official. Do not interpret between one picture and the next.

Next. 179 inches of pain.

Fresh from the battle of the brakes, its time for something new, up on deck.

It’s treat time!

Remember the lack of roof? And remember the sartorially inelegant tarp that served as the roof? Heres a reminder…

Well today that’s going to change (interesting note: this is the only Land Rover related purchase Mrs Phatslax has formally approved).

Luckily I have all the support hoops in place (for simple bent metal hoops they are eye wateringly expensive to replace).

The issues:

1. The rear hoop is bent, no doubt from some hilarious squaddie high jinx. See it here compared to another presumably correctly bent one.

2. The hoop clamps are missing. Surprisingly no photo of these. They don’t exist. The eBay fairy will drop them outside the front door.

This is going to be an easy job. I’m not allowing any cynicism today.

First thing was to reform the hoop. I had visions of doing clever bending around a hand crafted mandrel. However, in the end I was too lazy, and have no idea what a mandrel is, so went for a good old wrestle. I.e. standing on it and pulling.

I think we all know the scenario, thin metal pipe that’s been kinked. Always wants to kink again in the same place until the kink becomes a separation. This is what tried to happen here, but by cleverly settling for a half-arsed job I managed to avoid the separation.

So having reformed the hoop to a approximation of the curve of the other hoops, it was time to try it out..

Oh.

There we go. Two more issues raise themselves. Both capping related – the drivers side capping has no mounting socket. The passenger side mounting hole below just separated from the capping. Both appear to have been attached using the finest British Leyland Friday afternoon welding.

This means both have to come off – a simple matter of drilling out the rivets..I can repent at my own leisure here; getting them back in was a pain (literally).

The drivers side was just a replacement sourced surprisingly cheaply from eBay. Easy.

The passenger side I subjected to my own Friday afternoon welding. Looked OK after grinding off the worst of my welding sins. Oddly though I only did half…I have absolutely no explanation for that. Maybe the spirit of the 1970s British car industry was with me. See later where I put screws in with a hammer, and then walk out.

I had to call in younger muscle to get the rivet gun to work. Here he is ruining his joints on the driver’s side. As I said teenage boys and their barely broken-in joints are two a penny in these parts.

With both cappings back on, the hoop could be mounted

And then the new hoop clamps went on with new zinc M8 bolts and spring washers. Spring washers are so much more classy than ny-locks aren’t they? I’m a convert, feels very authentic.

Are you looking at that indicator? Looks well very settled in doesn’t it? Hmm – we’ll see about that later. Turns out its very difficult to take these things alive…

Anyway here’s the scaffold ready to receive its cloak..

And so, on with the new canvas top; got cheap from Exmoor because it was a bit faded. ‘Cheap’ in this instance still involves a degree of eye-watering, but nothing near the angel falls that results from a full price purchase. Still we are on the homeward straight…aren’t we?

No surprise. Guess what? we have a problem. Turns out that two of the tie down hoops are different and in the wrong place on the drivers side. Necessitating some more holes in the tub and another session wrestling with the rivet joint mangler. This is the point where i invested in an old-man version with long handles….

Ooh and here it is..

The eagle-eyed amongst you will notice something. Yes. Theres a new door top on the drivers side…Another simple job you might think. Well it was once I had done battle with another rusty bolt. Look at the size of this whopper (in the absence of any scale you’ll have to trust me on this) it was left in the door frame with about 100mm of solid rust glue holding it in. Yum. It took some extreme persuading to get out with my biggest hammers – but enormously satisfying when it eventually shifted (especially without anything else coming with it)

The colour (of the door, not the bolt) will have to wait until the creative team have met next. It needs new runners, but the structure is pretty sound.

The ghost of Phatslax Towers makes an appearance here. A handsome manifestation, wielding what appears to be something that could harvest souls. I didn’t look directly at it just in case…

Ouch, that title is awful. But completes the triptych.

First things. the Land Rover has now had to be named – mainly for self preservation reasons – joining Van Wanker, Boris and The Bolus in the Phatslax stable. Welcome Beelzebub.

Thinking about it, stable maybe the wrong word, shed maybe better.

Now, lets see a picture of what Beelzebub did to Mrs Phatslax’s lawn during brake testing…Bad Beelzebub!

Ok, lets get this brake thing over and done with. I’m sick of them, as are you by now. Hopefully there are some learnings here we can all take home.

We start at the front again, with all old cylinders replaced and another brake-line plumbed in. Blah blah. its like groundhog weekend. But this time with a shiny new master cylinder – supremely easy fit.

Trawling the interwebs set me off on the path of minimising void volume in the system – the bleeding nipples are the low point in the system AND not well placed on the cylinder to get the air out of the piston.

Some solutions involve re-plumbing to put the bleed at the top, but given I now have brake line fabrication fatigue (who’d of thought it eh?) we’ll try this first.

The ratchet pushes the shoes which in turn pushes the cylinders in to their fullest detent (a little bit more than the springs would) therefore keeping the volumes inside at the minimum. Meaning less air to remove! The opposite side is locked up with adjusters to prevent them moving and decreasing the efficiency of the Eezibleed.

Just need to plug the black line onto the wheel and away we go…

So far so good. I bled the otherside in the same manner. All you need to do is open the nipple and expensive brake fluid (and bubbles) flow out.

After this, pushing the pedal I could see the shoes straining against the strop. So on with drums again and its time for a bit of testing…Bring out the mole grips! This is looking good.

I unleashed the wrath of the mole grips on the rear flexible pipe, blocking the flow to the rear drums so I could test the fronts independently..One concession to the pipe was a wrapping of duct tape, those jaws are fearsome.

Back into the cockpit and we have a solid Pedal. FUCKING A. This means progress and tight front brakes.

So now to the back brakes – this time a G-Clamp came in handy. A minor scuffle with the springs to displace the shoes, but they are tiring of the battle…and i’m on a roll.

Only one cylinder to bleed each side here…Interestingly I could not bleed this one until I’d slackened off the clamp a little – good indication of the small volume left inside? Lets hope so, don’t need my bubble burst yet. (Oh and I did remember to take the mole grips off – did you?)

Right drums back on and……………disaster. The Pedal is pretty slack.

BUT…BUT….the shoes are adjusted all the way in. Pah! adjustment is something only enthusiasts do isn’t it?

Well. It turns out that adjustment is an order of magnitude more important than a fine tuning exercise. Once adjusted out to contact the drums and then backed off slightly we have a good pedal again – not brilliant but the pedal applies the brakes in one stroke.

So conclusions?

1. I have working brakes!
2. Clamping the cylinders probably makes some difference to the amount of air in the system. (As probably, do other interweb solutions like removing and orientating the brake back plates with cylinders attached to allow gravity to help)
3. Eezibleed (2) works like a dream.
4. Adjustment is absolutely key! Could I have got to this point 2 weekends and £60 ago by simply adjusting the brakes properly? Possibly.
5. More adjustment is needed – suspect it will be ongoing as the new shoes bed in, and I think they need to be adjusted to be VERY snug to the drums.

Phew. We are back up and running morale wise. I’m now bored of the bilges; lets go top sides and do some stuff on deck….

Well I thought we’d be past this by now. But no.

As a piece of context I am currently at 35,000 ft musing the events of the weekend at the wallet raping courtesy of BA in-flight WiFi.

Started well with a nice collection of bits..Plan was to finish the brakes, replace the hub with reluctant bolt end, fix the hoops for the new hood and then as a Sunday PM climax install the new hood! Perfick.

Pretty much I didn’t get more than a third down the table.

At this point I wish we had the fervent optimism of last weekened, I think we all look back in pleasure at the pics of newly made brake pipes – this could be the place for a retrospective? No? Really? …I’ll move on. Your loss…

So to the future..

First minor issue is that the replacement brake hose between the rear axle and the body is a bit shorter. But I’m not stopping for that – its going on, we’ll see later if axle extension while getting ‘air’ stretches it.

All three went on satisfyingly well – except you have to use the old washers and nuts, as the new pipes do not come with them. Same actually for the wheel cylinders – a bit more fore-thought on my part may have helped. But lets look upon reusing bolts as recycling, and therefore good.

Shamefully (and something that may put off fellow travellers if they read this thread) I also reused the copper washer in the rear union. Here it is freshly ‘dressed’ sitting on a velvety wet ‘n’ dry cushion.

Back to brake bleeding; using the first stage Eezibleed (1), which constitutes an overly short clear pipe with a chode on the end (look that one up if your filters allow), I tried to bleed the system.

Starting at the back brakes which are arguably the easiest to bleed a single cylinder standard affair.

Remember the oil seal I replaced on the rear passenger side to prevent the gear oil coming out? The new Shitpart brake cylinder leaked on the same end of the same axle! Heres a pic, more so I can remember my outrage, rather than it being a suitable illustration for the crime. You’re looking for the wet patch on the ground. Which equates to about £5.00 worth of brake fluid. Doesn’t look it does it?

Anyway Did I get on the rap-rod and throw some Fs at Mr Shitpart? No! I went to the dustbin. I exhumed the old cylinders and rendered a new seal arrangement from the oily remains. Boom! the Frankenstein’s monster cylinder held liquid. With this type of engineering skill on display, its surely got to be all gravy from here…

Hmm. After trying the basic Eezibleed using foot pedal pressure only, then trying again with the engine running to get the benefit of the servo, the pedal would not achieve greatness even after all four corners had been ‘bled’.

Note: For those not down with the patois we master mechanics use, ‘The Pedal’ is used as an avatar for the quality of the braking system as a whole.

A lack in ‘The Pedal’ is normally indicated by ‘Sponginess’.

‘Sponginess’ can indicate several things:

1. Failed Master cylinder
2. Air in system
3. Something else (I cannot think of a third even though I’ve gone and led the audience to expect a third…..Damn.)

Right, thinking that maybe the pedal has not enough oomph to rid the system of air I went and bought an Eezibleed stage two (more dollar to Halfrauds). This connects to a spare tyre and uses the tyre pressure to force liquid through the system via the master cylinder. In this case it was connected to the least cracked wheel – which I pumped to 20 PSI as per instructions (and then later to 30 PSI when things started getting desperate).

Irritatingly the pressure vessel (loosest terms) for the Eezibleed (2) is shaped like a shampoo bottle. Meaning that even with a flat Land Rover wing, getting it to stay upright is a nightmare. Meaning more brake fluid over everything when it falls over (Edit I have to take this back – it comes with a hook! Masterful).

In this set-up I used Eezibleed (2) in conjunction with Eezibleed (1) to avoid back flow, but in hindsight maybe this was an added restriction. ‘The Pedal’ did not achieve greatness, retreating to the bulkhead under the considerable force of my lower guns. No evidence of more air coming from the system during bleeding. But..no sign of working brakes. The only way I could get any braking was through multiple pumps.

What next? Well I proactively bought a master cylinder refurb kit (clever eh?) – I installed that too. Turns out the seals were perished so maybe that was the issue?

Anyway see below for the master cylinder eviscerated under laboratory conditions. Not sure why an eating implement has crept in. Surely I wasn’t using it for disassembly purposes?

Also see the springs. They are in cahoots with the brake drum ones, and very much did not want to be put back inside.

Note: The reservoir stays with the cylinder! I tried levering it off, but then read the instructions.

There was much amusement from the phatslax household as the master cylinder exploded during re-assembly on the kitchen table.

Worse there was still no change in The Pedal after more bleeding attempts.

This is the transfusion volume used so far…..I hate the stuff. More than I hate gear oil, I now know. What a voyage of discovery…At this point I gave up and sulked. What next?

Is the title annoying? I think it might be. I’ve lost a bit of perspective. It’s staying anyway. Got to keep the pop culture references going.

Today I started on the brakes, need to be able to move the beast around without injuring the Phatslax infrastructure. I filled the master cylinder and pumped the brake pedal – all the brake fluid mysteriously disappeared from both chambers..

So I guess that means i have leaks in the front and back circuits.

First off is to identify what unholy chimera of braking systems the FFR (remember the magic these three letters bring) is composed of…

Heres the Master Cylinder. Dual circuit and a servo. Stop on a sixpence that will. And only minor patination.

So far so good. Looks like something from the parts catalogue..

Heres the next step down from the MC, the shuttle valve / distributer thing. This is where is gets interesting (if you like this sort of thing). Here it is evicerated from its rusty surroundings in the utopian state that is shown in the workshop manual. Front brakes are fed by two separate lines from the shuttle valve.

The shuttle moves in response to differential pressure between the two circuits, hence can detect low pressure in either front or rear circuits and illuminate a light in the cockpit by closing a switch as it moves.

If indeed there was a light in the cockpit. There isn’t. Its gone.

Using my state of the art Aldi Vernier I make the OD of the pipes to be just shy of 5mm, making them all 3/16″ ID Copper tubing? Answers the query about whether there was odd sized tubing used front and back. By the way looks like i have sausage fingers like Prince Charles in this pic (look them up, they are really agricultural). I don’t, i actually have pianists hands, this is just a trick of the lens.

So now the job is to trace all the pipe work and see where the leaks are. Wire brush and lamp in hand I go in…

The only leak found was on the front nearside line from the shuttle valve to the wheel cylinder..Everything else appeared patent. Have I got away lightly? I doubt it somehow.

I wanted to check the state of the brakes at the same time, so set about the nearside front wheel. First off the wheel. Nice big nuts on these…27mm. Doused them in penetrating oil and got the breaker bar on the socket.

So far so good. All drums front and rear are 11″. And helpfully say so in the casting.

Using an impact wrench the three drum retaining screws came out easily (Why do I use the word easily as a relative descriptor? read on…)

Then once I’d adjusted the shoes away from the drum using the two 13mm bolts (which turn cams against the shoes) on the rear of the brake plate, with a bit of lump hammering, the drum came off.

Showing a two cylinder arrangement at the front (the hydraulics loop from the top cylinder to the bottom where the bleed is) and below a single cylinder arrangement. This is easy! I am totally dominating .

Here are the main actors, front cylinder on the left , double acting from the rear on the right, with the original Girling part numbers. Why are they off the car and sitting on my life-style patinated zinc coffee table? I will tell you later, but you can probably guess.

Repeating this around the car there were no other obvious hydraulic leaks and the shoes are hardly worn.

Full disclosure; to get this deep into the metal, sacrifices had to be made. Those of a delicate engineering disposition may want to look away.

The drivers side claimed my impact wrench as its first victim. Two of the drum retaining screws had become exceedingly obstinate. So I had to let rip with the extreme HSS by DeWalt and drill them out – as you can see I was perfectly centred. Hmm.

I’m left now with a hub flange with only one operable drum retaining screw. I’m not sure if this matters. I think we’ll assume it doesn’t.

Also, remember the incontinence? Well the near side rear revealed a secret..The hub has shat itself. It stinks.

So at the end of round one its two all. Two perfect removals, one drill out fiasco and a blown hub seal. Round two is trial by bleed nipple . Lets see how it goes…

Almost enough shorn metal for a steam punk necklace. If you like that sort of thing.

For those paying attention this means three useless cylinders, hence their cameo appearance further up the thread.

So three new cylinders (1 front and 2 back), a rear hub seal, new shoes to replace the lubricated ones and 3 new pipes where they perforated or sheared when removing the pipe connections.

The big mystery is where the the fluid for the rear circuit went as I didn’t find the obvious leak…..Scary stuff. Maybe internal leak in the shuttle valve?

Enough of this minor detail, onto Braking Good!

Odd shaped packages have started arriving, apparently i’ve been busy and not particularly quality conscious on eBay..

Here’s one as an example (wont bore you with the outrigger, tailgate bracket and brake pipe flarer that also arrived). What sort of maverick would buy a used heater valve, and then spend precious daylight fitting it to their engine? Me. Thats who. These things never fail. NEVER.

This thing is the heater valve that sits to the left of the thermostat and will make the cabin like an oven. Bought for £20 delivered – mainly because the long nut on the right is an adaptor that I could not find elsewhere that, is an immense value add. Apparently.

Had to remove the top radiator hose to fit it; a few inches of PTFE tape later and it was on..(the liquid that spilt out when removing the hose was satisfying in two ways (1) that there was actually liquid in the cooling system and (2) the liquid had a reassuring blue tinge which tells me everything is perfect where I cannot see.)

Before…

And after…Now need to buy a new heater cable to be able to operate it from the flight deck, but thats for another day. Cannot tell if it leaks as during the test run the engine stalled and wouldn’t start again…

This really felt like pissing in the wind. But you have to start somewhere…

Never having trailered a large vehicle before certain questions arise

1. How do I strop the beast down?
2. Will it be ruinously expensive?

Ah. And a third that occurred afterwards was towing weight. So no idea if my road train was legal or even safe in that respect. Something learned for next time.

The tow vehicle was Van W@nker, our long suffering T5 camper, which needs some TLC (as they all do) to the cylinder head – but let’s put our heads in the sand here – much more logical to spend money on a questionable Land Rover than on my daily driver, right? RIGHT?? 

To deal with (2) first. It was not. Hire from Blendworth trailers in Rowlands Castle was £60 for 24hrs, really easy and good value. Great company to hire from. http://www.blendworthtrailers.co.uk/

AND to (1)..the trailer came with two strops. So apparently the wisdom here is that you tie down opposite corners of the ‘project’ and that should be enough.

So it was, left in gear and handbrake on, didn’t appear to move on the journey home. Did keep scaring me by appearing to aggressively tailgate when I forgot the trailer was attached.

The land rover made it onto the trailer under its own steam. Where we balanced it using top-level man-maths. The video says its all (including my un-constrained pleasure which comes out as a Beavis and Butthead snigger). Apologies for the melon twisting orientation change – I was very excited.

And the journey was made home. Uneventfully.

Back on Hayling I reversed it off, and drove it into the garden and over a teenage boy – I forgot the foot brakes don’t work. Teenage boys are two a penny round here. Luckily missed most of Mrs Phatslax’s weeds, they apparently are not two a penny.

Now nestling under a tarpaulin – opinions divided (very) on the aesthetic of the tarp in the Phatslax household. Got a feeling that this will need to be dealt with soon. Expensively.

how many projects begin….and end…at this point?