What to do? We limped the Land Rover from Tsumeb to Windhoek at 60km/h, desparately trying to keep the temperature gauge out of the red. It's a long way at that speed! Every few kilometers the 120km/h speed limit signs were taunting me. I used to be proud of doubling the speed limit and now this? Almost too much. Really.
I just wanted to get rid of this confounded truck already, but I doubted whether we could make it back to Cape Town without risking a major break down. If the cylinder head went on route and we had to have the vehicle towed, it would cost a lot more than addressing the issue in Windhoek.
I contacted the couple with the red Series III that we met in Tsumeb and told them we were interested in purchasing their truck. I was planning on heading down to Cape Town with or without our truck. Buying their truck and flogging ours seemed to be a good idea.
We went back to Theater Garage in Windhoek as Oubaas had really impressed me last time we were there. He suggested getting a test done on the radiator as a starting point to determine whether there was a problem with the cylinder head. We went to Silverton, the biggest radiator place in Southern Africa, and a quick test was done on the coolant to determine whether exhaust gas was getting into the cooling system. This would indicate a crack in the head gasket or worse, in the cylinder head. The test was positive.
I didn't completely trust this quick test and so went to talk to another Land Rover mechanic. I opened the radiator cap and showed him the brown froth building up as the water circulated. I had become convinced that this was caused by engine compression, a sign of a crack somewhere. The mechanic didn't think so, actually, he was quite certain it was not a problem with the cylinder head. He suggested that it was probably a blocked radiator core. I just love it when mechanics contradict each other. So what now?
I went back to Theater Garage and decided to have the radiator looked at first. It was taken apart and properly flushed and according to Silverton, there was no indication that it was the cause of the over heating problem. They said the core was completely unobstructed! While at Silverton, I had a small pinhole leak fixed and the mounting brackets repaired that had broken off on some bumpy road. Since I had checked all the other more common things that could cause engine overheating, everything was pointing at problems with the head. I thus pulled apart the top of the engine to have a look at the cylinder head. The head was sent out and pressured tested and luckily no damaged was discovered. I only had to replace the head gasket.
stripping the engine and removing cylinder head
While to top of the engine was out, the pistons were checked for hairline cracks. Everything looked okay. The water pump didn't look like it was circulating sufficiently and the fan wasn't drawing much air through the raditor, so both were replaced. The temperature sender in the thermostat housing did not match with the Land Rover console, so it too was replaced for good measure.
In Cape Town I had the exhaust manifold gasket replaced, but because the manifold was not skimmed, the gasket only lasted about two weeks. Over time this exhaust leak had become quite bad and probably wasn't helping the engine bay temperature. It was actually the manifold side of the head that needed to be skimmed as it was strangely warped. Apparently the mechanic had never seen this and the engineer shop the head was sent to had never performed this kind of skim on a head in all of its years of operation! It's great having unique problems. It only made sense to fix this problem while the head was out - and with this rational, one thing lead to another and I spent several more weeks, which eventually turned into months, working on the Landy, replacing and rebuilding everything imaginable.
cleaning pistons and checking for cracks
The brakes had been giving on going problems since day one. Right from the beginning, the left front brake would lock up. The first mechanic to look at the brakes simply played around with the front left brake adjustment. This appeared to temporarily solve the problem, but the underlying cause of this problem had not been solved. It was then discovered that the brake adjusters were actually siezed and some of the hub seals were leaking. So both the adjusters and hub seals were replaced. The problem persisted and the brake situation deteriorated until there were no brakes at all. It turned out the hub seals were still leaking. So I had the hub seals replaced again by another Land Rover mechanic. This time also replacing the pads, as he reckconed the oil drenched pads could not be cleaned. The brakes seemed to temporarily work but then again started to fail. I pulled all the drums off and discovered that all the drums were full of oil. The hub seals were still leaking! In Tsumeb the mechanic had told me that the metal sleeves that the hub seals run on were worn and this is why the hubs were still leaking. Seemed to make sense. Unfortunately, these sleeves weren't available and the entire drive members would have to be replaced. That was an expensive proposition. I had made a temporary fix by slightly shortening the spring inside the hub seal to make it run a little tighter. I had cleaned and sanded the pads again, something that I was getting a little tired of doing, and the brakes seemed to once again work. For a while. I had also replaced the oil in the swivel pin houses with grease, which would stop the oil leaking through the hubs in the front. By the time we got to Windhoek however, the brakes were barely working. So, while I was working on the truck, I had Oubass look at the brakes. He quickly determined that the hub seals were in fact the wrong ones! Unbelievable! Twice the hub seals had been replaced with wrong ones by Land Rover mechanics! While the hubs were apart, I found out that one of the wheel bearings was incorrect and thus the bearing and the race were replaced.
cleaning and adjusting brakes
The oil pressure sender had been leaking live a sieve from day one, so why not quickly replace this $10 part as well? I had noticed that our batteries weren't always charging fully, so I had the altenator checked. Wouldn't you know it, faulty. No sense in having the altenator give up its ghost somewhere in the desert, so it was added onto the list of replaced items.
oil pressure sensor, altenator
The Bendix drive on the starter was on its last legs, as we had noted by the intermittent difficulties starting the truck. The plastic cap on the solenoid was cracked which could only mean trouble for wet driving. Luckily spare parts were found second hand at an auto-electric shop and both the starter and solenoid could be rebuilt. All the bushes in the starter were completely shot and were replaced while rebuilding the starter. Oubaas also had a close look at the distributor and aside from a slightly worn shaft, it looked like it still would continue to perform its job!
hub seals, starter, solenoid, distributor
I completed numerous other tasks which were easier to accomplish while the engine was apart. I tackled the nasty mess of electrical wires which were half hazardously strung throughout the engine bay. I pulled out at least a third of all the wires which had no longer been connected to anything. Many of the crimped on electrical connectors were only hanging on by a thread or two of wire, so I figured it prudent to properly crimp on new connectors.
I carefully inspected every inch of the truck and continued discovering things that I found alarming; for instance, more than half of the bolts were missing from the bell housing! Needless to say, I turned in a few extra bolts - but that sounds too easy. In fact, it was a small mission to find the correct bolts with the right thread and length.
assembling cylinder head
Once the cylinder head had been reinstalled and all the bits had been bolted back onto the engine, the truck was given a complete tune-up: high grade oil, fresh coolant, pressure check on the cooling system, new spark plugs, adjusted timing, and the carb was tuned for maximum fuel efficiency. The truck purred like a kitten which instilled a complete false sense of confidence in us.
Somewhere along the line, addressing the over heating problem had morphed into a project with much bigger scope. Maybe we'd take this truck through Africa after all. Seeing that we were dumping money into the truck hand over fist, it didn't make sense to go down to Cape Town anymore to purchase the other Series III Land Rover. Something in the back of my head was telling me that this wasn't the best decision I would make. We had convinced ourselves however that first, we had put too much money into our truck now and secondly, we were uncertain of how all the logistics of registration, licnesing and carnet would work with the UK registered Series III vehicle we had considered. It didn't really make sense to try and sell our truck at a loss now either.
If we were going to take this truck through Africa, we'd have to do some more work. In Cape Town we did not have the time to properly outfit the vehicle and organize the inside to make extended travel easier and more efficient. The storage bins and boxes were stacked on top of each other (which made accessing our gear a pain in the ass), we had no secure storage for the camera and computer gear, we had gotten rid of the 13L Engel fridge that we bought in Cape Town due to its inability to properly keep things cold during the heat of the day (so we'd have to find another fridge as throwing bags of ice into the coolbox on an almost daily basis wasn't very practical, especially when there wasn't any ice available), the truck still used copious amounts of fuel so installing a huge auxillary fuel tank would need to be considered and many other details that had not been worked out previously. One other thing we would need to address is the suspension. In the front one of the main leafs had broken and was being held together with a home-made clamp and the rear leaf backs, although they had been retentioned in Cape Town, were sagging badly.
This was going to be a lot of work, but at least we would then have a fully rebuilt and custom kitted vehicle that would suit our needs. Stay tuned for Part 2 of the Landy Rebuild.