1989 Range Rover

[PTSchram]

I don’t know how I didn’t comment on the wings and dual rear shox

im glad I’m not the only not afraid to break out the plasma to increase clearance!!!

I have an ‘88 Rangie with the Terra Firma dual shock mounts-love them!

as for your axle breakage, “I” have yet to break an axle, after many years of flogging the shit out of my first Disco, but when I got my ‘93 SWB I had to cut the diff pan off and bash the broken bits out as the carrier tore as well

it now has a Salisbury rear and “someday” I will finish the front I’ve had the housing for ermagerd, at least eight years! See what I mean by the lightning fast build?!

keep up the good work!

 

[A4L7E3X]

Detroits break when you break an axle shaft on everything not just Rovers.

24 splines are worthless too. I got to the point I was breaking one every time I went out. I even broke both rears at the same time once.

The only way to fix them are tons.

Cheers for the reply 😁 it was getting a bit quiet in here!
"Tons" would be great, but horrendously unavailable in Aus. Most axle swaps in Aus are to GU/GQ Patrol axles, but even then most of the 'garden variety' Patrol axles are semi-float rear, and although they are a bunch stronger than the Rover stuff I'm not really willing to give up the full float set up. You can get full float from Utes and some of the higher spec models... But all of that would require an engineers cert and more expensive insurance and all the bullshit that comes with it.
When I can afford a decent 24 spline locker I will try to go some Ashcroft or Maxidrive axles. Plenty of guys run up to 35"s with them and seem to get away with it, but at least you can still throw in a junkyard axle if the need arises.

 

[A4L7E3X]

I don’t know how I didn’t comment on the wings and dual rear shox

im glad I’m not the only not afraid to break out the plasma to increase clearance!!!

I have an ‘88 Rangie with the Terra Firma dual shock mounts-love them!

as for your axle breakage, “I” have yet to break an axle, after many years of flogging the shit out of my first Disco, but when I got my ‘93 SWB I had to cut the diff pan off and bash the broken bits out as the carrier tore as well

it now has a Salisbury rear and “someday” I will finish the front I’ve had the housing for ermagerd, at least eight years! See what I mean by the lightning fast build?!

keep up the good work!

Cheers for the comment. Yeah the dual shocks seem to be working out well, it's definitely lost the bounce that it did have, maybe a touch stiff with no weight in the back but there's always going to be a trade in off I guess.

The Rangie's progress might slow down a touch now, it already had to share time and resources with a 300zx, a WB Holden Ute and a BMW r850r, and now it is getting another buddy....

 

[KungFooMASTA]

Cheers for the comment. Yeah the dual shocks seem to be working out well, it's definitely lost the bounce that it did have, maybe a touch stiff with no weight in the back but there's always going to be a trade in off I guess.

The Rangie's progress might slow down a touch now, it already had to share time and resources with a 300zx, a WB Holden Ute and a BMW r850r, and now it is getting another buddy....

What kind of 300zx?
I have a few Z31s an 86 and an 88 Shiro Sport #886.

 

[A4L7E3X]

What kind of 300zx?
I have a few Z31s an 86 and an 88 Shiro Sport #886.

Nice, mines a Z32, an early one being 1989 though, VIN number 000123. It's a 2+2, was NA Auto, now TT Manual.

 

[A4L7E3X]

Little update just because its been a while, not that much as happened with Victoria going in and out of lockdowns every other week

The Series 3 got dragged out of the weeds and towed the 300 km or so back to my Dads shed. It ended up there because he has a hoist, although that turned into a bit of a pain because with all of these lockdowns I haven't been able to get much work done on it. Dad has been tinkering away though whilst waiting for parts to replace the head on his Disco (in the background below).

Initially I wanted to document the work done to the Landy either for here or maybe even a little YouTube build series, but with such little sporadic time to spend on it that didn't happen.

In other news, without any need or intention of owning another Land Rover between us, dad and I went halves on a 1999 D1 300TDI Manual.

One of those "too cheap not to" sort of deals. For a fairly stock standard car it had a really heavy duty home made "comp style" winch bumper on it which looked totally out of place. Luckily Dad still had the standard bumper from his Disco so that got swapped over.

Since I have been looking to save some weight on the front of the Rangie I thought I may as well see what it looked like...

Turns out on something with bigger tyres it doesn't look so out of place. Out of curiosity I did some weighing:

ARB Bullbar - 47 Kg with my shitty little "bash plate" (an aluminium fuel tank step from a Volvo truck)
Warn XD9000 - 24 Kg with solenoid pack, cables and 30m of synthetic rope
Home Made "comp style" bar - 47 Kg with a proper steel bash plate

So as it is it wont save any weight, but there are definitely some improvements to be made in its construction. A few shitty welds here and there that I will go over, I can cut down the side bars a bit, and lighten up the massive 8mm plate brackets that bolt it onto the frame. I also plan to move the whole deal back about 25mm and up about 25mm.

All up I'm not expecting ill shave a whole bunch of weight, but if I can save a couple of kilos hanging way out over the front end, and end up with a better approach angle, more under body protection, a clearer path in front of the tyres, and lifting the winch up a bit higher (hopefully saving some water ingress) I think that's worth my time. The only real down side is that I'm losing protection in front of the headlights.

 

[A4L7E3X]

Here's a comparison of my original ARB bar to the "Comp Style" bar. I'm not totally sure which I prefer to be honest - opinions welcome!

 

[A4L7E3X]

Thought I might as well update with where I ended up with the bullbar. I spend a bunch of time grinding out shitty old welds and re-welding, plus cutting a bunch of weight out of the ridiculously heavy mounting brackets.
I tried painting it with Dupli-color wrinkle black, the theory being a textured paint would be easier to cover all the grinder marks, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get an even effect with the wrinkle black. With that paint I think you need to be super consistent with how thick the coats are, and it just wasn't possible with a bar made of tube.
So I sanded it all back and tried using Bully Liner, a rubbery bed liner material. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. One litre was enough to do the front bar and the flares. Once upon a time I was thinking of doing the whole car with Bully Liner, but its a very coarse texture so I don't think it would look great on the panels.

I still need to finish off mounting and painting the bash plate. It had to be re-worked a bit with the bar being moved up and back. I think the bash plate I will just paint with normal gloss black.

I got the light bar mounted on some 3" tube brackets (I cut off the old tabs when I was re-working the bar) and mounted up my freshly refurbished Warn XD9000.

With this bar I couldn't find a spot that I was happy to mount the solenoid box, it either looks stupid mounted off to the side or i'm worried it's going to block too much of the front grill. At this stage I'm thinking i'll mount it under the bonnet and extend the control plug wiring down to front grill? Open to suggestions and ideas.

 

[A4L7E3X]

Made up a flip up number plate. A couple of little magnets hold it up to the hoop.

 

[m016324]

fun to see you build it up. One think you might want to think about is retaining those rear springs. It will help the front work better and since you have lockers it will not feel nearly as tippy and will go most places you point it.

-ben

 

[A4L7E3X]

fun to see you build it up. One think you might want to think about is retaining those rear springs. It will help the front work better and since you have lockers it will not feel nearly as tippy and will go most places you point it.

-ben

Rear springs are retained 👍 you can sort of see the top retainer in the pic showing the dual shocks. It's a kit from Kingpin.

Unfortunately it only has a front locker at the moment, still just got a standard diff in the back since I broke the Detroit. Looking at getting an Ashcroft locker and Hytuff axles for the rear, and possibly re gearing it if I can save some pennies...

 

[A4L7E3X]

Bought myself a Christmas present:

Probably not very recognisable outside of Aus, but that's a Maxi-Drive locked diff, they are pretty well regarded by the Land Rover crowd here, and unfortunately no longer in production. This wasn't my original plan and unfortunately wont accept standard junkyard axles in an emergency, but it does have 28 spline axles which are as big as it's possibly to fit through the Land Rover stub axle. Certainly nothing like a beefed up 14 bolt or Dana 60 or anything like that, but it should cope with 33s and an auto. And it cost me less than an ARB or Ashcroft locker for the whole assembly ready to run.

Comparison to a standard 10 spline axle:

They use a vacuum engage / disengage cylinder that I plan on converting to air pressure since I already have the compressor for the front ARB. The locker itself works more like a semi-truck diff lock with the extra splined section on the axle shaft, this slides though a dog clutch which will lock the axle to the diff carrier when engaged.

As a bonus it also had this still attached:

Also a Maxi-Drive product, its an extended upper ball joint which flattens out the upper link. These are available new but are worth about $200. It needs a new boot for sure but otherwise seems to be in good condition.

 

[ArTi54N]

cool range rover