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101 Forward
Control Land Rover pages
THE DIARY, 2001-2002!
Other 'history'
pages:
general information
conversion to a camper
service history (since we got it)
military service
Bosnia connection!
This diary documents the first couple of
years of ownership of this vehicle - 2001 to 2002, as we
coaxed it back into proper life and fitted it out for
camping. Enjoy the story.
January/February 2001 diary:
The new distributor cap and rotor arm have made
a HUGE difference to the starting. It's been really
wet (and snowy) here recently, and even without a run for
a couple of weeks, it'll now start first time allowing
for the funny petrol pump setup that means that it
doesn't even begin to deliver fuel to the carbs until the
starter motor begins to turn. Points and condenser
are on order.
I drove it in proper dark the other day -
that is back roads without streetlights - and found out
just how bad the original headlamps were. Looking
at them more carefully, they appear to be the same as
those fitted to early series 2 vehicles (suffix A) -
40/50 watt bulbs with spring connector on the back (not
even the lucar triple connector). Luckily, I'd just
replaced the series 3 headlamps to halogen units, so had
a couple of 45/60 watt sealed beam units knocking
about. These are now fitted, and the lighting is
very much better. Might convert to halogens if I
can find them in the scrappie.
I pulled the dividing wall between the cab
and the rear out, and in doing so sorted out the lighting
arrangement for the rear. It's very clever wiring - click here for a diagram of
what it's like as standard, and a couple of
alternatives. I've also taken out the upper
stretcher carriers and most of the centre seat/cabinet
arrangement (but had to leave the forwardmost part in
because it's where the gearlever goes into the
gearbox). The vehicle now rides about 6 inches
higher at the back than it did!
March/April 2001 diary:
Replaced the points and condenser, which finally
sorted the cold starting. However, having got the cold
starting sorted out, the hot starting is proving to be a
problem. It's fine is I start it quickly after it stops,
but leave it 5 minutes and starting is dreadful. There's
been a strand running in the LRE UK forum which has
helped a bit. The best advice seems to be that it's
caused by fuel vaporisation, but dwell angle is also a
possibility. I've checked that and it's spot on. This
does seem to be a running problem with all V8s, and on
this vehicle particularly due to the cramped engine
space. The best answer is to replace the carbs with a
four choke Weber, but that's a £600 option that isn't
really 'on'. I've re-routed the fuel line and that's
helped quite a lot. The next step is to check and
overhaul the carburettors - the right hand one does seem
a bit sluggish. I've also ordered a new coil to finish
off the ignition system. One other thing that I've done
is to rewire the fuel pump, so that it works all the time
the ignition is on. Not quite so safe as before, but cold
starting is spot on now (see Jan/Feb comments).
Andy from the 101 club collected the
ambulance bits for a mate of his in Germany.
May/June 2001 diary:
It's been a slow couple of months - work
pressures, holidays and all! I fitted a new coil to
complete the full ignition system, then I decided to
overhaul the carbs. You should have seen the pile of dirt
that came out of the float chambers and jet carrier!
Overhauling them is fairly straight forward,
but setting them is a different story. I haven't done a
two-carburettor setup before and it proved to be a long,
tedious job. Having got them balanced, it was a matter of
setting the mixture, which upset the balancing, and so
on. However, having finally done it, the vehicle runs
much better, and the hot starting problem seems to have
gone away. It's not surprising that something didn't work
properly, given the dirt in the system.
Next job is to start on the cab
refurbishment.
July/August 2001 diary:
I managed to break the choke control so had to
fit a new one of those. Now holidays are here, and so is
Billing. We had a day there and bought lots of bits for
the 101 and the Series 3. Still working on the mixture
for the carbs - it runs OK, but won't pull properly - I
think it's too weak at the moment. However, we bought
some nice bits and bobs from Billing, like the pick and
shovel set for the front, an amber beacon, some nice new
driving lamps and a new lock for the back door. We also
got a new fuel filter element. In order to get the wiring
a bit prettier, I've used some multicore to reroute the
rear compartment wiring. We picked up some good ideas for
the conversion from Billing, which will be included in
the master plan soon. One of them even had a shower! I
don't think we'll stretch to that, but you never know.
Lois says that a toilet's more important since you can't
poo in a shower. I beg to differ, but that's a different
story....
I've now 'bitten the bullet' and removed the
rear step completely from the tailgate, including cutting
the brackets off. It was too heavy - OK for squaddies,
but not for Lois, and certainly not for Hannah - we had
visions of her unlocking it, then it falling on her! This
will also allow for the internal single door that we want
to fit just inside the big external doors. This door will
be for 'on-site' use since, again, the two big double
doors (while they may be gas-tight and waterproof) are a
tad impractical for minute-by-minute use, certainly by a
seven year old.
I think it may be time to restore the fuel
pump wiring, too. Having it running all the time that the
ignition's on is not a very good idea, although it did
help the earlier starting problem. It'd probably be wise
to wire the driving lamps in through a relay, too. Ah -
Summer's here.
More August 2001 diary:
I rewired the driving lamps, through a relay, so
that they come on with the main beams. I can see to drive
in the dark, now. As I write, I've just heard the vehicle
now has an MoT - it only needed a new U/J and headlamp.
Regular readers will note that this is one of the
headlamps I repaced with sealed beam units from the
Series 3 - thus showing that it's not worth cutting
corners. As always, Paul at HPMS had done a brilliant
job. It's being tuned now - they are having a bit of
trouble with the carbs! More on its return. We got to the
Miltary Vehicle rally at the DLI on b/h Sunday -
brilliant. Also, we're booked for Stoneleigh - better
crack open the bank again.
September 2001 diary:
Fuel side sorted! The carbs are tuned, balanced
and set. The main problem was the distributor - the
centrifugal advance weights were stuck and the spindle
was rising as the revs. went up. Basically, as the revs.
went up, 3 or 4 of the pots went off (see my comment
below in July/August diary "Won't pull
properly" - understatement or what?). Not
surprisingly, the thing was impossible to tune
electrically. A new distributor was needed (from MVS -
good, helpful place - see 'bookmarks' for their site).
Blimey - is the end of the tunnel in sight? Stoneleigh
came and went. Excellent show from the point of view of
camping and the main stalls, but didn't get any new bits
there, and no real autojumble to be had. Thanks to all of
you who e-mailed us - it was good to meet. The vehicle is
now fully tuned (including its new distributor) and is
running perfectly. In fact, it's better than ever it was.
The distributor really was worn out. The advance weights
were sticking and only slowly returning to their proper
position. This, coupled with a loose spindle and very
worn gear, was what was causing most of the running
problems. The carbs. being set up properly has also
helped a lot. Very many thanks to Paul and his team at
HPMS, who did a terrific job finding the problem and then
curing it. The 101's also sporting brand new halogen
headlamps. Given the vehicle a full service (too low
milage for 12000, so based on the 12 month routine that
you can download from Alasdair Worsley's "1
Tonne" pages). I have bought and made up a
Velleman electronic ignition, that I'll fit soon, to help
keep it in tune.
October 2001 diary:
A slow period - such is the beginning of a new
University year, I suppose. Still, we've had a couple of
little outings to enjoy the newly performing engine.
Also, we've done some more work inside, with the removal
of another hundredweight or so of superfluous metal - the
rear seatbox extensions, the lower stretcher racks and
the elevating screws. It really is quite big in the back,
now! We've got down to some serious planning on the rear
layout - I'll post some of the ideas for comment soon.
We've decided not to pull out the spare wheel box
(although many people who do the conversion do this),
mainly because the only alternative for the spare wheel
is the roof, and Lois would stand no chance of getting it
down. So this leave the main layout constraint as being
the bed at the front of the rear section. Hannah will
have a bunk in the cab. One plus point is that we've
found a recovery service that will cover it with its
3600+ kg plated weight. Britannia will, so long as its
not commercial, and we'll be taking out a membership very
shortly. As mentioned in September diary, we bought a
Velleman electronic ignition system. I made it up in
September, and have just fitted it. Didn't seem to make
much difference, but that's not really surprising since
the conventional ignition was spot on. The idea is the
the electronic ignition will let it stay that way. Slow
tickover does seem smoother, though. 600 rpm (which is
was the manual says) does seem very slow, and I might
ease that up a bit. Anyone any comments?.
November/December 2001 diary
These months saw some good runs out, and a bit
of additional work on tarting up the cab. In particular,
the instrument panel was refurbished and some of the
added wiring sorted out to make it a bit less like
spaghetti. There's still a problem with the iginition -
on our last run out, there was a sudden power loss. We
got home, but I think that the dizzy has jumped a tooth
on its drive - all the symptoms point that way. I really
should have replaced the drive when it was evident that
the gear on the bottom of the old dizzy was badly chewed,
but I didn't, so now's the time. Thanks to some very
helpful advice from Rob at British 4x4, we'll be back on
the road very soon.
January/February 2002 diary
Having worked in the freezing cold (literally)
to get the timing cover off (after taking the fan,
radiator, oil cooler, etc etc etc out), I found a very
worn and chipped drive gear - it looked as though the
dizzy drive had jumped a number of teeth, not just one
(see last month's entry). The timing chain was a bit
slack, too - so that's been replaced. Now that
everything's back together, the engine sounds brilliant -
it has the distinctive purr that V8s have, and the power
is back the way it was. Getting the distributor back on
and lined up properly (it turns as you put it on, so you
have to guess where to start from in order to get it
lined up when it's in place) was a piece of cake, and the
oil pump worked first time, too (not being self-priming,
they sometimes don't work to start with and you have to
do funny things with vaseline to get them going!) Doing
the dwell and strobe timing was easy too. What's the
catch?
March 2002 diary
While driving, half the power went suddenly.
Regular readers might find this familiar (see November),
but this time there was no associated backfiring. Working
through the 'remove the plug leads to see which
cylinders are missing' method, I found that
cylinders 1,4,6 & 7 were not firing. Does this give
you a clue? Now, I'm going to sound very cocky here, but
I happened to know that these cylinders have in common
that they are fed by the left-hand carb. Five minutes
work later replaced the needle that had dropped off the
carrier, and power was back to normal. While doing that 'remove
the plug leads...' test, it became evident that the
plug leads that I'd fitted shortly after getting the
vehicle were poorly constructed, and the end fitting were
loose. So I've got a new set. Thaey've made another huge
difference - shows it doesn't pay to cut corners. I
actually overtook something on the road!
April/May 2002 diary
Now the vehicle is running nicely, starting
properly and sounds a treat (that statement will ensure
that it breaks down today). It's time to get back to the
conversion of the rear. We've re-registered the vehicle
as a 'motor caravan', mainly for MoT purposes, but also
cos it just isn't an ambulance any more. We've adapted
the rear doors so that the old tailgate is now bolted to
them - after sawing it in half. That solves the problem
of having a big gap between the bottom of the doors and
the floor which couldn't be closed from inside. See
photos from the 'Conversion History' part of the site.
We've also re-lined the rear inside walls of the vehicle
and taken the blue anti-flash glass panes out. These were
almost opaque, and taking them out - just leaving the
clear glass - means that we can see out, and the inside
is MUCH lighter. Off to build some furniture...
June/July 2002 diary
Now came one of the biggest headaches we've ever
had! Not a BIG fault, but a very annoying one, and fixing
it turned out to be really, really frustrating! The
flasher unit went wrong - clicking at odd times and
sometimes not working. The wiring looked ok, so I got a
new one. It chattered badly when it was fitted. It only
did this with the engine running - ignition on, but not
running, no chatter. Earths were OK. If I picked up a 12V
feed direct from the battery - same, the relay chattered
while engine running. BUT (and this is the bit I couldn't
understand), if I picked up a feed from the Auxilliary
battery there was no chatter whether the engine was
running or not. Feeds from both main and aux battery
together, chatter. Good one, eh. A couple of people made
suggestions, but now that I've cured it, I though you
might like to hear the answer... It was several problems,
all at the same time: The power pick-ips from the back of
the starter solenoid were corroded and starting to get
hot. Replaced them - brighter lights and things, but
still chattering. The leads on the back of the ignition
switch were also loose, so replaced them. Still
chattering - although a bit different now - more of a
'fizz' than a 'chatter' (you'd have to hear it to
understand). The sympotoms of "connect to main
battery gives problem, while connecting to aux battery
doesn't" were still there. Here's the big one...and
I had to resort to an oscilloscope to find this one: The
alternator diode pack was breaking down, and was giving
bits of AC every now and again. Hence running a lead from
the aux battery (which is behind it's own blocking diode
in the split charge system - see comment about earlier
alterations below) was OK - DC only, but mix that with a
very rough source from the main battery and the voltage
varied from 12 ish to -5 ish. Lights not bothered by
this, but a sensitive flasher relay was. Good, eh? Of
course the other problem was that the wiring bore very
little resemblance to the wiring diagram for the Ambi. It
looked as though bits of extra wire had been put in at
some point. And also there's an error in the army diagram
(no surprise there) in that the heavy lead from the ambi
panel to the main battery terminal post isn't shown -
only the 12v sensing wire. I've got a JPEG of the amended
version - in the resources area..
While doing this, I've found that there was
a big voltage drop across the split charge diode. I
wanted to leave the old system in place until I'd sorted
out the problem above, but now that it's fixed, the time
has come to ditch the diode (which is old technology
anyway) and replace it with a relay system which is
simpler, safer, more reliable and more effective. The
change was very easy (see amended wiring diagram in the
resources area), but the change in charge rate is
significant. A good move! Instead of fitting a new relay,
I used the one in the fuse/relay panel that used to work
the compressor (which I removed some time ago). Again,
see the fusebox layout diagram in the resources area to
see what's what.
I've finally bitten the bullet (and got the
credit card out) and bought an overdrive. All I have to
do now is make up a linkage to be able to work it - more
of that later...
August/September 2002 diary
The main summer month really should have been
taken up by holidays and work on the vehicle. However,
finishing off my Project at work took up so much time
that both went by the board to a large extent. OK,
excuses over - what has been done? Well, you'll recall
that the last entry ended with news that I'd bought an
overdrive. August was, therefore, taken up by firstly
making up the linkage to be able to operate it, and
second getting all the bits to make it work. The o/d
itself came from LEGS, and the people there are very
helpful indeed - and nice with it. However, I'm still
trying to persuade them that I need the shim and spacer
that fit on the back of the clutch sleeve to stop the
roller bearing dropping into the transfer box. As usual
with these things, I've got loads of information from the
Yahoo Groups (in this case, the "Sixstud" group
was more help than the "101" group), and even
got the dimensions of the bits I need from a guy who goes
under the snappy name of guitar03278, but is called
Gordon. Still, I digress... if push comes to shove, I'll
get them made up from Gordon's dimensions. The linkage
was good fun to make - from heavy steel plate and
1.5" box steel. Pictures are in the 101 resources section. The
difficulties were that there is only very limited
clearance between the gearbox and the floor, and there
needs to be a connection with a second transfer shift
cable which goes to a wince control level in the cab. All
good stuff, and the fun bit was making sure that the
range of movement in the control lever was transmitted
via appropriate ratio of levers in the new linkage to the
corrent range of movement at the overdrive. So, once I
get the shim and spacer, all will be able to be connected
together.
The other news it that I now have a built a
kitchen unit, complete with gas cooker and sink. The
former runs from a Camping Gas bottle in the locker
behind the spare wheel stowage, and the water comes in
the same way. In one respect I had to do that since it's
now re-registered as a Motor Caravan, and therefore it
needed the kitchen gubbins to make it into one. It
couldn't be registered as an ambulance any more because
it hasn't got any stretchers! (See April/May 2002).
Photos in the Conversion section.
October/November 2002 diary
Yes, as I hoped, I got quite a lot of the
domestic electrics fitted - these are the mains lighting,
13A sockets, that sort of thing. In short, I've put two
lamps high up on the walls, with individual switches, and
both controlled by a single dimmer. And two double
sockets, one near the worktop and one low down. The inlet
is in the outside cupboard that the fresh water comes in
and the waste water goes out. A properly wired in ELCB
and MCBs are to follow (a Christmas present to be) - I'm
using a plug-in one for the present.
This was the first half -of the
month....
Not a lot to report in October so far - sorry. I
suppose the BIG news is that she sailed through her MoT.
Nothing at all to be done. Great news. The difference
between the milage on the new certificate and the last
was embarrassingly low (just over 1000), but - hey - this
is a project, not a daily runaround! Overdrive's still
not fitted. LEGS were really helpful and sent the thrust
washer, and Paul at HPMS is getting the spacer made up
now to the dimensions I got (see below). I really do aim
to get the o/d fitted by the end of the month. Honest. Oh
yes, and I've got a chest of drawers and a worktop in,
too, which completes the kitchen. LRO at Peterborough was
the usual fount of bits and ideas - a really good show
this year.
But then came half-term hols and the
overdrive is fitted!!! And before the end of the
month - and not only that, it works! The part from Paul
came through and fitted perfectly, and the mechanism that
I built by measurement only needed a bit of tinkering to
make it work, and the cable through to a winch lever
works fine. All in all, I am very chuffed! Huge thanks to
everyone that helped, especially the people on the Yahoo
groups 101 and Sixstud, who came through with loads of
advice (and those all-important dimensions) and Allan at
LEGS.
Next job (for November) is the domestic
electrics in the back.
December 2002 diary
It's been a busy month at work, and the
weather's not be very good for working outside, so not
very much to report. The big thing to report on is the
Christmas Outing! Unfortunately Kodak failed to deliver
the digital camera on time, so no photos can be posted
yet. But I'll get some scanned later. We went to the
middle of nowhere (well, where else would one go in a
101?), got parked and found we'd forgotton the kettle. So
had to go back for it! The overdrive worked brilliantly,
so did the cooker and the sink. However the pressure
switch on the water tap wasn't very well set, so that'll
have to be adjusted. The fridge worked very well, too.
So, we are now able to use the vehicle for the reason it
was bought! Sleeping arrangements next on the list.
Well, that's it really - to
continue with this level of detail would just get boring
and repetitive. This diary shows the trials and
tributlations of the two years it took to get a clunky
old ambulance up to a well-running camper. The continuing
story can be found in the Service History pages.
For the history of
conversion to a camper, click here
For the Service
History of the vehicle since we got it, click here
Please
e-mail us on
ian.neal@yahoo.co.uk
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