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'87 110 Refresh, Restore, Rebuild and Update

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110 rebuild
48K views 268 replies 47 participants last post by  TheOneTen 
#1 ·
Hi folks,

I bought a 110 back in March with the hope of having a decent runabout truck. After poking around a bit, I found it needed more work than expected, so it's been getting a bunch of work done to it.

In no particular order, I've rebuild the transfer case, installed a 300TDI/R380 transmission, rebuilt the floors, cleaned up some rotted out chassis chunks, custom seatbox work, rebuilt the footwells, refreshed the guts of the doors, and more. So, a lot ;)

Here's an album of the photos (so far): https://goo.gl/photos/f7qmQKZVY3rfiwL56

Hope to have it on the road come springtime.

The list still to do:

- Finish the work on replacing the cappings
- Replace the bulkhead (already have it!)
- Replace left front brake line.
- Replace some interior trim bits
- Clean up wiring. Add radio.
- Swap out to stainless windscreen and door hardware
- Replace fuel lift pump
- START TRUCK! ;)
- Repaint the truck
- Swap over to LED lights
- Add rear LED work light
 
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#3 ·
Thanks. I'm not against hard projects. With my other love (rally racing) that's given me quite a knack for welding and fixing things. The LR is a whole new thing though, it doesn't "make sense" when compared to say, a Subaru.

Subaru? You can take apart a whole car with an 8, 10, 12, 14, 17, 19, and 32mm wrench? The Defender? Every damned tool in the toolbox, plus a bunch of custom stuff.

An no captive nuts. Floor the love of god, why are there no captive nuts!!!!?! ;)
 
#6 · (Edited)
I sure need to learn more wrench skills.
Good luck, you can come to my place and help me, I have lots of Canadian beer.
I will be getting my new to me MT82 and getting it in the truck when I get home.
The truck is looking nice, keep the pics coming.
 
#8 ·
Bulkhead was a TD5 unit from lrdirect.com, so shipped from Europe. But throw in a bunch of other stuff, and it's not a bad deal on shipping.

BTW, I'm absolutely astounded how easy it is to get stuff from LRdirect. Overnight international shipping, which sound crazy expensive, but it's often cheaper (and faster) than ordering from the next state over. I'm all for giving local guys my business, but when someone has a part on a shelf and can't get it out the door, I find that inexcusable.

300TDI was sourced as a "complete" package deal from here (used). That said, I needed to source my own engine mounts and crossmember, fabricate a bracket for the seatbox (to change the LT77 to R380), buy a new transmission tunnel cover, and fab new floors.
 
#10 ·
Ordered a bunch of parts from LR direct as well last week. It seems cheaper than well known mail order companies when you are buying a bunch of stuff. Can't say much about quality as I haven't received them yet.

I have picked up parts from Rovolution as well with currency exchange rate in my favor. Good thing they got good snow this year. I got excuses to drive up do some fun snow stuff and on my way back pick up rover parts.

I have 200tdi on the way from UK. Decided to go that route instead of 300TDI.

Anyways, what Ga metal is the frame?
 
#11 ·
Yanked the fenders off and stored them today and found even more fun with nicked wires. Taking a break/pause before I dig in deeper.

Found that my heater fan is done for, haven't researched how hard these are to swap out. Also, the strut tops look like they're starting to separate, so I'll need to replace those too.
 

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#12 ·
Got all of the bits and bobs off of the bulkhead and got it pulled out. Quite a feat, having never done anything like it before!

Pretty sure I'm a long ways from having it back on the road ;)

Pro-am tip: If your bulkhead is so trashed that you're not going to reuse it, sawzall it off right above the side sills and then come back and mess with the bolts afterwards!
 

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#14 ·
Bulkhead came over from LRDirect in Europe. If getting just a bulkhead alone, it'll be pricey (about 500 shipping), but that's for *next day* priority overnight. Pretty amazing, honestly. I bought a bunch of other bits at the same time (cappings, some interior bits, gaskets, etc) so those things were basically thrown in for free on shipping since dimensionally, the bulkhead is massive.

Doing the vast majority of the work alone. My wife helped me yank out the bulkhead last night ;) And she's done wonders on restoring interior bits (including refreshing the door cards).

Tips? Anything you think it's going to cost to do work, multiply it by 3 - in both time and money!

------ Follow up post added December 24th, 2015 11:50 AM ------

Bulkhead is out, now on to doing fun stuff like electrolysis rust removal on brackets and whatnot, and doing frame touch-up painting and rust cleaning.

I've gone and put up a webcam link so all of you fellow nutjobs can follow along with my cursing. (and yes, it has audio links too!)

Give 'er a whirl and let me know what y'all think.

Webcam: Live from the Dirty Rallysport Garage!

Example shots:

 
#15 ·
LOL. Seems like you are having fun. What is the part number for the bulkhead? Any mod required to do fit it on 110?

Thanks for all the answers. I will be doing my engine swap this coming Jan. See if I can get things lined up before that. Where are you sourcing bolts and nuts? I have been making trips to homedepot and lowes but that is getting old quickly .
 
#16 ·
I haven't installed the bulkhead yet, as I *just* discovered a nasty surprise while doing some rust cleanup. Merry xmas to me! I get to do big frame repair... under the front outrigger, so that will need to be replace as well. Fun! Thankfully, Santa brought me a plasma cutter today.



As far as I understand, the required mods for the bulkhead are outlined here: Bulk Head
 
#18 ·
I ordered AHA710460 for the bulkhead. It's the RHD TD5 bulkhead which will fit with some slight modifications, mainly for wiring harness locations and small fixes. A link backwards in the thread points to where people have used a bulkhead for this.

The mess today was that I found out that about half of the frame is rotted away underneath the RHD outrigger. I've had to remove a bunch of crap to get access to it and now that it's exposed, it's time to start prep and cutting things out so I can patch it up. I'll probably end up making a C-type patch that wraps up and around area that I need to cut out, and then the outrigger will have to be trimmed by the thickness of the patch.

The LHD outrigger isn't as bad from what I can see with a boroscope. There's only one small hole through the steel that I can see whereas the RHD side was like swiss cheese. Horrific!

I'm going to patch with 3mm steel which is what I usually use for mounts on roll cage feet. It should be okay. I'll update later with lots of pics from my discovery and work today.
 
#19 ·
The 110 chose to give me a lump of coal for Christmas. Found a little damage to the outrigger that I figured, "hey, I'll patch that right up!"

Cut out the piece and woah! Found a bigger hole inside of the frame. And the only way to get at it is to cut the outrigger off.

And woah! Even MORE damage. Whee!!!

So, I'm starting to hack into this and attempting to get this fixed up. I'm no frame expert, so I'm just doing what I can. This is a tricky fix, as the frame is curved here, and regular "boxing" won't do. I'm replacing the steel, and am debating about coming back and doing another patch atop and lap welding. Thoughts?
 

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#20 ·
Frame fixed. Not really knowing how to attack it, but using some engineering brainpower, I figured out that cutting across the face of the beam was bad. I cut into the frame with a couple of angled cutouts so that the frame could flex/bite against this, rather than having a straight shear line. We'll see how it holds up.

All patched up with 3mm steel.

Tomorrow, need to pull out the grommet for the wiring harness and spray the backside of the plate with primer to seal it all up nice and neat.
 

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#22 ·
Now, I'm not a mechanical engineer, but... ;)

I don't think it's necessary. The top surface of the box frame is either in tension or compression, and with the replaced piece in there already, it should be fine.

Any other professional engineers can by all means correct me (and I would welcome a challenge to my assumption)
 
#23 ·
I would think the top side will be mostly in compression. Only concern is the weld failing and new weld with new material biting both the new and old material reinforcing the overall structure.

I just thought of it because how close this spot is near heavy stuff and it would be a rather quick work to ensure things are better than original with structural integrity.
 
#24 ·
My worry about overlaying another piece of metal is that I'll be giving an area for moisture to collect and then further rot away between the two pieces.

The outrigger gets put directly on top and will ultimately distribute the load across both surfaces. And with the vertical section being sectioned at 45 degree angles, the ourtigger will have a good mounting area.
 
#28 ·
A busy couple of days, doing both Defender stuff and other chores around the house. Some updates, in no particular order:

My bulkhead appears to be a Friday afternoon build job. Panels don't fit well, and I'll need to redrill a bunch of holes and will ultimately need to use copious amounts of seam sealer.

Started to do more engineering on the bulkhead swap. There are a LOT more tiny holes/penetrations that exist in my 87 bulkhead. In particular, there are these little hexagonal holes. I'm guessing they have some sort of grommet/harness that plugs in there, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what it is, since it's not present on my 87 bulkhead.

Had to cut the TD5 wiper motor bracket off, and will install weld nuts for the motor mount. Also, due to the oval-shape holes for the wiper arm assembly, I'll have to use ground-down washers to make the holes round. Will fab those up tomorrow too.

Things are rusty, so I've been disassembling, needling/sanding, and painting/primering as I go.
 

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#30 ·
Wiring? No formal plans. Just to clean it up and have it function. What were you thinking?

Primer is just some stuff I got from Autozone to keep it from rusting after I did the welding. The exterior/engine bay portion will get painted once the truck is all done, as the whole thing will need a respray/proper paint job since I need to repair so much rust-through damage elsewhere on the vehicle.

Seam sealer? I ordered a couple of tubes of Dynatron 550 Auto Seam Sealer Grey Caulk - 12 oz so that I could visually see where everything was coated. Again, after it's all done, it will get a thorough coating of <insert favorite coating here) to protect the whole bulkhead. Then sound proofing/heat reflection material.
 
#31 ·
Hi Eric,


I just wanted to pick your brain and see if you had any plans for the wiring. Thanks for sharing everything thus far.


I thought about getting a 18 or xx pre-terminated fuse block for building hot rods to run lights and non-essential stuff or even possibly rewire the whole thing. At least for my beater 90.


With regards to the firewall, when I get to mine, I am contemplating spray bedlining in the engine bay side.


How long did you spend pulling the bulkhead out?
 
#32 ·
Removing the bulkhead? Probably 2 solid nights of messing around with it all said and done to get the windscreen, ancillaries, and dash out. And in the end, the sawzall was the fastest way to remove the bottom portion and just yank it out ;)

I've certainly contemplated replacing the glass fuse block. I'll probably pull the trigger on that too. ;)
 
#33 ·
A bunch of small updates:

  1. Inserted riv nuts for the vent flaps.
  2. Inserted weld nuts on the bulkhead for mounting heater/brake booster brackets, as well as the fuel filter.
  3. Welded and drilled out hole in middle of firewall for the main cable harness.
  4. Converted oval-style to circle-style holes on bulkhead to take the old wiper arm setup. (which I'm very proud of).
  5. Fabbed up weld nuts/riv nuts to mount old wiper motor.
  6. Installed plastic firewall nuts w/ Right Stuff to reduce water passages.
  7. Drilled out hexagonal holes to round to receive standard 3/8" firewall plugs. (Who knows what those hexagonal holes are for anyway?!)

Big win - discovering that you can get replacement plastic firewall nuts from your local hardware store as long as they have a good supply of stuff. IIRC, a "#12 Ford" nut is *almost* the same as the LR nut. It'll fit with a little coaxing.
 

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#34 ·
I got sick of messing around with the bulkhead on sawhorses and fabricated a bulkhead jig that keeps it at working level. Useful, since the bulkhead will be going off for paint soon.

Today's accomplishments:
  • Fabricated a jig to hold the bulkhead!
  • Replaced a riv nut that ripped out that was holding the wiper motor with a proper weld nut.
  • Cleaned up bulkhead seams inside and out with paint thinner.
  • Seam sealed the external seams. (Man, that stuff is nasty!)
  • Cut out rotted C-pillar section to replace with YRM bit.
 

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#35 ·
Updates:

Sent away the bulkhead for painting. We're going with Keswick Green!
Disassembled the heater box and blower. What a mess. Going to have to do some rust repair in here too. The matrix, while not original based on the missing rivets on the heater box, isn't in the best (or worst) shape. Will have to figure out if I should switch to a 300TDI-type heater matrix, or stick with my downturned core and run custom lines. Advice?

Surprise: Discovered that one of the heater vent flaps has 100% coverage with some sort of foam gasket on both sides. Of course, there''s no mention of this in the LR documentation. I'll have to figure something out here as all of the gaskets just disintegrated when I touched them with my hand.
 
#36 ·
Rebuilt the whole heater box today, and no, I've never done it before. The lower panel had rusted through due to crud and water sitting in the trap in the box.

So I had to fabricate a new panel, cleaned off the rust of everything else, painted, reassembled, DIY'ed gaskets, and it's ready to rock and roll as soon as the new blower motor and gaskets come in!
 

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#38 ·
Rebuilt the whole heater box today, and no, I've never done it before. The lower panel had rusted through due to crud and water sitting in the trap in the box.



So I had to fabricate a new panel, cleaned off the rust of everything else, painted, reassembled, DIY'ed gaskets, and it's ready to rock and roll as soon as the new blower motor and gaskets come in!

What did you end up using for gaskets on the flap? Is that dynamat?

I rebuilt and repainted mine but haven't put in replacement foam yet.

Nice choice on the Keswick that's what I'm doing on mine too.
 
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