JD's 1985 Series III Land Rover
The "restoration project" has been underway for a few years now, check out the progress...

Ever since my cousin took me for a drive out in Central Otago in New Zealand, I've wanted to own a Land-Rover.
Now I'm living in England, what better opportunity than this to buy one?

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		A Land Rover evokes a very emotional response, you either love it immediately, or hate it the moment you scramble inside. There can be no middle ground, or ambivalence. It's strange though, to a person, every man who has ridden or driven my landie, has beamed with pleasure and every single one has said "I'd love to own one of these...". Conversely, I've yet to find a single women who has anything good to say about the vehicle at all! While Solihull is now producing much more comfortable Land Rovers, like the Discovery and the new Freelander, I've always liked the older series II and III.
My new pride and joy. A 1983 series III Land Rover seen here just after purchase in 1997
		My Land Rover, like any other has some interesting personal quirks. It veers off to the right under heavy braking, it carries the faint odor of petrol after every refill for at least a day, and consumes petrol at an unheard of rate! After a bit of tuning and the addition of free-wheel hubs, I've got the petrol consumption from 12 miles per gallon (5.09 kms per litre) to around 16 miles per gallon (6.79 kms per litre)! I've yet to remove the fan and replace it with an electric one (should give another 9% better fuel economy) and add an overdrive unit to the gearbox. I've also fitted slightly larger tyres than normal which gives another bit of added fuel economy and a higher top end. It also means the speedometer reads low by about 6 miles per hour! One thing I've never understood (and my mate Marc laughed a little more than was polite...) is the bloody safari roof! You can see a thin panel mounted on the roof which in warmer climates (Africa comes to mind) provides a layer of air between the interior cabin roof and the the Safari roof which is getting baked by the sun. No problems so far, but why did the previous owner fit one for the UK?
Splashing about in the mud...
		We have a great off-road facility about 20 minutes drive from our home in St Albans, called the Devils Pit. These two photos were taken on the green (easy) course. The red (hard) and black (impossible) courses are loads of fun. Euan and I lost a fog light, dented the left side guard and nearly rolled at one point! I've put some more recent off road pics in the off road section, the damage from which resulted in some of the modifications you'll read about on the following pages.
and out again!

Next on the list was the overdrive. I managed to source a second hand unit for 200 UK pounds, and fitting it was a breeze. It has improved motorway driving (what you do to get from one off-road site to another when you don't have a truck or trailer!) and a drastic improvement in fuel economy. The Fairy Overdrive unit I have is a Land Rover recognised option for the series III and has completely changed the vehicle. I would highly recommend getting one if you're thinking about doing so. The final recent update in terms of improved fuel economy is the addition of a lead-free head. Now I can use the cheaper unleaded petrol and my fuel bills have plummeted.

On a recent off-road trip to France for the Trophee Cevenol, we got 24.6 miles per gallon on the motorway getting there and back. However, the really hard off-road bits which we attacked in low range knocked us back to 7.2 miles per gallon (Arrrrgggghhhh!)

The next thing that happened was the fitting of door sill protectors. These are a must and are easily available for just about and Landie except a series vehicle. I finally tracked down a pair and fitted them. In doing so the petrol tank got banged quite hard, and the rusty seam weld started to leak petrol at a fantastic rate, so I replaced the petrol tank with unit which has a seam running equatorially, instead of around the edges, so hopefully any leaky seams in the new one will mean at least half a tank of petrol will remain in the tank!

Other bits that have been added and fixed up include a rev counter, a CB radio, complete new set of Defender seats, decent spotlights, new mangle wheel rims, air horns, steering guard and a rear floodlight for when we go camping. Richard and I completely rebuilt the universal joints in both prop shafts, fixed the brakes, so the landie doesn't veer off to the right under heavy breaking anymore, and I've tracked down the annoying little leak from the petrol tank breather tube which filled the cabin with petrol fumes every time we filled up. I've also added a Garmin GPS antenna on the roof which hooks in to the GPS fixed to the dash. This really saved us in France where we didn't have a trip computer and were trying to follow a road-book describing everything in tens of metres!

The Trophee Cevenol saw the Landie suffer quite a bit of damage to panels, and the safari roof. I'd fitted a piece of coving to the front of the safari roof to stop air from whistling through and making such an awful noise at any speed. What a godsend that was. An errant tree caught us by surprise and not only dented the safari roof really badly, but punched one of the supports right through the actual roof and into the cabin! It was time for the safari roof to go, so armed with an angle grinder, off it came...

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