Land Rover seat belts, oil/fuel guage, mudshield

     Well I waited for the paint to dry and put in the reel mounts for the inertia seat belts. I was waiting for the bottom brackets to come in and after a couple of weeks I started to look and see who I ordered them and the door locks from. I found that I hadn't placed the order anywhere. So here is what the top  bracket that I came up with looks like. I was happy that I had managed to keep the reel itself from taking up room in the usefull area of the interior.

     I then set about installing the seatbelt stalk, where the harness clips into. After some looking online I decided to make some spreader plates and bolt them to the lip of the bulkhead.

     In the mean time I've been working on the wiring, slowly sorting it out. I decided that my 30amp ammeter that was stock in the multi guage wasn't up to the 45amp on the 2.5 motor. After some more online research I found an oil pressure guage that would fit in the multi guage. This was sourced from John Richards Surplus in the UK. www.johnrichardssurplus.co.uk  I needed an adapter at the oil pressure switch which came from Speedograph Richfield Ltd also in the UK. www.speedographrichfield.co.uk  The hose and fitting came from The Hose Shop in Santa Cruz, CA. It took some fettling to get the guage to fit in the multi guage as it has a different(wider) shape. I was lucky enough to find a hole behind the hand throttle to route the hose and I used a grommet to blank it off.

Back of guage

Once the pressure guage was in and the air distribution box I could put on the RH wing. I did this with 1/4-28 stainless bolts. One thing I have gotten to use a lot lately has been my cordless drill. I cut off the handle from a 7/16 nut driver and chuck it into the cordless. Makes quick work of the installing of bolts!

Installing the wing had it's own issues mainly the mudshield had to be installed and the hose for the heater intake. Well of course I didn't quite have the hole in the mudshield in the right place. So it was off and on with it a few times while using my nibbling tool to make it big enough to fit the hose. I picked up thermo ducting hose with fabric from The Hose Shop. Once the hose was connected at the blower end I could connect it at the intake end located next to the radiator support panel. The screen I used for this is 1/4" mesh stainless, I had put riv-nuts to the hose adapter and it is all held to the wing with 10-32 screws. I made straps to hold the hose up under the wing out of "Band-it" stainless steel straping, bolted(again riv-nuts) and screwed to the wing.

With the guage done I could also close up the dash. After doing so I connected the battery and turned on the power with the key. It was then that I noticed that the  fuel guage was reading MT. I knew there was some fuel in it but not how much. So in went another 2.5gals. No change on the guage. :^(
So I opened up the seat cover for the fuel tank. I went about testing the wires for power thinking there was none. When I touched the hot lead with a grounded jumper the needle about slammed itself thru the roof of the guage! Well I had power alright! Now the needle was stuck on the top and nothing I did would make it come down.
AAhhh, I had a spare so I once again opened the dash and changed the fuel guage out. Nothing I did could make it read correctly. So I asked on the Series 2 Club forum for help.
Turns out there are 2 types of guages and 2 types of senders, early and late, and they don't mix. Early guages have the arrow style needles and go with the domed senders(2 terminals for diesels). The late have the straight needle, need a voltage stabilizer and go with the flat top senders(3 terminals for diesel/ground). The second terminal on the early guages runs a low fuel warning light for diesels.
    Now I had kept my orginal sender and had cleaned it up. Even though it is for petrol I can use it in my diesel tank with out the low fuel warning light.

The bottom pic is the new generic "late" style.

     While doing all this I realized that my fuel guage was "on" every time I hooked up the battery cable. It was a matter of disconnecting the wire from the fusebox and tapping into an existing hot when keyed circuit. When the sender and wire were swapped out and working correctly I closed up the dash!
     A few days ago I put on the steering wheel, sorted out the positions of the horn and turn signal. Started it up and put it in gear. HORRIBLE grinding in the tranny. Traced it down to the overdrive, it is not adjusted right and not going into regular gear. When in od I could lift the clutch and move it forward about 6 inches and roll back on the chock.
     I didn't drive it because I was still awaiting a new brake master cylinder. Well that came in on Thursday from LRSeries. www.LRSeries .co.uk  But I was fighting with a clogged septic line starting on Wed night. Finally got it cleared Friday afternoon,,,whew!!
     Saturday June 1st I put it on in the morning and used my power bleeder to bleed the brakes. Then I spent the HOT afternoon lounging in my daughters kiddie pool.

Today was spent doing some of the little bits. I needed to attach the bottoms of my mudshields. I knew I wanted to space them away from the footwell, already purchased were 6 3/4x3/4" aluminum spacers. I had put these on my 88 and in doing so knew it was a tedious job trying to hold all the bits in place under the footwell and trying to stick a bolt thru from the inside.
My solution; I used super glue (Locktite) to glue the washers to the spacers, one on each end.

Once the bits were stuck together it was easy to hold them and put the bolt thru. This should help drop the water and dirt thru the footwell area and prevent more rust issues.

A happy owner!

Update; the superglue didn't work. It held fine for the original mounting but upon the first dismount it fell apart.