Land Rover screen door!

I have a love-hate relationship with mosquitoes, they love me, I hate them. So my 109 has screens on the side windows and I usually camp in a tent. I don't like to use DEET but it seems to be the only thing they can't stand, but it melts plastics.........I don't want it on my skin.
When camping I wear long sleeves and pants when necessary and crawl in the tent when I have to. I remember once on Union Pass in Wyoming while doing the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route the mossies were so thick they would land on the spoonful of food before I could get it under my mossie headnet and into my mouth.

Nothing worse than trying to sleep and hearing that whine as they fly around trying to find a place to land and suck my blood. OK, well maybe what you are thinking is worse.
I killed 13 of them that night in the tent in Wyoming.....

I figured I could make screen door for the rear of my 109 to help out with insects while camping and started to collect ideas and parts on what's out there at my local hardware store. Looking at the magnetic tape like that on refrigerators and talking to the clerk about my idea when she showed me this;

It is 39" x81" which is just wide enough for my 36" opening. It has magnets clipped to the seam in the middle which line up and close, $18.00. Not perfect but will keep out lots of bugs. I went and tried to set it up with super magnets but they wouldn't hold it tight enough, I needed clips, but I was able to mark the length to cut.

Dragging out my beloved mom's old Singer machine, I set about removing the extra magnets, pinning and sewing and cutting off the excess.

I just folded it over at my marks and pinned it and sewed it, so it would hang below the door sill.

I repositioned a couple of the magnets to get a better fit at the top. Then the interior light  above the door was removed and the screen hung with clips and the light replaced. I used those binder clips, but I want to find something that fits in better visually. These will do for the trial period.

Looking at it from the outside

The bottom doesn't quite make a seal and I may have to use some velcro, and the main seam has a small (1mm) space in places. It opens easy and reseals as long as the center is held tight at the top.

Above you can see I just folded it over the lip and put the clips on. Time will tell.

UPDATE 26 May 2020;

This didn't work out so well as it wouldn't seal right, getting in and out. Oh well...

My 109 Land Rover turbo update

OK it is 6.30.2015, a couple of weeks ago I went up and brought my turbos home. That story is told on another post. 

Once the broken bolts were drilled out and after a cursory inspection I took the exhaust housing down to my sandblasting guy Ian at Santa Cruz Metal Polishing. Ian quickly cleaned it off and didn't charge me for the quick job! Looking at the housing there were no cracks in it so this was the one piece I needed to finish off a complete turbo.

Next up was checking videos online to see how difficult it would be to rebuild the turbo myself. I must have watched half a dozen of them and convinced myself it wasn't that hard......
Had to find the correct rebuild kit for my Garrett T2. Checking online proves that it goes by many names and numbers so I had to dig a bit to make sure. I found one on Ebay from someone called TraderGreg. Forty-five bucks!

Had everything I needed and more as it also fits some other Garrett turbos. So I set up my table for the rebuild of a turbo I had not taken apart with some trepidation.

Finally after an hour or so I got finished;

Since I didn't have witness marks to align the housings I had to keep everything loose and put it on the engine before tightening it up.

I made sure I assembled it with engine assembly lube and put engine oil in the bearing for the turbo.

Then I tried starting it up......The starter clicked and spun but not the engine. I tried it several more times and sometimes the engine would turn and the starter would disengage the flywheel but keep spinning. I got out my hand crank and made sure the engine could turn freely,,yeah that's OK. Tried it again and the engine caught it was idling at around 2 grand so after only a few seconds I shut it off. Exhaust smoke was everywhere, loud with no exhaust hooked up. Who knows how long ago it last fired up.
   As it was late in the day I called it quits. The next day I put on the exhaust downpipe.

I took the time to back out the idle screw, I don't know where it should be but I didn't want it running so fast. Then I fired it up,.....well, I tried to anyway, the starter dog just won't stay engaged. So maybe the battery was a little flat, I charged it overnight. And fired it up,.....well, I tried anyway, Starter just spins, the dog won't even try to engage.

I got very disheartened, So tired of fighting with this thing EVERY STEP of the way. So I walked away from it for a bit. I have another starter to try but haven't wanted to do the work yet.

Now it is in the 90's and too hot. but I'll get back to it soon.

Land Rover storage option

OK dear readers, while waiting on the turbo I have not been idle.

Besides some mountain bike rides, you can catch some video's here;   https://www.youtube.com/user/meignotus


I put in the thermostatic control for my electric fan and wired in a relay. Pretty straight forward follow the directions. The hard part was the wiring for the probe was short so I HAD to mount the controller on the top of the radiator support panel.

above is the probe and below is the controller

   Also in my head has been the lack of storage issue. I wanted to take advantage of the space above the rear side windows for some time. Last winter I spent a week or so making a prototype but when I got to the latches, the flush pull ones I picked out just didn't work out so I scrapped the idea.

   Then one day I was looking at my scrap pile and noticed that the old Land Rover roof sections I had were almost the exact size and shape I needed.  A couple of weeks ago I went to work, measuring and cutting, fitting and cutting, drilling and fitting, bending, filing, paint removal, primer, paint, hammer rivets, grinding and shaping, searching the hardware stores,  respray, fitting,

   First I cut the dimension I needed for fore and aft and then the width, the height was already established at the factory. Since this was either a Series 1 or Santana roof it had the raingutter spot welded in and would give the rigidity and support I needed without drilling into my roof.
    Next I cut the notches for the galvanized interior gutter and the top roof rib. Once I had a good fit I could start on the door.

   Not being sure if I wanted 1 door or 2 I pondered this for several days. What was going to be my intended use? How big was it? How would the door/s hang. What kind of hinge? How can I make it so it does not stick out and catch me on the head and still be simple and "fit" the vehicle?
   At first I thought backpacking type meals would go there for easy access and low weight up high, then maybe clothes or a sleeping bag. The food I could do 4" doors but other stuff might need more. My choice was to make 1 door 24"x 5".

   So laying out a 24 x 5 rectangle on the storage bin, I drilled a 1 1/16" hole with a hole saw at each corner and cut down the lines with my jigsaw. This provided a nice radius for strength and beauty. I had purchased for the job an offset tool and went around the bottom and the sides to help with making the lid fit flush. That is when I found out that my top had a double thickness due to the raingutter and the offset tool would not fit..I countered this by offsetting the opposing lip of the lid.

HINGES,

   Originally I wanted to use piano hinge because it hides nicely and looks good. But testing showed that in this case I could not make it work like I wanted, so back to the hardware stores. I decided on the strap hinges you see because I could not find any Rover hinges small enough to "look the part" and I could use hammer rivets to make these seem factory(after all it is a factory roof!) I bent the hinges to fit the curve of the roof.

I still struggled to find a good latch. First I had left too small a space to fit something like a striker latch and the lid needed a single latch in the middle as opposed to 1 on each end, as the center bowed out.

LID;

   Using some aluminium I had  I cut a lid to the necessary size and bent the lip with my offset tool. The hard part was forming the lip to the shape of the roof. Can't say I like my result but it works. I bent it by clamping it on my welding table and using a 2x4 along the length to bend it.

Then it was a matter of locating the hinges and drilling holes, stripping the paint from the bin and painting it all up. After the paint was dry I hammered the rivets in and came up for a plan for the catch.

The CATCH;

   I was going to at one time or another buy/make, magnetic, striker, barrel, latches. I even toyed with making small antiluce latches ala the tailgate. Common sense prevailed and using 1/8" angle iron I crafted the latch you see. I wanted to hammer rivet it also but I do not have any 1/2" long rivets. Maybe in the future. Using my dremel tool I cut the slot in the bin to accommodate the locking portion.

I am using a lynch pin to hold it closed

In the front I fitted the bin and drilled a locating hole in the roof rib for support. There was installed a 10-32 rivenut. This combined with a stainless machine screw supports the front end. The sides and rear are supported by the bolts securing the roof to the sides as seen in this bottom photo.

You can barely see the front screw here;

You can't see it too well but on the back I had to fit a piece of wood between the bin and the liftgate hinge to hold the bin tidily flush with the inner roof. I did not want to put any more holes in the roof than necessary.

Update; 6.15.2015

Still waiting on the turbo so I went ahead and did the other side of the storage bin option. I mean I had the part and the time so might as well right?

Looking from the front right

Left front

Rear view

right side

Left side

This was a fun project and I think they came out nice. There is a surprising amount of room in them and I am glad that I made 1 large door because I could easily get my arm in there to tighten up the bolts. The space is roughly 10"x10"x37". I used 3" zinc plated strap hinges from my local hardware store.

Land Rover turbo

Well, a month ago when I got the battery re-positioned I went ahead and tried turning the motor over. It would turn but not catch and as I peered around the corner of the bonnet I could see smoke coming from I don't know where.
  So I got my neighbor to look as I cranked the motor. It turned out to be the turbo exhaust housing, I had forgotten to put the clamp and the bolts on, mainly because I had broken off a bolt when removing it. Gases were coming out the bolt holes.
   I took off the turbo and tried to remove the housing to extract the broken bolt but it was beyond me. I decided to have the turbo rebuilt and let them do the extraction. Checking around I found a place in Hayward, CA about 60mi away. Vargas Turbo Technologies. I emailed them and they assured me they could rebuild it. So I took the 2 turbos I had up to them on May 6th. Both are Garrett T-2's for the 19J 2.5DT and fit my intake/exhaust set up.
   After a week I called and found that I had been put on the back burner due to a local water company needing 4 turbos rebuilt. A week later it was they had a backlog and would get to mine soon. Last week it was we sent the exhaust housing to the machine shop and they can't get the bolt out, they will try the second housing which has 3 broken bolts. This week the machine shop is a flop on both. (WTF????)
   Today I went up and was able to pick up the housing with the 1 broken bolt, figuring I can't hurt it and I work cheap and have all weekend to try to get it out. After all I have a drill press and a drill sharpener and time. I picked up some new drill bits at Home Depot, some black oxide split point and a couple of cobalt deep freeze all in 7/32"

   Around 4pm I started working on it first by cutting a slot across the bolt and trying to get it out with my impact driver, that just bent the corners on my driver tip...

Then  out came the center punch and the drills and it took a bit of finagling to lock the housing tight in the drill press but with a couple of clamps I got it. Slowly with light pressure and plenty of cutting oil I started drilling. It was hard going, at one point the drill bit caught and broke about 2 min into the drill. I only had a shiny depression maybe a 1/16" deep. Out came drill bit #2, more oil--lighter pressure, after a min or so I re-sharpened the bit and repeated this about 5 times until I finally got through the hardened part maybe 3/16's or so then the going was somewhat easier but not like unhardened steel. It took about 15 minutes to drill that first hole all the way through.
  I jumped 3 sizes on bits and started over expecting to go right through,,,not so, I had to resharpen that bit 5 times to get to the bottom, but I got there! I tried my EZ-out, nothing.. wouldn't budge, tried some heat with same result.
  So I went up 2 more bit sizes figuring this would be the max I could go since the hole was off center. Surprisingly this bit went right through, so did my EZ-out, dropped right through the hole. It was 5pm and I had to make a run to the hardware store and get larger EZ-outs.
     I bought a set of 5 for $14 at ACE Hardware. I tried the correct one for the hole and nothing, Damn thing just wouldn't turn.
    Moving the housing to my welding bench for better access, I clamped it down and was really able to put some torque on the EZ-out whilst taping it with a hammer hoping to break it free. Nada...
   My only option was the dremel tool with a carbide cutter, I put it down in the hole and reamed it out centering the hole in the bolt better, being careful to not hit the threads. Then I drilled it out to 17/64" and ran my 8mm x 1.25 tap down the hole. Done! It was 6:15pm, roughly and hour 45 mins which included set ups and bit sharpenings.

   I will contact the shop on Monday to get it back up to them but I have concerns over the cracks in the housing. Maybe the other one is in better shape.

Vargas says the cracks are nothing to worry about, but to me they look pretty serious. I dunno?

UPDATE;      6.12.2015

    I did some more looking online but really haven't found any good exhaust housings even though I have contacted turbo places in Spain and the UK. So it looks like I will have to go with an exchange unit or a new one.
   Based on this I went up Friday to pick up my 2 turbo parts. To my surprise there was no charge for the work done. Kudos to Tony at Vargas!

   I came home and drilled out the 3 broken bolts in the second housing and need to get it media blasted to find if there are any cracks. I may be still able to make 1 good one out of the 2.