Working on parts in the back garden, with very little spare time available it seems ages since I opened the doors to the vehicle but this week it’s all coming together, bringing the freshly cleaned and painted parts round to the front drive for installation.

While the seatbox and floor is out it makes sense to scrape off years of grease and muck. If nothing else it makes future jobs much less unpleasant so it was nice to see a nearly shiny gearbox after a couple of evenings scraping and washing.

Here, the bulkhead end of the transmission tunnel have been fitted, the fuel tank has been thoroughly cleaned and a couple of coats of ‘chassis black’ applied, just painting the pedals and handbrake lever.

Here the floor has been screwed in with all new fixings. The rest of the tunnel is in, new gaiters have been fitted to the handbrake and high / low range lever. A previous owner had gone mad with the angle grinder in just about every part of the cab area, maybe he wasn’t wearing his glasses. I’ve filled most of these gouges but annoyingly I missed some on the tunnel.

Poor old Britpart do come in for some criticism, often justifiably, but in this case I am very pleased. These mats from Paddocks were reasonably priced and well made. They are heavy (hopefully this will deaden vibration and drumming) and with a substantial lip to the edge that will retain water and stop it getting to the floor and bulkhead. Hopefully the many layers of paint in the footwells will help preserve them for a little bit longer.

Rainwater update

Well I talked that one up! A stormy end to the week and a rainy weekend prevented much work to the vehicle and my above theory is proven. A pint of rainwater has got in to the passenger side (driver’s side is bone dry so not a problem!).  The lip on the mat has successfully retained the water. I removed the mat and watered the petunias. The floor underneath was perfectly dry so Britpart get some bonus points here.

Of course I will investigate this, it seems to be a combination of missing and damaged seals, to the door and the one that goes between the windscreen and bulkhead.