20th August 2011
Well, it has been just over 12 months since I last laid my hands upon Betsy,
due to a change of jobs that has seen both Vanessa and I working long hours and weekends. You may have seen the
odd update in respect of the Series IIA Land Rover on this site, but even those have been sporadic. You may recall
that I took Ollie off the road last September to do two weeks work to get him through the MOT and I still haven't
quite finished that task either, though there's less than two days work left in it before it goes off for test.
With things finally starting to settle down and a deep seated desire not to spend my time on the Land Rover, I decided it was high time to pick up where I left off with Betsy! With the chassis laid up on its side awaiting removal of the front leaf springs, I thought I should get the front and rear axles ready before I finish the chassis. That way I will be able to work from the ground up, so to speak, thus avoiding having a freshly painted ladder frame laid on the floor getting scraped all the time. But let's not get ahead of ourselves here; the axles need stripping, painting, the seals and bushes replacing and putting back on their respective wheels.
So, for the last 4 hours I have been stripping down the rear hubs and brakes. As mentioned previously, the nearside hub oil seal has failed, so that side was all pretty easy to free up, though the offside gave its usual quota of sheared and broken components. The brakes were rather unsurprisingly inoperative on both sides and the brake shoes will all need replacing. I haven't tackled trying to pull the hubs yet, or removing the dampers. That will have to wait until next week......hurrah!