Fairey Enough
Finally found the cash to buy an overdrive! Got it on eBay for £333.33 - about the going rate. You’ll be interested to know that The Duke himself was £555.55, so this purchase was far from cheap; but it actually comes out somewhere around 5% of the total cost of the restoration, so maybe not so bad. The 5th gear which the overdrive gives me should also give a pretty good improvement to The Duke’s woeful fuel economy and might well pay for itself at some point. So if you ignore the fact that I could, instead, have spent the money on a five-year-old Mondeo with one careful previous owner, it’s money well spent. An overdrive And lets be honest, you don’t buy a Land Rover because you want to be sensible! Bloke who sold me the overdrive was a nice guy and it’s in great shape. He’d recently refurbished it and showed me the receipts for all the parts. There’s no linkage or lever, but that’ll make a nice workshop project. My plan is to reassemble the replacement gearbox and bolt the overdrive into that, then buy a second hand 200TDi engine and drop the whole lot into The Duke in one go this Summer. Teeth look in great condition - I am just amazed that all of the engine’s power is transferred through those tiny little things! I’ve said before that I’m not keen on the 200TDi conversion, but I’m also not keen on paying 40p for every mile I travel, when I could be paying a quarter as much. I also think that making all the pulleys and adapters would be a fun workshop job which adds to the interest.
More great dental work. Some slight impressions on these is you look closely, but far from a problem! Yet more nice teeth! Everyone posts this picture. Must be a tradition! Dipstick! So there you have it: a plan and hopefully more stuff to come on the blog. Watch this space!