Prep

Degsy is off to the garage on Monday for the new chassis. It was too hot for allotmenting today, so after I had done the muck run and the bees, I set about the dual tasks of tidying up the garage and prepping Degsy for Monday. I emptied the back of Degsy of all the gardening paraphernalia. By tidying up the garage I managed to find a new home for everything. I then took the decking, that makes the shelf in the tub, to bits and stowed it in the garage.

Next job was to remove the spot lights from the bumper. A squirt of oil and a bit of spannering and they where free. I pulled the feed wire back into the engine bay and taped it up. I was a little apprehensive doing the next job, fitting the new bonnet. The hinges for the bonnet are not subtle. On the body there is a tube with a slot in it. The other part of the hinge is on the bonnet and it is just a plate with a slot cut in it. You just open the bonnet until it is 90 degrees to the floor. The slot in the body part of the hinge lines up with the bonnet part and simply lifts out. Fitting the new bonnet is the reverse. Dead easy. The manual says you need two people. I did it on my own. However the manual does not suggest you stand on the engine! I closed the bonnet and to my relief the hinges ran smoothly and the bonnet catch engaged perfectly. Then it was small job the fit the bonnet stay. To do the bonnet job from start to finish took less than ten minutes.

The last thing to do was take out the passenger seats and stow them in the garage. Having finished all the job and tidied up. The very last thing to was run over to the tip and dump the out bonnet and other bits of rubbish.

A big decision

A very big decision has been taken. It is one that I knew had to made the day I parted with cash for Degsy, do up or do away with. I have decided to to "do up". I found a Land Rover specialist a couple of miles from home. I cannot believe what he is to charge me. It sounds a bit cheap but folks tell me that his pricing is a bit random since it depends what he thinks he can get away with. He must have though me a deserving case....I am!

Degsy is to have a new chassis, footwells, passenger seat well, windscreen, petrol tank, track rods ends, heater matrix [I have had that in a box for a year], the gearbox seals renewed, and I get an MOT thrown in. I am thinking I will the whole hog and have the clutch renewed whilst the gearbox is out. I am having the chassis painted black. I do not fancy a shiny chassis beaming out from under the shabby panel work.

I have had a few results on Ebay. I got a full windscreen for a tenner, a petrol tank for £15 and the passenger seat well for £16 and the sellers were within a couple of miles of each other. Result all round.