With things still at the base chassis stage it was the opportune time to tackle a range of upgrades needing good access beneath the vehicle. Fitting new wheel bearings and brake shoes to the rear end was relatively straight forward, following the Haynes workshop manual. The front axle assembly, including swivel hubs, was more difficult. The diff' centre looked worn and to have lost hard facing so I sought some expert advice from a specialst 4WD workshop who advised getting another. A Land Rover collector, David Christie, with a large collection of old Land Rovers north of Adelaide came to the rescue and delivered one to my door. The workshop also advised me that using "liquid grease" in the swivel hubs rather than SAE 90 grade oil would provide sufficient lubrication and prevent later oil leaks. All the exterior wheel components were cleaned and repainted black before reassembly. The brake drums looked to be OK without too much wear and scoring so were refitted onto new brake shoes. New wheel cylinders were available for the front brakes but not for the rear. The rear brake backing plates on the series 2 are different to the 2A and require a different cylinder. Fortunately my old ones were able to be rebuilt by a workshop, who included new stainless steel sleeves. I made up new bundy tube brake lines all round and fixed them with rubber lined P clamps. Along with new flexible brake lines and a new master cylinder, the infamously poor Land Rover brakes should now be like new. More on brakes later.
Early Land Rovers don't have a lot of wiring but what this one did have had plenty of badly frayed cotton covers, hardened and cracked plastic and corroded Lucas terminals. I sourced a full replica wiring harness from Vinwire in Melbourne and since it was colour matched to the original, I was carefully able to follow both the Vinwire labels and the original wiring diagram in rewiring the vehicle. Most connections were soldered, or the wiring soldered prior to crimping. To avoid any mistakes in later jump starting,
and to allow a lighter socket charger to be fitted, I switched things (ampmeter, coil and generator) over to negative earth. New lights were fitted all round and given the Series 2 only has one fuse, a circuit breaker was fitted behind the dash for the headlights. The modern, more efficient headlights have flat glass fronts rather than the rounded fronts of the originals, but only the true believers would notice.
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