The Beginning

A few years ago I bought myself this 1971 Land Rover Series III 109 on eBay from the UK. I had it shipped over (which cost more than what I paid for the vehicle) and now its been sitting in my garage for the past three years. When it first showed up it actually ran pretty decent. The exhaust was totally busted which made it louder than the neighbor's Harley at 5:00am (my 2 year old daughter affectionately called it "Daddy's noisy blue truck"). My Dad and I got that fixed and also installed a new gas tank. It was literally a rust bucket that probably leaked more gas than it burned. After that, I drove it occasionally and it ran great. I'm sure it would still run great today but I think the battery is dead and it won't hold a charge.


So now that I've provided a bit of history it's time for the reason behind this blog. I've been wanting to restore it ever since I first saw it on eBay and after doing a ton of research I couldn't really find too many complete step-by-step restorations of a Series Land Rover. So I thought I'd document as much as I could about my little project. Hopefully somebody out there will find it interesting or even helpful for their own restoration.

The plan is to do a complete frame-off restoration along with converting the stock 2.25L 4 cylinder and tranny to a Chevy Small Block V8 and a Dodge NV4500 5-speed transmission. I know, I know, I know. . . "why buy a Land Rover if you're just gonna put a Chevy engine in it?". And with todays gas prices it doesn't really make sense either. But after driving it for a while and needing to have it totally pegged just to make 45mph I decided I wanted to upgrade the drive train. So why don't I just install an overdrive you ask? That's a good question and I've thought about that quite a bit. I never really came up with a good answer other than I wanted a challenge and something that I could work on with my Dad.

So, I hope over the next several months (or years) you'll keep coming back to see my progress. Below are some pics from eBay and from the previous owner that he took before he bought it.