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A lot of my teenage years were spent in a Series 2 Land Rover that belonged to the schools cadet force. The first encounter was a 24 hour trip from GlenBrittle in Skye back to Cheltenham. We got lost after Glencoe and ended up south of Oban before we got back on track. Later on, the Land Rover was used on a weekly trip down to Wintours Leap near Chepstow for a summer evening's climbing. I purchased my first Land Rover 1988 or 1989. One of the first jobs was to install a Fairey Overdrive which made driving a little less tiring. ALG failed its MOT in 1991 and the garage in Cark (now extinct) persuaded me to have a go at fitting a new chassis. I can't remember where the chassis came from. These pictures have been scanned from Kodachrome slides. These days I would take stacks of pictures to remind me where things go.

	Here's where battle commences. The radiator panel is out and I reckon I'm preparing the engine for extraction. I think I took the wings off before I lifted the engine.
	The major problem I encountered was bi-metallic corrosion. Basically the aluminium body is secured to the steel chassis by steel bolts. Because Land Rover didn't bother to insulate the bolts from the body, the bolts corrode badly. The only way I found to remove the body without damage was to cut away sections of chassis until you could get the angle grinder to the bolts. Then you cut the heads off the bolts or cut away the bracket. You can see the battery support section of chassis on the floor.
	Wings off and engine out. Still more sections of chassis cut off until I had a nice little pile in the yard. This the point that you find out that not all of a Land Rover is an aluminium body. The bulkhead isn't and because it has a secondary function as a wheel arch, it rots. So, at this stage I found that the bulkhead resembled a cheese grater in parts, i.e. lots of holes.
	The new chassis has arrived and I'm giving it my standard treatment of 2 coats of Hammerite No 1 rust treatment (not the red oxide primer which is useless) and 2 coats of smooth Hammerite. Hammerite is now far inferior product than when it was in 1991. My big mistake was not using primer for galvanised metal as a lot of this paint peeled off. Apparently the best method is to leave it out in the rain for a few months before painting the galvanising. I didn't paint the axles which I should have done. They were just swapped off the old chassis. The interesting aspect was the more difficult handling compared to a car - everything is that more difficult to manoeuvre into place due to the weight.
	The engine was completely stripped down. I can't remember what I did to it but it almost certainly involved some work by Lancaster Engines (excellent work from there). The block was wire brushed and painted.
	Head on now and tub fitted. The rear load area had a false floor as the original floor was shot. The whole lot was cut out and replaced by a sheet of stainless steel from a jam factory.
	The bulkhead was far gone and the price quoted by the Land Rover dealer in Torver for a replacement was scary. A few days later, they rang me back and said they could get a cheap left hand drive one. I said 'what use is that'? They said, 'Come and talk to the chief mechanic'. I did and he showed me how to cut 2 holes in the right hand side and use plates from the old bulkhead to cover up the holes on the left hand side. That's all it needed. I then bit the bullet and got the bulkhead galvanised at the local farm supplies engineer. He made me sign a no comebacks paper and said that it might warp. Well it did a little bit and I had to use a jack to stretch it a bit so I could get the bolts to the chassis in. I wouldn't have liked to get them out. I wasn't that fussed so I hand painted it using the right colours.
	Radiator panel in place. This should have had more work but it had to make to with filler in the holes as funds were getting low.
	Almost complete
	And the finished article. Flew through the MOT with no issues.