It's been so long....

Blimey, time flies, and house extensions seem to have taken most of it up.
Anyway you may remember some months ago I talked about the handbrake being less than efficient.

I thought as part of my quest to fix all the various oil leaks and little niggles, that I'd investigate further. Hmmm.

On removing the drum I found a lot of oil. The rear output oil seal had clearly gone. I therefore spent a couple days (on and off) stripping the whole handbrake mechanism off.

I found it impossible to remove the old (metal and leather) oil seal from the speedo housing, so I removed the housing, taking the opportunity to clean this as well, then pressed out the old seal and pressed in a new one.

I then soaked the handbrake in petrol to remove all the oil, and cleaned it - the shoes (well worn - as well as oil soaked ) They appear to be the originals (labels under the linings marked 10/52 - the landrover was built 11/52)

Above is a picture after it was cleaned, rebuilt and new linings riveted on.

Harrowing times

Well after many inches of snow, spring briefly arrived last weekend, and having emptied the trailer of the mower, in readyness for work to start on that, a quick journey to the next village resulted in the purchase of a good heavy secondhand set of harrows.

Sunday was spent harrowing one of the paddocks, if the weather holds I'll be doing the rest this coming weekend. I can now see why the farmer who ordered my land rover originally picked the hand throttle as the only option he wanted.

Low ratio, 2nd Gear, hand throttle out till your doing 5mph (or whatever you want to do) then it's just steering round and round the field, just liek a tracctor, and much easier than using the pedal for maintaining a constant speed.