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When I did the rebuild [1] of my 1987 Land Rover Defender 110, I did it through a shop that ran a special program where owners could rebuild/repower their Defen

When I did the rebuild [1] of my 1987 Land Rover Defender 110, I did it through a shop that ran a special program where owners could rebuild/repower their Defenders under the tutelage of the shop owner. In fact, the build was so dependent on my labor that I, as the customer, had to sign a contract that I would complete my part of the bargain in a timely manner or else I would have to pay him his hourly rate to complete it for me. It turned out to be an amazing experience. I stripped the truck down to a bare frame and built a brand-new rolling chassis [2] with new motor [3], transmission, transfer case, and suspension. I moved the old body over onto the new chassis, which gave it a sort of retro look with proper period-correct gear but the reliability of all-new parts. The shop owner was there to direct me what to start on next, to answer questions when I got stuck, and to help me lift the really heavy things, but for the most part, I wrenched alone. Over eight weekends of work, I went from knowing how to do only the most basic of maintenance (oil changes, etc.) to being quite confident that I could do another project just like this entirely on my own. The cost was about the same as paying someone else to do the work but I can be confident that everything was done right--every bolt torqued correctly, every dirty thing cleaned, every broken thing replaced. I take my truck out to the desert for multi-week camping trips and the experience gave me much-needed confidence in my ability, my tools, and my gear. [1] https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/albums/72157640704807135 https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/albums/721576407048... [2] https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/13052224614/in/album-72157640704807135/lightbox/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/13052224614/in/albu... [3] https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/12399960314/in/album-72157640704807135/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/defender90/12399960314/in/albu...

adanto6840 9y ago
I'm super intrigued by this -- almost surely over my (non oil-changing) level by far, but would still be interested in more info on it. Is it something that is advertised by the shop? In what location (or region) was this? What was the expectation in terms of timeframe, and how many hours were you typically putting into the project in any given week? If you're comfortable, shop info/specifics would be great but no worries if not. Awesome outcome BTW, and is something you can be very proud of and continually enjoy -- love it!
- swozey 9y ago
  I'm not Op but I'll bet that this was probably a shop run by an owner big in the Land Rover/offroading community. Working on Land Rovers is probably his favorite hobby and he can cut breaks for people that will probably get into the community more. The offroading community is huge and tight knit.
  - chrissnell 9y ago
    In my case, the shop was still very new and the owner wanted to get into restorations (he was in the parts biz). After my project, he took on a few more owner-builds but now primarily focuses on doing resto jobs himself for his customers.
- chrissnell 9y ago
  The build was done at Defenders Northwest [1] in Gig Harbor, WA. I was fortunate to live in Tacoma at the time, just across the bridge, which made the process easier. It took eight full weekends to get the truck on the road and back to my house. That's an 8 or 9AM start on Saturday and Sunday, working until 5 or 6PM. It was done over a PNW winter and there were lots of days spent out in the rain, as you can see in some of my pics on the previous post. Tough work but so worth it. Once the truck was rolling, I took it back to my house to finish up the non-essential things, like wiring up the speedometer and aftermarket things like my winch and bumper. There were a bunch of little things that needed to be solved and the last 5% of the build took at least 50% of the time, mostly due to having to air-freight less common parts from the U.K. Defenders Northwest is owned by Brian Hall and he's a great guy to work with. However, if you're seriously interested in Defenders, take some time to do the basic research on your own before calling a builder. I run one of the big Defender forums, NAS-ROW (NAS being "North American Spec" and ROW, "Rest-of-World" spec). https://nas-row.com https://nas-row.com - lots of info there. [1] https://www.defendersnorthwest.com/ https://www.defendersnorthwest.com/
Sophistifunk 9y ago
Sweet baby jesus this sounds excellent. I don't suppose you have any reproducible tips about how you found this? Ie, what kind of keywords I'd need to search for, etc?
- michaelt 9y ago
  Establish cultural capital within the landrover community, such as by participating in a popular online forum. This proves you have the interest, motivation and free time to complete the project once you start it. Your many new friends will alert you when opportunities like this come up.
agumonkey 9y ago
I recently wondered about this kind of system. Lots of people aren't happy about devices they don't understand and can't really fix. Repair shop can be very expensive and often scammy. This could be a nice thing to try. anecdote: I remember when I bought my first laptop (2nd hand on ebay... foolish) I was very very nervous at every sign of failure. After a few years of dabbling in electronics (rpi fad helped) my fears are almost all gone; I know I can intervene easily on a third of low level issues (blown component, broken trace/wire/contact), and may hack on other things. It's not a bad feeling.
- magduf 9y ago
  >Repair shop can be very expensive and often scammy. Yep, this is why it's frequently more economic to dispose of or resell something old and buy a new replacement, rather than to repair it. Factories are far, far more efficient at making things than repair shops, and also don't have the problems of doing things incorrectly (it happens in factories but a couple of orders of magnitude less frequently), or running a scam. Repairing things frequently only really makes sense if you're doing the work yourself.
  - agumonkey 9y ago
    Factories are especially better at outputing when the market asks for that. Designing for repairability adds complexity. After repairing a few appliances and laptops I think there's potential for less difficult products to repair. But it requires cultural shift (very difficult) into crowds that like poking into things. It's not all good, it kills some of the magic of buying a box. But it's not devoid of pleasure either, there's beauty in how minute things are done and done well; it's just a different kind of pleasure.
    - magduf 9y ago
      Designing for repairability adds some complexity, but it depends on the application. The modularization needed for easy assembly (which helps the factory, particularly when using parts coming from many different suppliers) can also make it easier to repair things. However, at a factory, all the parts are brand-new and quality-controlled from their suppliers, so the process in assembling them is pretty smooth. With repairs, the process isn't so clear-cut: the problem could be different things, there's a diagnosis step involved, and it could be wrong if there's a cascading failure involved (one failure caused another one, and fixing the obvious problem doesn't fix the root cause). Also, doing repairs generally requires more intelligence and training than doing initial assembly; you can automate assembly usually, you can't easily automate repair. Because of all this, repair ends up being disproportionately expensive. It doesn't help that it's usually not done by the original manufacturer, but instead by others seeking to profit on failed devices. You seem to be arguing for DIY repair, which I only partially addressed before. I'm not talking about that. Most people cannot repair their own devices: many simply do not have the aptitude for it, and many other have no desire to do so. Repair can be dirty work, or even dangerous, and also require special tools. Replacing an axle on a FWD car, for instance, can be very difficult for backyard mechanics because getting the axle nut off is extremely difficult as it's a large nut and torqued to a high degree, and after years of age and corrosion gets even tighter. I've seen videos of people using 6-foot extension bars to break them loose, and even then failing sometimes, and sometimes they resort to using the car's starter motor to assist, which is just plain dangerous. But a handheld air impact wrench can usually get them off pretty easily. But most DIYers don't have air compressors and impact wrenches like this; they're not that cheap. Aside from difficult axle nuts, car repairs in general can frequently be dirty, and a good way to get your hands cut up. There's nothing wrong with doing this stuff yourself (I do), but to expect for instance some 50 year old woman who has zero mechanical skills and very little arm/hand strength to take on this stuff is silly, and even with more able people, many people these days don't even have a place where they're able or allowed to work on cars (apartment/condo parking lots for instance usually don't allow this). That's automotive repair, which many people at least are able to grasp intuitively, and the simpler jobs are able to be done with some simple hand tools (wrenches etc.). How about electronics? I'm sorry, you can't expect someone with a background in law (for instance) to be able to use an oscilloscope to diagnose a failing electronic part. People go to engineering school to learn about that kind of thing, it's not something just anyone can be expected to do. Even doing simple electronic repairs with a soldering iron is out-of-reach for most people; I've taught laypeople how to solder, and it's like welding: there's a lot of technique, and not just anyone can master it. It's easy to do a poor job, or to even damage the thing you're repairing. The point to all this is that we have specialization of labor for a reason (some people are better at certain tasks than others), and that repair specialists exist for a reason: because there's a market for them because many people can't/won't repair things themselves. But by its very nature, repair is not and never will be as efficient as factory assembly. Also, technology improves: repairing a 1965 vehicle might be fun for some, but it'll never have the fuel efficiency, reliability, or safety of a brand-new vehicle (unless maybe you severely modify it, which brings us to a Ship of Theseus argument). At some point, except for a museum relic, it just makes more sense to dispose of the old and buy new. I know I, for one, do not want to be involved in a crash in any pre-2000 vehicle rather than my mid-2010s car. And given how inexpensive many manufactured products are, compared to the labor rates of qualified repairpeople (plus the risk factor of them doing it wrong, intentionally or not), there's a certain point where it just doesn't make economic sense to repair. However, when you're DIYing (or paying a friend with beer), that calculus changes. I will say that YouTube videos and other sources of information on the internet have really helped a lot here too in making repairs more accessible and feasible for many things.

adanto6840 9y ago

I'm super intrigued by this -- almost surely over my (non oil-changing) level by far, but would still be interested in more info on it. Is it something that is advertised by the shop? In what location (or region) was this? What was the expectation in terms of timeframe, and how many hours were you typically putting into the project in any given week? If you're comfortable, shop info/specifics would be great but no worries if not. Awesome outcome BTW, and is something you can be very proud of and continually enjoy -- love it!

swozey 9y ago
I'm not Op but I'll bet that this was probably a shop run by an owner big in the Land Rover/offroading community. Working on Land Rovers is probably his favorite hobby and he can cut breaks for people that will probably get into the community more. The offroading community is huge and tight knit.
- chrissnell 9y ago
  In my case, the shop was still very new and the owner wanted to get into restorations (he was in the parts biz). After my project, he took on a few more owner-builds but now primarily focuses on doing resto jobs himself for his customers.
chrissnell 9y ago
The build was done at Defenders Northwest [1] in Gig Harbor, WA. I was fortunate to live in Tacoma at the time, just across the bridge, which made the process easier. It took eight full weekends to get the truck on the road and back to my house. That's an 8 or 9AM start on Saturday and Sunday, working until 5 or 6PM. It was done over a PNW winter and there were lots of days spent out in the rain, as you can see in some of my pics on the previous post. Tough work but so worth it. Once the truck was rolling, I took it back to my house to finish up the non-essential things, like wiring up the speedometer and aftermarket things like my winch and bumper. There were a bunch of little things that needed to be solved and the last 5% of the build took at least 50% of the time, mostly due to having to air-freight less common parts from the U.K. Defenders Northwest is owned by Brian Hall and he's a great guy to work with. However, if you're seriously interested in Defenders, take some time to do the basic research on your own before calling a builder. I run one of the big Defender forums, NAS-ROW (NAS being "North American Spec" and ROW, "Rest-of-World" spec). https://nas-row.com https://nas-row.com - lots of info there. [1] https://www.defendersnorthwest.com/ https://www.defendersnorthwest.com/

Sophistifunk 9y ago

Sweet baby jesus this sounds excellent. I don't suppose you have any reproducible tips about how you found this? Ie, what kind of keywords I'd need to search for, etc?

michaelt 9y ago
Establish cultural capital within the landrover community, such as by participating in a popular online forum. This proves you have the interest, motivation and free time to complete the project once you start it. Your many new friends will alert you when opportunities like this come up.

agumonkey 9y ago

I recently wondered about this kind of system. Lots of people aren't happy about devices they don't understand and can't really fix. Repair shop can be very expensive and often scammy. This could be a nice thing to try. anecdote: I remember when I bought my first laptop (2nd hand on ebay... foolish) I was very very nervous at every sign of failure. After a few years of dabbling in electronics (rpi fad helped) my fears are almost all gone; I know I can intervene easily on a third of low level issues (blown component, broken trace/wire/contact), and may hack on other things. It's not a bad feeling.

magduf 9y ago
>Repair shop can be very expensive and often scammy. Yep, this is why it's frequently more economic to dispose of or resell something old and buy a new replacement, rather than to repair it. Factories are far, far more efficient at making things than repair shops, and also don't have the problems of doing things incorrectly (it happens in factories but a couple of orders of magnitude less frequently), or running a scam. Repairing things frequently only really makes sense if you're doing the work yourself.
- agumonkey 9y ago
  Factories are especially better at outputing when the market asks for that. Designing for repairability adds complexity. After repairing a few appliances and laptops I think there's potential for less difficult products to repair. But it requires cultural shift (very difficult) into crowds that like poking into things. It's not all good, it kills some of the magic of buying a box. But it's not devoid of pleasure either, there's beauty in how minute things are done and done well; it's just a different kind of pleasure.
  - magduf 9y ago
    Designing for repairability adds some complexity, but it depends on the application. The modularization needed for easy assembly (which helps the factory, particularly when using parts coming from many different suppliers) can also make it easier to repair things. However, at a factory, all the parts are brand-new and quality-controlled from their suppliers, so the process in assembling them is pretty smooth. With repairs, the process isn't so clear-cut: the problem could be different things, there's a diagnosis step involved, and it could be wrong if there's a cascading failure involved (one failure caused another one, and fixing the obvious problem doesn't fix the root cause). Also, doing repairs generally requires more intelligence and training than doing initial assembly; you can automate assembly usually, you can't easily automate repair. Because of all this, repair ends up being disproportionately expensive. It doesn't help that it's usually not done by the original manufacturer, but instead by others seeking to profit on failed devices. You seem to be arguing for DIY repair, which I only partially addressed before. I'm not talking about that. Most people cannot repair their own devices: many simply do not have the aptitude for it, and many other have no desire to do so. Repair can be dirty work, or even dangerous, and also require special tools. Replacing an axle on a FWD car, for instance, can be very difficult for backyard mechanics because getting the axle nut off is extremely difficult as it's a large nut and torqued to a high degree, and after years of age and corrosion gets even tighter. I've seen videos of people using 6-foot extension bars to break them loose, and even then failing sometimes, and sometimes they resort to using the car's starter motor to assist, which is just plain dangerous. But a handheld air impact wrench can usually get them off pretty easily. But most DIYers don't have air compressors and impact wrenches like this; they're not that cheap. Aside from difficult axle nuts, car repairs in general can frequently be dirty, and a good way to get your hands cut up. There's nothing wrong with doing this stuff yourself (I do), but to expect for instance some 50 year old woman who has zero mechanical skills and very little arm/hand strength to take on this stuff is silly, and even with more able people, many people these days don't even have a place where they're able or allowed to work on cars (apartment/condo parking lots for instance usually don't allow this). That's automotive repair, which many people at least are able to grasp intuitively, and the simpler jobs are able to be done with some simple hand tools (wrenches etc.). How about electronics? I'm sorry, you can't expect someone with a background in law (for instance) to be able to use an oscilloscope to diagnose a failing electronic part. People go to engineering school to learn about that kind of thing, it's not something just anyone can be expected to do. Even doing simple electronic repairs with a soldering iron is out-of-reach for most people; I've taught laypeople how to solder, and it's like welding: there's a lot of technique, and not just anyone can master it. It's easy to do a poor job, or to even damage the thing you're repairing. The point to all this is that we have specialization of labor for a reason (some people are better at certain tasks than others), and that repair specialists exist for a reason: because there's a market for them because many people can't/won't repair things themselves. But by its very nature, repair is not and never will be as efficient as factory assembly. Also, technology improves: repairing a 1965 vehicle might be fun for some, but it'll never have the fuel efficiency, reliability, or safety of a brand-new vehicle (unless maybe you severely modify it, which brings us to a Ship of Theseus argument). At some point, except for a museum relic, it just makes more sense to dispose of the old and buy new. I know I, for one, do not want to be involved in a crash in any pre-2000 vehicle rather than my mid-2010s car. And given how inexpensive many manufactured products are, compared to the labor rates of qualified repairpeople (plus the risk factor of them doing it wrong, intentionally or not), there's a certain point where it just doesn't make economic sense to repair. However, when you're DIYing (or paying a friend with beer), that calculus changes. I will say that YouTube videos and other sources of information on the internet have really helped a lot here too in making repairs more accessible and feasible for many things.