Sacrifice

IT has been another busy month at the Norfolk Garage. It must be a good few years now since I decided that I would not do any more chassis-up rebuilds as they took up too much space and there was no money in them unless you cut corners in all directions and just threw the vehicle back together with self-drilling screws and Tigerseal. I’m not quite sure what went wrong, but I am just finishing off my third chassis replacement of the year and spent yesterday stripping down a One Ten to the bare chassis ready for replacement number four.

To be fair, none of these have been what I would term a full restoration. Body panels, interior trim and paintwork have been left pretty much untouched, and mechanical overhaul has been confined to dealing with oil leaks and any other major issues identified during the stripdown. Two of the four are vehicles which I have been looking after for a number of years: I know the running gear is basically sound, but the chassis have reached the point where I start running out of good sound metal to weld to. When you find yourself having to cut out welded repair sections and replace them with much larger ones, the chassis probably does not have much life left in it.

The latest vehicle to emerge from the depths of the workshop on a shiny new galvanised chassis is a little Series III 88in hard top. It is the sort of Land Rover that I grew up with –