In our conversations with https://www.winchfield.net/ they requested that we perform the initial strip down prior to transferring the vehicle over to them. It took a few evenings but we eventually got there!
There were a couple of new areas with rust but overall the general state of the SJ was very encouraging!
See the pictures and video below!
Another video in the series on the restoration of the SJ.
With a delay in the restorers (They have a Land Rover in front of us) I have more time to source the parts. With the parts for the early, narrow arch, SJ413 in short supply its time to widen the search to include parts that can be adapted to the SJ413 we have,
So it is off to the restoration company. They came all of a half mile to collect her. At a guess this is goodbye until at least Christmas. Work is scheduled to start the first week in November. We will update you as work progresses.
The restoration has started!
Winchfield Engineering has sent over the first batch of pictures from the work this week. If you recall, they asked me to strip as much as I could first so here is a reminder of where I had go to.
I had stripped off all the parts that I could easily remove including all of the interior apart from the dashboard and a few plastic clips used to retain the carpets etc.
The SJ was then loaded onto a trailer for the less than 1/2 mile trip to the restorers.
More dismantling!You may recall we bought new front wings and had to gamble on the Samurai wings (large wheel arch) being convertible to the SJ413 Wings (small wheel arch) and have the pressed in decorative curve line hidden under the large arch flange.
Therefore we wanted to check as early as we can in the process that the wing underneath the wide arches is, in fact, an SJ413 wing.
The picture on the left shows the wing with the wide arch (ie. a standard Samurai wing) and the additional narrow arch that I purchased.
The key difference between a Samurai wing and an SJ413 wing is the decorative pressing line around the arch which would be difficult to reproduce. However we believed that this pressing line is actually still there, hidden under the wider arch.
The spot welds were therefore drilled out on the arch.......
