Did I mention that the Perentie did not de-mist the windscreen very well. I probably didn’t because no Land Rover can de-mist or indeed heat the cabin with any degree efficiency. This is because the heaters are completely rubbish.
Basically the heated coolant in the engine permanently flows through the heater box, you don’t turn the flow on and off with the heater. You can of course amend the plumbing to enable this, but it is a fix that is most, often, not done.
The hot air passes into the lower part of what is the dash board, effectively in front of the bulkhead in front of where your knees go!
When you need heat you pull a lever, that pulls a long wire that opens two small flaps one on each side of the car, this allows a very weak stream of warm air to enter the cabin, pushed along by a low powered fan on heater box in the engine bay; if you are lucky some of it may make it to the windscreen up two very basic tubes. part from bad design and a small fan I guess the car is always heating cod airframe the outs so it will never be great. Ultimately I will upgrade the heater box and fan, but not now.
I needed to remove most of the dash to get at the wiring and soon realised that the wires that opened and closed the flaps were not connected inside the lower dash. One flap is connected to the other with a rod, so just the one connection from the lever. There was no easy access so the whole thing had to come out which was a painfully slow job as all of the fixing were rusted in – the dash also looked a sorry state.
If you look closely at the picture top left you will see a brown wire sticking up in the air, this is a permanently live battery feed, that was just hanging around behind the dashboard; with all of the metal sound proofing just behind it as well – an accident waiting to happen.
Anyway, an afternoon with a wire brush and some Hammerite and all is looking much better! Some padding added and new foam on the flaps…….
All I need to do now is the covering, so some more research. This is when I stumbled across Mike at Britannica Restorations based in Canada. Mike is a true Northerner and a old school properly trained mechanic, his You Tube channel has dozens of fantastically detailed videos about how to fix your Landy – you must visit!
So Mike had a couple of videos about how to recover dashboards, with varying levels of success. Following his tip, I sourced some of the 4 way stretch vinyl used by manufacturers. This is the proper stuff and needs to be treated by vinyl sealent (VP1 Primer) before being stuck to the dash itself, not cheap, probably £100 for the vinyl, sealer and adhesive. Benita and I did the covering one Sunday afternoon as it is not a one person job, we made a effort I think.
I attached a new wire, hopefully it will never come off again, as I have no intention of removing the dash ever again as I was also a pain to get back on!
I followed the same procedure with the top dash which had holes drilled through it in the past.
Later, once I have a proper diesel heater fitter, I suggest the I will use this in the winter instead of the inefficient Land Rover system.
Whilst the dash was off, I replaced the windscreen wiper motor, the wheel boxes and the tube to the windscreen washers.
I also replaced the pipework to the windscreen, the originals were not properly sealed into the lower dash, so the air had no chance of making it to the windscreen.
48 States of Gray 