Now here's a smart looking Land Rover (and for a pie can you tell me the model and the year...?) It belongs to the Chequer family and I have been sent it by Rikki Chequer, community manager at www.TruckNetUK.com . And this folks is 'Project Bertha' for Rikki and his full-time truck driving partner Lucy. To find out more check out the dedicated Porject Bertha website at http://projectbertha.blogspot.com/
Rikki tells me that it's not been easy restoring the Land Rover, what with Lucy on the road full-time. Rikki tells BLB: "I on the other hand work from home and have time, however I also firmly believe that "no nails" or "Gaffa tape" is the only answer to any problem which would probably not work to well on a restoration project!" Well I don't see why not....Rikki and click through here for a nice Land Rover Picture...
And the question is will you let Bertha get this dirty eh?
Brian the glorious Landrover you see before you is hiding horrible secret, underneath the chassis and front bulkhead are shot, kaput,to be honest Bertha is close to being an ex-Landrover.... The blog you kindly linked too was started this weekend, when we took the probably daft decision to sink our savings into her restoration. I hope that folks will look into the blog from to time and keep up with Bertha's surgery, it will be a long project, at best we estimate 4 months before she is back on the road,
But surgery as drastic as this ( stripping everything and replacing most including the chassis) has a habit of throwing up nasty surpises and that time line could be extended by a long way.
Also we are doing ths on a tight budget, in fact so tight that it is squeaking !!! The whole project is scarey, for all the reasons above, but the main reason is that the old girl has survived 42 years and got this far, and we hope to give her another 40 years before we pass her onto the next generation of restorer's
Any Land Rover fan should get hold of the books by Len Bedell about his adventures in Australia during the 1950s and 60s. try your local library or http://www.beadell.com.au/index.htm. Len was a surveyor, road builder, author, dentist. mechanic and artist with a great sense of humor. He used the series one Landrovers on survey missions into the Australian outback and usually limped back into base with timber replacing broken springs, tyres consisting mainly of patches and the whole thing held together with fencing wire.
Good luck with your restoration Rikki, I just love the distinctive sound of those early petrol engines.
Bertha has regularly been much dirtier than the one in your picture above, Brian. You've obviously never driven across Teesport in the middle of winter when there's a storm blowing up the Tees Estuary, bringing most of Hartlepool with it!