When setting up my Land Rover restoration business back in Feb 2017, never in my wildest dreams did I think that 6 years down the line I’d be writing this, and appearing on one of the most famous new TV series of this decade. I love Land Rovers its no massive secret anyone who knows me knows I live, breath, sleep, dream about them 24-7! ask the Mrs!, So when I was approached by AirTV company and The Mathewson’s family to get involved I just had to jump at the opportunity.
So…Where shall I start?…. well… Bangers & Cash TV series has become hugely popular in recent years, and I’ve always loved the program, so when they launched the new spin off called Restoring Classics which follows cars bought at auction, restored and then re-auctioned with the aim to make a profit it was an exciting prospect to follow and watch anyway.
Towards the back end of 2021, AirTV vested an interest in a Series 1 Land Rover which was going through at the Mathewson’s classic car auctions, and they had the bright idea to buy it as a restoration project for the Bangers and Cash Restoring Classics TV program. After purchasing said Land Rover, I was then approached by the TV crew and Dave Mathewson, whom asked me if I wanted to get involved and restore the 1953 Land Rover series one 86″ (RSK 998), I was very pessimistic about the whole TV appearance part, but pretty keen and enthusiastic about the prospect of getting down and dirty with one of these iconic classic old vehicles.
The Series 1 eventually arrived at my premises on the 16th September 2021. The initial plan was to assess and then make a plan of action to mend a few bits here and there and decide what was the best way to go on was on the restoration. I could see from my first quick initial assessment that the bulkhead was rotten, most body panels were out of line, the roof had had its day and there was a bit of corrosion and tin worm, the chassis on initial quick glance didn’t look too bad, nothing I couldn’t handle. (famous last words) It wasn’t until I started stripping it down that we all began to realise what we’d actually got ourselves into.
When the chassis came back from the paint shop I could then start the major task of the rebuild, I say that word with a bit of a pained smile, as we all had gone far beyond ‘restoration’ now, we were all now into full rebuild territory!
Rather than now begin to bore you with over 1000+ hours of laborious pain staking graft of body panel and parts hunting, panel and tub repairs, removing an immense amount of what we call in the Yorkshire trade as ‘DOGGY’ (filler) To give you some idea of the sheer volume of work that’s gone into this build, I’ve done a very brief list of the basic parts we fitted once the new chassis arrived:
Parts we were able to reuse from the old Series One:
Everything else was sourced second hand and refurbished, remanufactured or fabricated.
After all rebuild work completed the day came to fire it up….we were all seriously ready to see if it would run again, and it didn’t disappoint as it fired up on first start up!…..The relief James and I felt that day was unimaginable.
It’s hard to put into words the amount of effort, research and work that’s gone into this project so please don’t be led into any false preconception that it’s a quick, easy and cheap process to rebuild a Series One Land Rover, and especially an 86″ model, it certainly isn’t! The TV program filtered this down massively for ¾ hours of good TV and in my honest opinion made it look like it was quick and done in a flash! God knows I wish it had been so simple!. This build took myself and my contacts behind the scenes just shy of 2 years and more than 1160 hours, include filming into that labour equation too which does slow things down a lot!, (Nick can you do that again, one more time, but from this angle please!)… sometimes you just did want to be on! so please take that into account on the Labour costs as this was included in my bill!. , I have a waiting list here for builds so my time is money!!🙂
I thought after seeing a lot of negative posts on the socials, (which I know myself in all honesty I’ll never get away from anyway, as there is always one who can do it better than me! lol) I would try and put it into simple terms for you all when you’re watching and not having all the actual information…….so here goes:
Imagine a super-size Meccano set, with 1000s or more pieces, all in a really bad way when it arrives to you already built up by someone else. You then have to take it all apart, put it all in a box for safe keeping so you don’t lose anything, some of it now broken, or breaks completely and is totally destroyed when its removed or has to be drilled off, also to add insult to injury some parts are missing altogether and completely from another Meccano (Land Rover) set, so not only do you have to then start to put it back together, but, find parts from somewhere which you have no idea if they still exist, where they could be, source, beg suppliers to help you find the correct bits you need, then ALL the old and newly sourced Meccano parts need to be cleaned up, blasted, repainted, refitted……so that the actual finished Meccano looks the dogs danglies prior to going to a new owner, well that’s how this was in pure reality. Apparently now having many more new and old contacts in the scene from doing this build, with all of that above taken into consideration, I have been told and advised by them all the time I took is….. ‘Very good going’.
We’ve enjoyed it, lost sleep over it, cursed over it BUT the end result we are very proud of and the new owner whom I have now met is thrilled with his new Land Rover (new being the operative word!!)
Now seen here, back to its former glory, but for a much better insight to what actually went down check out my photos above!… or….. get on, catch up, and check out Bangers & Cash Restoring Classics series 3 – episode 6 on Yesterday channel/UKTV play.
With Special Thanks going to:
Richards Chassis
Shielder Chassis
Terry Elsey Tyres (Malton)
Mark Dale, Dickie Dale & Waspy – Seven Acre
Charles Emberton
Exmoor Trim
Britpart
Bearmach (that once was)
Westbys & Hydra Power
Land Rover Series One Owners Club
Mathewsons
All the team and camera crew from AirTV
Yesterday Channel
UKTV play
Cheers all for the adventures, laughs & memories!!
– Nick (& James)