Suspension

As the body shell was completely divorced from the suspension (and indeed from everything else!) I thought that the best plan would be to take home the suspension bits, build them up and then return to fit them to the car in order to make it easy to get the body onto a trailer. So we loaded up the Range Rover with as much recognisable suspension subframe related gear as we could find, and then set off back to Leeds. It might be worth mentioning at this point that I don't have a garage, so much of the resoration work would have to take place in my living room and kitchen! My brother kindly offered me use of his garage for the bodyshell, so the eventual plan would be to restore and assemble items at home and then take them to my brother's to fit them to the car.

Having already rebuilt a DS420 Limo a few years earlier, I was reasonably happy assembling the suspension. All the main components had already been de-rusted and stove enameled, or replaced with new, so all I had to do was put it all together. The first problem I hit, and one which has plagued me throughout, was lack of bits. Although the previous owner had bought a complete working car, a reasonable percentage of the parts had gone missing over the years. For the rear suspension, the main missing components were the brackets for mounting the brake callipers to the differential. Once I'd located a pair (courtesy of Les at John Gordon) assembly was reasonably straightforward. I'd never fitted new rear wheel bearings before, so the mysteries of setting the endfloat had to be explained by those in the know on the Jag Lovers Saloon list.