It's not just my cars that I spend time working on. My brother has been having problems with the car he's been driving recently too. So when I was up there I gave him a hand to test one theory we had as to what was causing it. While doing that I found a design "feature" that should never have made it into the finished product.

Step one. Make life easy for ourselves. We had to drop the fuel tank out so having some room to work makes the job much easier.

The tank on this car is held up with 2 straps that are bolted on at the back and allowed to pivot at the front. This means that after disconnecting all of the hoses, etc. all you need to do is undo 2 nuts and catch the tank.

Can you see the problem in this photo yet?

How about here?

 Whoever designed the towbar clearly did not expect anyone to be doing any maintenance on the fuel tank. And of course as the access decreases, the maintenance requirement goes up. So to drop the fuel tank you also need to remove the towbar now. If they'd cut a notch out of the thinner plate in the middle of the towbar then you could get a deep socket in and remove the nut that way. That shouldn't make a catastrophic weakness in the part.

It is what it is and we did get the tank out without too much hassle. But it is a good reminder to anyone who is modifying or building anything. Always think about how YOU will maintain it and get to all of the parts required during servicing.

Back to more Landrover stuff soon.

Cheers,

Rex