1970 Land Rover 109″ Series 2a 5-Door Station Wagon

Meet “Rescue” — our latest build by Rad Rovers. This is a 1970 Land Rover Series 2a 109″ 5-door station wagon, pre-Defender 110.

Rescue had obviously lived a brutal life, to say the least. When we bought her in March 2016 she was a total mess. She looked like hell, and we felt bad for her in a way — but also proud to see how well she held up under the abuse she’d been given. Arguably she was loved a little too much, but also obviously road-hard and put away carelessly.

The easy choice would have been to strip her for parts — but that’s not what we like to do here at Rad Rovers. As our mission statement says: Restore, Revive, Rebuild. So we started in on it. If any Land Rover deserved another shot, it was this one. As with all our builds, we stripped it down to the ground and assessed what we had to work with… not much in this instance.

Step 1: order a brand-new galvanized chassis directly from England. Step 2: order a brand-new firewall / bulkhead. Step 3: get down and dirty.

The workload was immense, to put it mildly. Separating the big bulky parts one after another, whittling it down piece by piece like a Russian nesting doll, down to the smallest screw. We found that in the end it was necessary to replace roughly 70% of this truck with brand-new parts.

Our general plan of attack for each build is to: strip the Land Rover down; send out everything individually to a media blaster who uses a product called Black Beauty to take everything down to bare perfect metal (yes, this is a great product for aluminum — not damaging); chop and weld if necessary; off to the powder coaters; and after powder coating, time for reassembly. Demolition is easy. Reassembly takes lots of patience and finesse.

As stated, roughly 70% of the truck is new:

• Chassis.
• Bulkhead.
• All 5 doors.
• All suspension.
• Fuel tank and entire fuel system through the carburetor.
• Water pump.
• Alternator.
• Distributor.
• Engine got a top-end rebuild with all new parts — valves, tappets, rods, etc.
• Steering converted from right-hand to left-hand drive. With that came new tie rods and ends, relay, swivel balls, and all the usual bearings, race bearings, and lip seals.
• Removed and inspected differentials.
• Pulled apart and resealed the transmission.
• All brake and clutch cylinders replaced; new rear drums and all shoes.
• Clutch and pressure plate.
• LED lights everywhere.
• Deluxe bucket seats.
• New wiring harness and several accessories.
• Windshield wiper motor.
• 13,000-lb winch.
• Heavy-duty Jeep-style bumpers and spare-tire mount.

And that’s really in a nutshell. Everything else was mostly the painstaking job of working with parts that were damaged but not bad enough to discard. Reusing original parts was rare — and where we did, we made sure to reinforce structurally important parts. Because we do all powder-coated parts, we are not allowed to cover over damaged metals before the powder-coating ovens, so what you see is what you get. We do NOT mask over imperfections, let alone rust spots, with body fillers and fair them over. We would not be able to cheat you, nor would we want to.

We chose the color scheme from the US Coast Guard rescue teams — the bright orange and black we associated with Rescue. Being big fans of the USCG, and how tough, heroic, and brave those guys are, we wanted to make Rescue’s style portray that as well, in honor of them. Plus, after some quick research, we found that Land Rover also has a line of orange-and-black rovers overseas, so we tried to mimic them as well to keep it in line with genuine Land Rover style.

We like the little dings and bumps and scratches. The character and charm add to the truck and tell a story — each one should be remembered, not forgotten and masked over. The weather-beaten, well-used Land Rover is, to us, beautiful.

Two years later, we present to you Rescue. Thank you for your interest, and we hope you enjoy her.