Giving the Jimny a birthday

Nice work MikeG, interesting to watch it all start to come together. Did similar myself to my old Land Rover many years ago and it's still going strong, so well worth the effort if it's a keeper.
Get some wax over and inside everything, it's good for those hard to paint or missed bits. 
Carry on posting, watching with interest.
Mike

Thanks Mike,

I've got some waxoyl for the internals of the chassis, will probably do the underneath of the body with it after it's had a coat of paint too.  All these are on the to-do list.  Next few days will consist of getting the axles and suspension sorted.  I'll keep you all posted with a few pics along the way.  I'm away to start my day at the shed now.

Nice work!

Cracking progress there in a short time, Keep it up and it'll be done in time for the end of lockdown

Thanks Soeley, Riccy,

I've held off doing it for so long, I'm just in the frame of mind in getting stuck into it.  I'm also renting the shed I'm working in, so I have a deadline looming to spur me on. I'm in there from 0930 till 1900 each day, which seems like a long time, but as you well know, there are always problems. The gearbox you sent up is still on my motor Riccy, still going strong.

Well, today 4th March.  I decided to take out the kingpins so I could extract the halfshafts from the front axle and clean up the cups on the end of the axle.  The bolts for the kingpins and the ball joint scraper seal had seen better days and have practically returned to nature.  I will have to make up some correctly sized bolts as I don't have any that length, only longer ones, shouldn't take too much time on assembly, I'll probably be running back and forth to the fastner shop when it comes time to put it all together anyway.  The same kingpin bearings are going back in for now as I don't have spares at hand, plus they are good enough to pass an MOT.  I don't need a shed to do that job.

Next up was to remove the anti-rolll bar, 3 bolts came straight out with no issues, the last one decided to shear, so it was out with the propane, oxygen and a litte bit of water to thermal shock it off.  I'll be touching up the paint with the batch I make up for the axles and suspension components.

I then thought it would be a good idea to remove the rear axle. The brake line to the rear was in good shape, so I was going to leave it, however the jimny decided for me that it wanted that line to be replaced as the brake pipe had stuck to the threaded brake fitting and turned the pipe into a double helix shape, so it was off with the brake line altogether, nevermind tho, I've still got some spare.

On the rear axle, I decided to keep the bolts (well most of them) as they were quite new.  However, the last bolt to come off the top of one of the shock absorbers (the ones under a cover) decided that it was not going to come out, regardless of how much it turned.  After a bit of messing around and head scratching, I figured out that the reason the bolt would not come out was due to the fact the bolt body had fused itself to the inner metal bushing of the shock absorber which stopped any longitudinal movement of the bolt.  No matter how hard I hit it with a hammer, no amount of vibration would shift this bond.  In the end, I had to cut the bolt head off, bend the cover back so that I could prise the top of the shock out wiith a crowbar. What a palaver.   In the pictures, theres a close up of the bushing with part of the bolt still stuck inside it.   I tried drifiting the remaining bolt out, no luck, then I tried pushing it out with a bearing press, no luck with 300kgs of force, I just bent the bolt I was using to press it out.  I then tried drilling it out on a pillar drill, still no luck. I'd had my fill of fastners for the day and it was 1900, so I decided to call it quits and start fresh with it tomorrow.  I still need to recover that bushing as I'm not sure I'll find a bit of pipe like that, unless my old shocks have similar sized bushings.  So it will be out with the gas and oxygen yet again tomorrow.  If that doesn't get it out, I'll just have to bite the bullet and find some pipe.