Somebody locally was advised to see me about a rattle in his Tdi engine in a Series 3 109. Normally you wouldn't see me for dust in those circumstances, but I was intrigued...

I found this - perfectly polished and smooth on both sides! Clearly a sheered bolt head of some type and it was sitting happily beside the camshaft when I took one of the side cover plates off.

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I reckon its historic because there are no sheered bolts that I can find round the top of the engine and when I took it out all the noise stopped - back to normal Tdi rattle. Its the head of an M8 bolt, but the weird thing is that the camshaft and valve gear seem to be fine - no damage as far as I can tell and I went right in to each follower with a borescope.

So it got me thinking. Why not start a thread about finding odd things on a LR which shouldn't be there? I'm thinking of unidentifiable lumps of metal falling out of engines, gearboxes, differentials etc. Lets see what appears... Also it can be identifiable things which have made a bid for freedom such as a con rod through the block, planetary gears through a diff casing and so on. Our very own Chamber of Horrors...

I'll start with two.

Firstly on the keyring for my truck is a very distorted M6 nut, found in the No 3 cylinder when my engine locked up in the workshop, this little beauty was end on stopping the engine going to TDC. Again no other damage we suspect it dropped through the carb and got sucked in on the first such of the engine.

Secondly a S3 owning friend called me with a strange tapping noise, no obvious clues, when we removed the hear we found a perfect profile of a small brass screw on one of the pistons and a closer inspection of the Zenith carb revealed one missing from the butterfly

I found 303 rounds in a S3 dash on an ex military 109 and shot gun shells in a S2 wedged down by the fuel tank.

Paul

Not LR, but a mate of mine found the end of a finger in the gearbox of a royal Enfield.
He feints at the mere sight of blood, but quite out of character, recounts the story with utter glee.
So many questions.

Do snail shells, acorns, pinecones and mice skeletons count?

I did find the following bolted to the engine side of the bulkhead, no clue what it was used for.

 

Shotgun cartridges behind the seats, used I might add, bits of straw here and there and a wee Meccano type spanner 

Quote from: Larry S on Mar 30, 2024, 10:29 PMDo snail shells, acorns, pinecones and mice skeletons count?

I did find the following bolted to the engine side of the bulkhead, no clue what it was used for.

 

Larry, that holds the clutch hose above the slave cyl. Hard line to the top, flex hose to the bottom.

Quote from: Genocache on Mar 31, 2024, 02:56 AM

Quote from: Larry S on Mar 30, 2024, 10:29 PMDo snail shells, acorns, pinecones and mice skeletons count?

I did find the following bolted to the engine side of the bulkhead, no clue what it was used for.

 

Larry, that holds the clutch hose above the slave cyl. Hard line to the top, flex hose to the bottom.

Are you talking about this one?

I think I found a pic of that odd piece in a pic of the engine before the refurbishment started.  But... I'm not seeing how it was attached, but it was being used to hold a fuel line bodge done by a PO (circled in last pic).

Not LR but I was having a close look under a Humber Pig at a show & found a wrist watch in the box section of the chassis. The owner had been mystified by the loss of his watch several weeks earlier.

Over the years of sitting and sniffing a new vehicle on arrival, the subsequent frenzied exploration has turned
up the following range indispensable artefacts:
Land Rover: Messages scratched on the windows & steering column of a sexual nature about colleagues.
Shorland: One Eire penny & a cartridge case.
Land Rover Ambulance: Knife, fork, & spoon secreted in various ventilating orifices.
Land Rover: Tyre pressure gauge caked in mud underneath the wheel arch.
Land Rover Carawagon: 3 diesel engine glow plugs, a torch battery & a boiled sweet.
Humber Pig Mk 1: Tree growing through the floor.
Humber Pig Mk 2: 4 empty larger cans, REME fitters time sheet, part of a CES, half a packet of Jaffa Cakes &
remnants of toilet roll.
Humber Hornet: Boiled sweet & a gasket set for a GMC!
Humber GS: Bird's nest.
Shorland APC: Mouse's nest.
RAF Land Rover: The inevitable dried up Biro.

I know of one ¾ ton ambulance owner who couldn't understand why the front roof ventilator system was
ineffective. He found that on both sides the ducts were jammed with packets of fags. So some soldier must have
had to swap vehicles a bit sooner than they had planned! A particularly fruitful place to have a rummage is the
scuttle under the dash of a Land Rover 90/110. In an edition of KIT! It claimed to have the record for a single
vehicle and listed:

3 large torch batteries
3 pencil torch batteries
6 fuses 5A to 25A
1 tissue
1 Coke bottle top
4 boiled sweets
1 stick of chalk
2 brake light bulbs
2 fog light bulbs
3 indicator bulbs
1 split pin
5 bolts
2 nuts
3 washers
1 cable tie
2 fuse cover screws
1 penny piece
1 five pfennig piece
1 gear stick knob

In my Wolf I found lots of Sun tan tubes but maybe the level of junk was reduced by this warning on a day-glow sticker "THIS IS NOT A PORTABLE WASTE DISPOSAL UNIT, IF YOU USE THIS VEHICLE, TAKE YOUR RUBBISH OUT!"

I think I've mentioned this one before....
Once while checking in a batch of new Defenders in Sarajevo, I spotted somebody's pipe and full tobacco pouch in the under seat locker left there by somebody on the production line. In the same vehicle I found the keys to our storage compound which was near Guildford.

Tobacco and pouch found their way back to their owner who was very surprised and pleased. The keys likewise. What are the odds of somebody spotting and recognising a random set of keys some 1600 miles away from where they were lost?

Not Land Rover and alas not me. Near my daughter's  place close to Silverstone is a tank driving experience site. They have all manner of military vehicles which you can potter around in for a fee.
A couple of years ago among a few newly arrived  vehicles was a tank which wouldn't run properly. After investigation they settled on an issue with the fuel tank which they removed. It must have dropped with a thud as it was packed with gold ingots stolen from the Kuwaitis by the Iraq forces.
How pig sick the 'stasher ' must have been when he lost his tank !

When stripping down the s3 for the new front quarter chassis found the original had been filled with Crazy foam and filled over. Expanding foam definitely does not belong in a Land Rover chassis

No pics, but I bought a second hand early radiator with the header tank full of nut shells. I guess a squizzle was hiding them in there. I must of removed about 50 shells 🤣

Jon

On my first Land Rover the chassis was totally rotten. As I was stripping it down for replacement I found that some of the rust was held together with filler and a phone card for additional strength. The rest of the chassis was only held together by the tin worms holding hands.

Top of my air filter was filled wsith these.