Restarting a 101

So amongst the many unfinished or neglected things lying around my house is an old Land Rover 101 ambulance that I used to off-road in about 10 years ago. I broke my ankle playing table tennis in Italy (that's a different story...) which made it impossible for me to drive it for a couple of years and I never got back to it...

It's a fantastic machine. High ground clearance, 3500cc V8, permanent four-wheel drive, blah, blah. I could wax lyrical about it for hours. So as I have the time (and my brother is coming up next week = free grease monkey) I thought I would try and restart it.

OK - so you should know I've never tried to restart an old vehicle before. I do have an engineering education and understand how it is all supposed to work - but that's not the same thing as making it work.

Being a good Internet user I of course took recourse to Google for help - typing in "restart land rover 101" I find the second link is to a video of someone crashing their 101 on Salisbury Plain. I'm not really surprised, though, given he painted flames on the side in some kind of premonition. While this is a good illustration of why you don't use your brakes when descending hills off-road, I'm not sure what it has to do with restarting a 101??

Anyhow, after several fruitless explorations (and a relayed conversation with my brother's neighbour, Stan) I have come up with a short-list of actions to restart the 101 - and in an effort to be a good netizen I thought I should record my thoughts/progress/failure(?) in case anyone else out there needs to do the same.

Short list of actions to restart a 101 (or any vehicle really):

• drain the fuel tank and refill. The old fuel will probably be varnish by now.
• replace fuel filter
• check and refill oil in engine. (If the engine restarts I'll flush/refill later)
• remove the air filter (not necessary for a restart and could hinder the air flow initially)
  
• hand crank the engine over to check for stuck valves (will probably put some oil/paraffin/diesel in each piston to help ease it initially)
• open up and clean distributor and points
• replace the battery
  
• check there's a spark for ignition (whole long rigmarole to this - may blog it later...)
• drain and fill the carburetters
  
• try starting it on the key!

In a fit of enthusiasm I bought a 101 starting handle off John Craddock's on the principle that it would be far easier to try and turn the engine with this than do it with a socket on the end of the crank shaft from under the 101. It arrived this afternoon - all 4 foot of it! - so I thought I'd see if the engine would turn, wholly anticipating solid lock. But no! The engine moved quite smoothly. This is a good omen!