Last weekend we got lucky with the weather, mostly. We spent a couple of nights camping in Wales. On the way we decided we’d break the journey, by stopping the night at a pub that allows camping in their garden. So we stopped in Wiltshire at The Parish Lantern, highly recommended.

The whole journey avoided the motorways and took us through many little interesting towns and funny back roads, on the way back we managed to include a couple of green lanes near Salisbury and the Stone Henge.

Prior to departure, I thought I’d change the fuel filter, the Landy will get it’s service any day, but in the mean time I though that I’d do the filter because I felt it had been a bit sluggish when I had occasionally driven it over the winter. As you’d expect the filter was quick and easy to change. But.

Problems occurred during priming, I was not able to prime the filter with the lift pump handle. I though it may have been the position of the pump lever on the cam, flicking the engine over a few times did not improve that. I managed to get the engine started though after several attempts without the lift pump for assistance, then just to confirm my suspicion cracking the bleed screw on the filter housing did not give a stream of diesel. This in my eyes proved the lift pump was failed and that it was not pressurising the filter, etc. It was getting late on the night before we left at this stage.

Luckily, I had a new genuine lift pump in my spares box complete with olives, nuts and gasket. I would have to make a decision. Live with it and fit a new one on return or fit the spare in the morning before we left. The problem is that I did not want to have a sluggish vehicle on a long journey.

As the task seemed mostly simple I took the gamble to fit it in the morning. In the pouring rain. My only apprehension was that the bolts to the block interface plate could be seized. They were not, so after establishing that, I spent an hour and the problem was fixed. Pump on and decent pressure restored at the pump bleed screw.

The upside of it all was that we got off earlier on our weekend trip and managed to have an early pint at the pub we stayed at.

With the annual trip approaching over the next couple of weeks, I have to get a service done on the Landy and fix the second row seat up riser corrosion which is a big job. For that I managed to get a galvanised mid cross member from YRM metal solutions together with the aluminium panels I need. I just hope I can get it all apart! I’ll keep you posted.