Frontera 2.8 TDI Diamond

So I have my old frontera back on the road as my winter retro.....I like this old truck....I dont really know why..

Over the summer I picked up a couple of genuine accessories for it.

The rear mats that came from the dealer with this truck were for the sport model for some reason....the front mats are the same  but the rears were different for the LWB. I manged to get the rears after a fair amout of searching.





I got a new old stock genuine roof rack, in the original box no less.







And I got this spare wheel cover so there no mistaking what the car in front is......



One advisories on the last MOT was the rear ARB D bushes. I didnt know (or didnt check properly) when I bought the replacements, they turned out to be polyurethane ones. The replacements were easy to fit but Ill be honest, Im not keen on the orange colour.  They will do for now.






Surface rust was also mentioned on the last MOT. Because I need to do some preservation on my 2 other cars I thought the frontera can be the guinea pig for this Lanoguard stuff thats all over facebook.



I soaked the underside in TFR twice, then pressure washed it off. I then snow foamed it & pressure washed it off again. I wire bushed any loose stuff then left it for a week to dry out.








I then went at it per the instructions, spraying it everywhere plus inside the box sections

I think the appeal of this stuff is the ease of application and I can confirm it is as easy as they say to apply. How it performs long term, I dont know to be honest, time will tell.

Here are some before and after pics of the rear chassis. 






Another finding from the MOT was the steering tie rods.

After the 26 year I knew there was no point trying to get the ends of the rods so made the sensible decision to but 2 new complete units on her..




I haven't aligned  the wheels properly yet but it does feel a little less wayward now.

Sadly the laquar on the bonnet is now going, what can you do, its an old Vauxhall built in a van factory...... these things are to be expected.......



But in other news I did fix the drivers seat properly by swapping the back from a slightly damaged passenger seat that I paid 20 quid for.







I also replaced the support in the base of my seat using the one I bought so its quite comfortable now. I got my moneys worth out of the seat I bought!




I have a few other bits to do before its summer holiday, I bought a remote central locking kit that I want to fit, plus I still the tow bar all painted up and rust treated for extra usefulness



Ive also bought a spare gearbox of somewhat unknown condition for it, it came via the facebook owner club & was said to be okay but I wont really know unless I fit it . I bought it because the 2.8 gearboxes are not readily available, mine has a slight whine and I really just wanted some kind of backup plan if that got any worse.



Lastly my rear window heater is now fixed .I think I planned that as one of the first jobs! It would have been easier to just get a second  raer window but because it has the number plate etched into it I decided to do it the hard.....not a factory repair, more a functional one that works




I think that just about brings me up to date on this one.