It’s a 1982 ex MOD 109. I have the military plate with the military registration on but haven’t got round to tracing it’s military history through Gaydon, I will get on to it some time.

The truck left service with it’s chassis in pristine condition and a previous owner had it galvanised. It’s very unusual to find an original MOD chassis that has been galvanised and it  benefits from the removable gearbox cross member, this means the gearbox can be dropped to the floor rather then up through the cab, which is a pain the arse as the floor needs to come up and the seat box has to come out..

When I bought the landy in Jan 2007 it had a petrol 2.25 engine that also had a single point LPG system with a 100 litre tank behind the rear bulkhead. With this set up it averaged 14 mpg. It ran very well on LPG and I would recommend the conversion to anyone. I found that LPG preferred the timing to be slightly advanced so I set the timing for optimum running on LPG, as a result it ran a bit rough on petrol.  Some people set the timing somewhere between the two but in my opinion going it that way you’re are getting the best of neither fuel. As a result I never used petrol, only in an emergency when I ran out of LPG and this was rarely. The truck started on LPG in all weathers with out any problems, the engine oil remained clean, and after another 20k miles when I split the engine to sell the cylinder head, it was in still in perfect condition.

A couple of years ago I picked up a low mileage (85k) Defender 200TDI engine with LT77 gearbox for the bargain price of £500 so decided to drop the TDI into the 109 with the standard series gearbox. This has been the set up until now and it gets 30mpg round town and up to 36mpg on a run but with the added bonus of LOADS more power!!