Well, having done the two rear chains and discovered that they were nice and tensioned up compared to the old ones, it soon became apparent that the rest of the chains were not in a good state and would need replacing.

So on our next walking trip to the hills, we went via Aird's at Beauly and got six more chains to complete the wheel set. Another 20ft of chain at £9.55 per foot plus VAT. There were a couple of things I learnt from doing the rear chains: first, it's much easier if you jack the whole Argo up so that the wheels and chains can be turned without having to push the vehicle up and down the garage. Secondly, the chains do have master links but were just buried under years of consolidated grease and muck.

There were yet more surprises when I took off the remaining chains including this 35-06 Remington casing in the muck below them. You can also just see one of the master links on the old chain.

Anyway having master links made things a lot easier and I soon had them removed. Cleaning up the black gunge on the sprockets and below the chains took a lot of time, a lot of rags and numerous pairs of latex gloves. Not a nice job but has to be done.




The left hand side chains went in really easily and getting the master links in was straight forward using the plumber's pliers to pull the two ends together. Even the front ones were OK despite there not being a lot of room to get your hands in.

On the right hand side I tried to fit the front chain with only the battery removed but this proved impossible as this chain seemed to be very short and tight to get the master link installed and the battery frame got in the way. So I then removed the frame and having ground the pliers a bit to give them better purchase on the chain ends I eventually got them installed. It was a struggle as they were very tight and I was glad when they were done. The other two were fine and straighforward. The manual, which I found on the web, says to replace the nylon tensioners if there are 1/4 inch groves in them. They were grooved, but nothing very bad and it did strike me that the grooves were all on the spring side so you could always take then off and turn them round if you were concerned.

Whilst the battery and its frame were out, I took the opportunity to investigate why the handbrake was not working. (Separate mechanical handbrakes were an optional extra and this Argo has one.)

Anyway it seems that only one of the two bolts which attach the caliper (pictured left) to the engine frame was present. The shorter one was missing for some reason and this was rendering the mechanism useless. I'll need to spend a bit of time looking in the gunge under the gearbox to see if I can find them. Both sides seem to be the same so perhaps they were removed for some reason which will only become evident when I refit them! I've removed the right side to clean it up and will source new nuts and bolts unless I find them in the bottom somewhere.