New Blog (Post #78) 7/27/2007)

I have finally moved the Rover Log over to a blogging site. It gives me a lot of freedom and a little more exposure to the blogosphere. Like that matters.
Anyway.
All the post from the old blog are here and with the labels at the bottom you can see related posts. Neat-o, right?
Thanks for reading, and happy Rovering.

July 7th, 2007 (Post #77) Hehehe 77th post on 7/7/07

Helping out a fellow Rover driver
Bo Pham recently sent out an email to some of the OK Rovers members about his pending brake project. He has 1997 Disco I he bought from Paul in Tulsa. It is lifted and has big tires on it. And Bo loves to offroad in it. He decided to upgrade the brakes. So I thought I could help him out.

I went over on a Saturday. I met his daughters and proceeded to start on the project. I tried to think of all the wacky tools you might need for this project. I didn’t think hard enough I guess as I didn’t have my “C” clip removal tool. Also he forgot to buy grease to repack the bearings. So before we got too far I ran to the O’Reilly’s and got some supplies.

We started the tear down and to my surprise it is exactly like my 1993 Range Rover. I showed him some tips about the rebuild. He took pictures and we got busy.

His grease was badly fouled and it reminded me that if you offroad in the water you should plan on repacking your bearings and draining your swivel oil and refreshing it. Bo had lots of sand on everything. I recommended he swap out the fluids in there to prevent premature wear from fluids that failed.

I couldn’t figure out the disc removal. And I ran out of time to assist. We had only got one wheel started. He continued on after I left with the help of Melissa and her boy friend. He managed to get the discs off and it all swapped out.

Bo owns the Cafe Bella Bistro on South Pennsylvania Avenue at the intersection of SW 89th street. He will be getting us together in the future at his bistro for some Rover related meetings in the near future.

Thanks for letting me help. I had a good time.

June 26th, 2007 (Post #76)

June 26th, 2007


Not much going on
I haven’t been on to post in a few months. Mostly because, there hasn’t been anything going on. The price of fuel is outrageous. RovErica is driving the Range Rover now. She is quickly learning that like a Sherman Tank, it’s not far to empty in a Range Rover. The sunroof is no longer going back. You can still vent it. But it is jams on when you try to retract it. I’ll have to take it our of the truck I fear to diagnose the problem.

She also reported a screeching sound. But cannot reproduce it. I think it’s brakes but she says it
is not. We also heard a strangle thumping sound under her when we were driving around 50mph on Sunday. Sounded like a tire with a bubble on it. But the tires are still perfect.

The Disco is still going strong.
I think I’m getting a little bit better gas mileage of late. I’m
not sure what to attribute it to though. Could the summer formula of gas make any difference?

I’m still looking for a trailer.
I’ve run into some interesting possibilities. I know where two M116A2 and one M105 trailers are for sale in OKC. The owner wants 450$ each and 650$ if I want the tarps. The M116A2’s formerly had 10kW generators on them. I have looked through the government surplus site at Government Liquidation and see them for sale there but usually with a generator on them. Now I’d love to have a generator on my property. Especially one I could run the whole house on. But I don’t have the money for that type of project.

The M105 trailers are plentiful right now. They have sides and a tailgate. They are also very high up. I’m not sure lowering them is possible. These things are really big too. I used to pull them behind my M554 Kaiser when I was in the Marine Corps. We put the powder for the artillery rounds in them.

The Tool Trailers will probably escape my purchase this time as I don’t have the money right now to do this project. But for an almost ready to go storage trailer/camp kitchen I don’t think you can get any closer than these Pioneer Tool Outfit trailers. They are selling right now for under 400$ on the auction. I’m not sure how high these would go.

Of course the perfect trailers are these Ammunition Trailers. I would like one of these for the pure utility of them. For the most part the adventure of camping is just getting your stuff to the site. And they don’t make trailers this tough.

These sell for around 300$. I know they are available at Surplus stores in North Carolina for this advertised price. Some people put frames on trailers like this and mount their roof top tents on them.

The possibility of getting an M116A2 is still in the works. A fellow here in OKC has them as I mentioned before. M116A2. These trailers have definate potential. The bows are
steel and would support nicely a tent for the tent over style of expedition trailer. Boxes for the kitchen and storage of other stuff would need to be bought or made. This and fact that the two I see will need a few hundred dollars of paint stripping and painting make them the more expensive of the possibilities. You can see they sit pretty high too. That picture is of a lifted Toyota pulling it. The front stone shield would have to be fabricated. But it could be built to hold the spare and the fuel cans and the jacks and the Hi-Lift jack.

Tents are easy to come by. There are several out there. Most of them start around 1500 and go up. I recently found an outfit on eBay that was selling a rooftop for under 800$. I will probably get one if I go that route. I still haven’t ruled out getting a pop-up camper. But the same deal applies there. How cheap can I get one and how much will it take to get it in shape and fixed up to use? Something tells me I should probably get a pop-up if I want the wife to go along with me on these trips. But who knows, we haven’t even been out yet.

You can see the possibilities are nearly endless. With a budget of around 2000$ you could make a pretty nice outfit. But, sadly, I don’t have 2000 dollars right now.

Blogging
As this is a “blog” by definition. The possibility of moving this to the Blogger website has come up. I currently blog on Devil Dog’s Daily News. It would be much easier for me to post things up if I used this format. And easier for you to look up items and subjects.
So look for that soon.

April 13th, 2007 (Post #75)

April 13th, 2007


Land Rover Lifestyle.
Reading the Land Rover Lifestyle magazine this week I noticed the What’s Your Lifestyle? sections. It tells about Landy owners and their Land Rovers and how they use those Land Rovers. Last Saturday I used my Land Rover to get me to the Fort Washita Fur Trade Rendezvous. Which is the extent of my lifestyle. I have been stuck at events and after the last time I purchased a Land Rover to prevent this from every happening again. In those years I haven’t even need a Land Rover at an event. I’ve not even gotten close to getting stuck. How disappointing.

Brakes.
Last night I completed the installation of the brake hoses on the Range Rover Classic. I now have to bleed the system and make sure I don’t have any leaks. RovErica is getting very close to taking her test. So this weekend I hope to have the Rangie driving so we can test the brakes.

Rear Upper Tailgate.
I called Rovers North North to order the aluminum tailgate. With the aluminum tailgate you need to deconstruct the existing gate and then fit all the bits on the new frame. The salesman talked me out of this in just 3 short minutes. With the following logic, I bought another OEM tailgate. Time. Basically he explained that it was a 6 hour project and a major pain. If you have any parts that are not quite right you will have to work out those troubles before you install them on to the new frame. Well my latches don’t work as nicely as they probably did when the Rangie was brand new. Also my rear defogger only works on upper half of the window. If I understand this correctly all I have to do is bolt on the new window and frame when it arrives before next week. I hope he is right.

Fort Washita Adventure.
I wrote up a new adventure. It was driving my Landy down to Fort Washita. I got a great
picture of the Discovery in front of the barracks at dawn. I also had to ford a creek when I was trying to get around the stalled train at the edge of Madill, Oklahoma. Man I thought that thing was never going to move.

I Hate Mud Forum.
I’ve been exploring my options for getting the family out to do some Rovering. There are several
schools of thought on this. Roof Tents. Trailer mounted roof tents. Ground camping. RV style camping. So many decisions so little money… I can’t decide if I want a military style trailer with gear or just get a pop up camper and give a lift and some skid plates and camp in relative style. You can get an older pop up for less than a thousand dollars. You would then of course have to refurbish or remodel it. I’m sure I want the pop up to be a smaller model. But then again, I want the military style expedition trailer. There are several models to choose from several manufacturers. But those start in the $3500(US) and go up from there. Meaning one tricked out the way you would want it could cost you 7000 bucks! Then again for less than that I’m sure I could build my Discovery camper from an old Discovery body. Once again too many decisions to
make and not enough money to pursue each one. With all that in mind I found the I Hate Mud Forum. It’s a haven for the Toyota crowd but their Trailer Tech forum can’t be beat. And they are a bunch of friendly folks too.

Check out their site if you have a chance.

March 15th, 2007 (Post #74)

March 15th, 2007


Happiness is a warm tush.
British Pacific offered a deal I could not pass up just a couple of weeks ago. It was the
facia panel and the buttons to activate the heated seats option on 1999-2004 Discovery II’s. $36 bucks. It seems in the infinite wisdom of dealer options, that all the seats delivered with Discoverys included the heat panels to heat the seats.

And only if you ordered the heated seats option did they install the buttons to activate them. Brilliant. SO with about 5 minutes of time and the switches I upgraded my seats to heat. Easily the quickest upgrade with the highest payoff at the cheapest price, I’ve ever done.

Brake lines.
I had a feeling I hadn’t gotten all the brake lines off the Range Rover and I was right. There are two more rubber lines up underneath near the rear axle. All this time I was wondering how they did that. I knew there had to be flexible lines in the system somewhere, I just hadn’t seen them. SO I’ve still got to get those replaced before finishing the brake project on the restoration. It was dirty under there and the lines are slightly different than the front ones so getting them off wasn’t any fun. I’ll get them off on Sunday. Saturday my good friend and I are going to the Chicago Fire soccer game in Norman. I guess they are exhibitioning and we are lucky enough to see MLS here. The Fire is his favorite team as well. So double bonus. The triple bonus comes as it is St. Patrick’s day and O’Connell’s Irish Pub is just up the road from the stadium.

Oklahoma Edition
How could OkieRover not have an Oklahoma Edition badge on his Land Rovers? Well that is a rhetorical question of course. I had a good friend of mine, who works at a dealership, get me these badges. I have one for each of my Landies. They are purposely placed on various Ford Trucks and possibly Minivans that have certain features such as engine size, and some other stuff. But after I saw them on the TV I knew I had to have some for my Land Rovers. A big thanks goes out to him for tracking these down. They were apparently hard to come by and he had to pull a string or two to get them.

I owe you big time, thanks “Frankenstein”.

February 22th, 2007 (Post #73)

February 22th, 2007


Kick Ass Buttons.
Well, another good friend of mine and fellow Devil Dog helped me out with a condensed rendering of the menu pictures. Making them faster to load due to their smaller size.
Thanks a ton Bobby.