June 2, 2010 - OKIEROVER.COM

YES!
I have an appointment scheduled to pick up my new trailer for Monday. My directions are a bit dodgy as the gal I talked to with govliquidation.com at Ft. Sill was pretty vague about street names and didn’t have an address or building number for the location of my trailer. Thankfully they have a map on their site. Unfortunately it doesn’t follow any of the directions she gave me. The brave soldiers guarding the gate will certainly know where I need to go. (fingers crossed)

I still have to put together my pintle hitch. I also have to hope that my old springs will be good enough and not sag too much when I hook up the trailer. Lots of pictures will be coming soon. Hopefully they won’t be sad pictures, but happy, good looking pictures of the Range Rover with a trailer attached.

Other good news this week…the doctor cleared me to do just about anything I want to considering my neck. Well okay, he said no football and that I should “use caution”. So I guess I’ll mark off,

Playing Wide Receiver for the Chiefs,
Training to be a cage fighter,
and Reenlisting in the Marine Corps,

from my effin’ bucket list. Damn it I would have looked great in Desert MARPATtm too. It’s been six months since my surgery and I can now take Ibuprofen based drugs again for my aches and pains. My wife, the nurse, said, “you’ve been mostly non-compliant so far so it doesn’t surprise me that your graft hasn’t fuzed.” Can you feel the empathy for my condition? Deep, deep down I know she loves me. Turns out 10% of them never do and as long as I’m not in pain, ROCK ON!

Well wish me luck, thanks again for reading and Happy Rovering.

Remember the last time you saw something on your Land Rover that made you say to yourself, “I really should fix that.”?
Do you remember the reason you used to convince yourself that it would be alright as long as this thing or that thing didn’t happen?

Well let me tell you, sometimes the consequences of those actions have us sitting in our Land Rover on the side of the road wondering if your one friend that owns a trailer and truck big enough to haul your dead Rover to your house/shop/shade tree. Sometimes the consequences of those actions are having your step-son calling you during a historic Spring hail storm that crippled an entire city for several hours and caused tens of millions of dollars of damage to houses, cars, churches, etc.with tennis ball sized hail for several minutes.

Yep, true story.
Who’s Land Rover: My good friend JagGuy’s Step-Son’s Range Rover Classic.
What was the part: Drive Shaft.
The Reason: That won’t blow as long as I don’t drive it hard.
When did it happen: During the epic Spring 2010 Hail Storm of Oklahoma City.

Who would have imagined a drive shaft failing would permanently disable your Land Rover? I for one do, now. JagGuy had noticed the drive shaft issue during an inspection some time ago. He gave the Classic to his Step-Son. And as good a kid as he is, he doesn’t know anything about the magic metal box with tires that gets him from point A to point B.

So when the drive shaft popped and knocked a hole in the side of the transmission limiting his speed to 25 mph no matter how hard he pressed on the accelerator the Classic was doomed. When JagGuy got there he saw the transmissions life blood running down the street on top the 4 inches of hail covering the street. The initial diagnosis was a busted transaxle. But that was short lived when he climbed under the Range Rover at the shop.

Sadly he found the transmission case cracked. The transmission is not going to be a cheap fix. As of this post I do not know what was decided if the disabled Range Rover was to be a parts car or repaired.

Lets hope he can get the money together to fix it. I know he loved driving it. So let this be a message to all you fellows thinking that problem can wait.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

Day: June 2, 2010

Trailer Goodness! (Post #180) 6/2/2010

When bad things happen to good mechanics (Post #179) 6/2/2010