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.