Author: Okierover

I'm just your average former United States Marine, married to an awesome woman, with amazing kids...and the cutest grand kids. My Profile.
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Fender Repair Part 2, Welding Patches (Post #618) August 5, 2023

Welding the corner

Today started out “cool”. At least it was cool for an August on the southern plains. The temp was lower than I thought and clouds covered the northern sky and looked to be moving south. This usually says we are going to get a break in the hot temps. We’ve been 24 days without rain. But with all things weather in Oklahoma, a full cloud cover did not offer any relief from the heat.

Regardless I need to make some progress on the Big White Bus if I’m ever going to drive her again. So after a little bit of trimming of the hedgerow between my neighbor and our house I got to work. Sticking with the theme of welding for this summer, repairing the rust in the fender seemed like a great idea.

I had four places in the fender that needed repair before I started today. I am now down to two. I repaired a small rust spot and repaired the corner of the fender.

I fixed one spot with a simple rectangle and welded it up in short order.

The corner was a complicated piece to fix. The patch for the corner was somewhat shaped like a trough? I don’t have the tools to make that happen. I tried hammering a piece of 16 gauge into a trough but really didn’t have any luck.

I got a bit of inspiration and decided that if I put the patch in and shaped it like one of the complex sides I could perhaps hammer it to fit the other complex shape. So with a bunch of vise-grips I got the patch in place and went to work with the hammer. I worked from the back of the piece to the front and continued until it was in the right shape. To say I was surprised it worked that well was an understatement.

I tacked it into place and began attempting to weld it in place. While not a perfect job, I think it will work and will keep the water out of the truck. I welded both the inside and outside of the patch. This was mostly in a vain attempt to make it a water proof solution. I know I’m fooling myself that it is.

So the final step in the fender repair well will be to give the entire underside a healthy coat of bedliner. I will do this on all four corners once I am done with the repairs.

I am still trying to source the bed panel. There are some in England, but I haven’t found one on this side of the pond yet. I have a Facebook contact that might do a bulk purchase and have some shipped over. I am hoping this works out. I am pretty sure I could order the panel and the support pieces but the shipping is ridiculous. Like, more expensive than the parts.

There were some issues with the video. The sound decided not to record on two sections. No camera changes were made…just no sound. I did a voice over for those sections. Also the shop was too hot for the GoPro to work and after two segments it shut down. I stuck it on the portable air conditioner to get it back to operating temp twice.

There are the last two sections for this fender, the “big hole” and “the strap” as I am referring to them now. Once those are done this fender is COMPLETED! Progress will have been made!

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Shoppe Clean-Up and Mower Repair (Post #617) July 31, 2023

Broken Mower Part

No Land Rover content this week. I started the weekend trying to get the chores done first. Mowing the grass which grows at a ridiculous rate due the the wet July we’ve had. I’m cutting grass every week now.

I got on the mower and got my book on tape going [Extreme Measures by Vince Flynn the eleventh book in the series]. I kept hearing some odd noises, vibrating parts, and the engine was running like crap. Just last week I was evaluating how many more summers I might get from this mower while I was patching the holes in the tires with plugs.

I have been impressed at how trouble free this mower (Husqvarna 1842) had been with this being the sixth summer. I’ve only had one other serious repair. It was also a mandrel. I have also replaced one battery and before the summer is up, I really should replace all the tires.

After an inspection I saw the shaft on the mandrel wiggling like crazy. The upper bearing failed on the mandrel. So it wasn’t going to be grass cutting for the weekend, it would be mower repair. I looked the part up and found it had a John Deere part cross referenced. I went down to P&K Tractor on Highway 9. The parts guy was SUPER helpful. He looked up the part on several sites and found a part number at O’Reilly’s. Turns out in his words this was the most common bearing in the world. I was surprised how many different parts numbers were associated with it. I ran down to O’Reilly’s grabbed two.

The bolts (steel) were really stuck in the mandrel housing (cast aluminum). You don’t have to be a chemist to know this is a recipe for disaster. And that’s exactly what happened.

I wound up having to attempt to drill and easy-out what was left of the bolts. Broke two drill bits and eventually the mandrel. Four hours lost. I’ve ordered a replacement, it comes in this week. So I spent the rest of the day cleaning and organizing the shoppe.

I’m going to visit an old Marine friend of mine this week. Jeff was one of my closest friends in the Marine Corps. We went to boot camp together and artillery school. I haven’t seen or heard from him since perhaps 1988. Gonna be great catching up. RovErica’s kids are coming to stay with us this week too. With all this happening I don’t think there will be any video next week. But we’ll see.

Jeff and Bear
Heavy sigh.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Fender Repair Part 1, Welding Patches (Post #616) July 25, 2023

Welding a patch for the body mount

I finally broke down and welded something on my Range Rover. While I will admit freely, I am NOT a welder, but I did enjoy getting the patches welded on. I took a few hours the day before this video was shot to “practice” welding with some scraps I had cut off the Big White Bus.

One of the difficulties is the metal on the Range Rover and the metal I am patching with are different thicknesses. I believe the OEM body panels are 18 gauge whereas my patching material is 16 gauge. I watched a YouTube video where a young man from Weld.com showed how he setup his welder to weld different thicknesses. It’s pretty good stuff and I recommend it if you are still wondering how to setup your welder and what settings you might want to start with. His settings for 18 and 16 weren’t different so I just need to find the same settings he suggested and convert those values to the letter equivalent on my Lincoln MIG Pro 180.

I also watched a fellow from Make It Kustom that has some great tips on welding and patch making. Good stuff there too. This guy is obviously an artist and I imagine has, “done this a time or two.”

In my video there is a lot of grinding and sparks flying and hopefully some good tips to help you weld your patches on your Range Rover Classic. I sped a lot of it up so I’m not consuming a lot of your life watching my low grade videos.

The camera overheated at the end for the second time that day. The temp inside the shoppe was above 110°F (which is 43.3°C for you metric system types). Yeah that’s pretty hot for this old man. I’m seriously going to investigate getting an exhaust fan installed to pull the hot air out.

Overall I’m pretty excited that I can weld stuff. I did fix a yard swing that one of our trees landed on and crushed. I’m looking forward to finishing the welding on the rust and turn my attention to making stuff like a 270 degree awning, a rear bumper, and lots of other stuff.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering

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Fender Prep Part 2, Rusty Bits (Post #615) July 18, 2023

Prepping the fender

In this installment I spent two days preparing the fender well for welding in the patches. Two days (4 to 5 hours each) of wire-wheeling and grinding and cutting. It was a dirty job with lots of rust dust and rubber flying all over.

My spinal cord didn’t enjoy sitting on the hard shoppe floor for so long. And, it was hot. Deep in the Congo humid Africa hot in the shoppe. It would rain in the morning, then the sun would come out and crank up the air temp along with the humidity. Temps from 95F to 100F plus 90% humidity, AND I’m in the metal hot box of the shoppe where the temp is 105F to 115F. Brutal. I need an exhaust fan for the heat.

My shooting of video was mostly terrible. It also was extremely long. I’m not sure what I should have done differently to make this more consumable. Watching other Youtubers I see they sometimes have longer videos. I would have most likely had to skip some of the work. How much grinding does one need to watch? I sped those parts up to cut time.

I’m prepping the first of the welding videos now and should have it out this week.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

mmmm rust removal….
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Fender Prep the Mud Flap Post (Post #614) July 9, 2023

Mudflap Removal

In this installment of me removing rust I work on the mud flaps. They were in the way of me grinding the rust spots in the wheel well. So I removed them, and good thing I did. The driver’s side (port side) mud flap steel was nearly rusted through under the flap.

The pitting was impressive and the amount of rust stuck on the flap was amusing too. So instead of welding my rust holes in the wheel well I had to take a day to fix the mud flaps. I went ahead and did both sides. The passenger side (starboard side) did not exhibit the same amount of rust as the other.

I got them cleaned off and applied the Duplicolor Rust Preventative to them. This is the stuff that is supposed to take surface rust and transform it into “not rust”. Through the magic of chemistry this “paint” converts the rust to I’m guessing zinc? hell I don’t know I got a “D” in Chemstry 1 and Chemistry 2 at the University of Oklahoma. In my defense, I drank more than I studied, and I had a nearly full-time job, and served a weekend a month as a Field Artilleryman in the USMCR.

Whatever, it’s magic and I’m not likely to do that job again on this Range Rover. Once I’m ready to reinstall them they will also receive a coating of rattle-can bedliner/rhino lining/stone seal or whatever they call this stuff in other countries.

The week had a lot more work done and filmed but I’ve run out of time as it is now Sunday. I’ll post another video this week of the rust cutting and removal under the fender well.

As we say here in Oklahoma, my hands and knees and back hurt “something fierce” [Merriam-Webster]. I haven’t done this much wrenching/grinding/hammering in at least a year. I ain’t gettin’ any younger so I gotta play through the pain.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

Grinding makes me happy.
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