Category: brakes

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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”.

Posted on

February 5th, 2007 (Post #70)

February 5th, 2007


Restoring the Rangie.
Took the brake lines off this weekend. I took the hoses down to Hoseco in south Oklahoma City.
JagGuy recommended them and so I took the old hoses down there to get the new hoses made. I had them put an extra 3 inches on the hose to allow for a lift kit if I choose to go that route in the future.

I also cleaned up the brake calipers for the paint job. I really wanted to paint the calipers or have them nice and shiny clean. Well after cleaning on them they cannot be cleaned back to shiney. So I am going to paint them. The fact that brake fluid will strip an and all paint off made that a challenge. So JagGuy suggested that I use self etching primer. It will be gray. I bought Mar-Hyde Self Etching Primer. I bought it at O’Reilly’s Auto Store. I can live with gray considering after a few months I’ll be surprised if I can tell I ever painted it.

I am dreading the swivel seal replacements. I really didn’t enjoy those jobs the first time. This time I get the added fun of it being cold in the garage while I do it.

I’m running out of weekends to get projects done. I still have to do the painting and I also have to get the drive shaft on the Discovery replaced and do all that drive line stuff. I need the lift to make that an easy job. And it right now has an Isuzu Trooper on it. I just need to schedule a day and get it down there. I’d like to have that done before I drive to Houston to take care of some family business.
Posted on

January 22nd, 2007 (Post #69)

January 22nd, 2007


Cadence Marie is doing well and growing like a weed.

Restoring the Rangie.
Did a bunch of work this last weekend on the 93 LWB.

Headlamps
Replaced the head lamps with some Hellas. They are sweet. German engineering in da house! I love that commerical for VWs. Check it out.

Heater fan resistor.
Replaced the resistor for the fan. It’s located in the vent cowl. Nice place to keep it cool but
a horrible place due to water and rust and such. The replacement was no picnic. But wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. I think I’d recommend anyone tearing out the dash to replace it when the have it all apart. The instructions say you can pull the plug out through the hole but that was not the case.
I’ve finished the write up on the Heater Fan Resistor. Check it out.

Brake Calipers.
I have the brake calipers off. They are soaking in a bucket of diesel in the garage. I want to paint them but not sure how that will go yet. The kit is coming in this week to replace the seals and such. You can check out my progress on the Brake Caliper page.

Swivel Seals.
I ordered the swivel seals. I’m not looking forward to tearing that apart again but it must be done. Maybe this next weekend I will tear them down. OR at least one of them as they are no fun to work on. You can see some of that work here on the Swivel Seal page.

Posted on

March 12th, 2003 (Post #24)

March 12, 2003
The brake pedal is the one on the left
Ah better weather is upon us. And just in the nick of time too. Brake problems are now haunting the beloved Big White Bus. The brakewear indicator began lighting up last week. I got home walked around the truck and the telltale smells of a very hot brake were eminating from the right rear wheel. I went in and change and proceeded to remove the wheel and inspect the brakes.

Now this light tells you when the pads are worn thin. These pads have been on the Big White Bus since September. I didn’t think I had been stopping a great deal in the last 6 months. But never the less the light was on. The pad is in very good shape. But it did smell burnt. So I took the pads out and inspected them further. No excessive wear was found.

Basically the way the indicator works is when the pad is worn down there are two wires in a channel near the metal backing plate of the pad. When the wires are exposed and you hit your brakes they “short” against the brake disc. This tells something else to illuminate the light. Anyway that’s how I understand it works. When you pull a worn brake pad you will see the channel very well and the wires too.

I can’t see the wires or any reason other than this that the light should be alight. I noticed a black burned substance on the top of the pad where the wires enter the channel. My hypothesis (21 point Scrabble word, impressive) is that the brake pad was heated up, due to what I am not sure. But this heating has caused the filler substance to “boil” out and the wires inside now are touching.

Is this verifiable?
Am I insane?
What business do I have making these types of hypothesis in the first place?
Who invented aerosol cheese products and why?

These are all valid questions but unless someone can tell me differently I’m gonna stick with my hypothesis. The solution is to unplug the sensor plug.

But aren’t you disabling an important sensor?
Yes and no. Yes it is no longer part of the diagnosis system. But the front pads will wear much faster than the back and they still have sensors on them. Besides, I’m not some Rover Noob. I check my brakes when I rotate my tires once a year or so.
And my Dad was a television repair man, I have an awesome set of tools, I can fix it.
(Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 1982)

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