Oh dear Lord, I’ve bungled a post (Post #391) 9/17/2013

My dear friend JagGuy has awoken from his birthday feast and subsequent hang-over and was apparently looking at my blog posts. He ran across my post “Rolls Royce Anyone“. He has correctly identified the car as a “Daimler Limo which is built from a Jaguar 420“. This was the title of the email….

Unforgivable Error on OkiRover.com Blog!!!

You can imagine I am now blushing with embarrassment.

1963 Jaguar 420

The rest of the email is a quaint love story with a sad ending.

I sold the one I had, Jaguar 420 that is, this spring. Mine was beautiful on the outside but, because of all the rust in the floors, would have folded in half if you opened all the doors at once!

JagGuy

Isn’t that the fear of everyone who drives a British car?!?! Especially Land Rover Series models?! Due to this being an “Unforgiveable” error, I must apologize to all three (its a guess) of my readers who own Jaguars. I am deeply ashamed at my utter lack of knowledge of limousines from across the pond. I don’t believe I’ve ever ridden in a limousine of any kind. If I did, I was too intoxicated to remember it.

I will follow up with my own response.

Dear JagGuy,
Seriously “OkiRover.com“?  I only FREELOADED my website on your servers for some odd 6 or 7 years, and you can’t even spell it correctly? I remember your 420 and it well may be my second favorite of your Jaguar collection.

I am still enamored with your silver XJ6. Besides the ridiculously expensive modern Jaguars that I find very attractive, the 1980s model XJ6’s are affordable to me and still very, very sexy.

Thank you for the correction, thank you for reading Okierover.com.

Your friend,

Okierover

P.S. Hurry up and get the M54A2 5 ton camper project finished.

I fully expect your camper to have the following modifications and capabilities. It only seems logical…you are, after all, the infamous JagGuy, owner of XM381.com.

Comfortable living quarters….

Direct, line of sight security…(hint, talk to Paul) .50 cal is fine, I prefer the grenade launcher…

And this quaint option so we can going fishing, I know you’ll figure out how to make it all happen….

Thanks for reading, thanks for correcting me, and Happy Rovering.

Traffic Post Tornado (Post #344) 5/27/2013

Traffic. I drive through Moore and South Oklahoma City on my way to my job at the capitol every day. My hours allow me to miss most of the traditional 0800 and 1700 traffic pile ups. When bad weather hits, all bets are off.

The recent tornado in Moore has cut the city virtually in half. The flash flooding the day the tornado hit was amazing. This picture is me fording Sunnylane at I-40. I had a bow-wake up to the license plate on the Honda Civic. It made me really wish I was in my Range Rover.

The major North-South corridors were all littered with debris and destruction and as you can imagine gawkers. The looky-lookers cause traffic to crawl through the affected areas. The day the tornado hit both southbound highways were closed. The major feeder streets from the airport on the west side of OKC to Sooner road were also closed.

The day of the tornado I drove out of the city and down a road in far east Norman. Anderson road was not affected by the recent tornadoes. I sailed down it.

I tried to use Sooner Road the day after the tornado. It moved well both in the morning and evening. So Wednesday I attempted to use it again to get home. Bad idea.

This is a shot of the traffic. South bound was backed from SE 134th street up past SE 74th street. 5 miles of the traffic you see above. The geniuses cleaning up the debris decided it was a good idea to park their dump trucks ON SOONER ROAD. This caused everyone to merge to one lane right where the tornado went across Sooner Road. Ridiculous.

I still don’t understand why the traffic was backed up on the northbound lanes. My normally 30 minute 20.9 mile commute was a 1.5 hour ordeal. The traffic was like that again on Thursday. I thankfully took the Anderson Road alternative.

In a week or so the traffic will move through these areas like it should. I remember it was like this back in 1999 when the May 3rd tornado tore through this same area. I remember sitting on I-35 while people gawked at the destruction. I looked out the side window and laying on the side of the road was the right half of a deer. Yeah.

Next week I am staying in Norman and attending the Six Sigma Training Institute at the University of Oklahoma. This means I won’t have to commute to OKC. Hopefully traffic will be back to normal the week after.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

Slow Down, Buy Fewer Tools to Fix Your Mistakes (Post #340) 5/14/2013

I’ve got to learn to SLOW DOWN. I was in a bit of a manic state Saturday. I had so much I wanted to get done, I didn’t know where to start. You’ve been there.

This time I cross-threaded one of the bolts that holds the right rear brake caliper to the hub. So Monday on the way home I have to make a stop at J&B to buy another tap. I won’t be surprised when they tell me they don’t have that “weird bolt pattern”. But I’ve got to try. When I told my future son-in-law about this, he told me he owns a complete set of taps and dies, but it is at his father’s house. A LOT OF GOOD THAT DOES ME!

I told him he needed to store that in my garage. He was smart and didn’t commit to bringing it to my home to be “stored”. I just created a new definition of the word “store”.

store [stawr, stohr] noun, verb, stored, stor·ing, adjective

17. To use discretely when I screw up a bolt or threaded hole, especially on a Saturday when all the stores that might, even remotely, have the tool I need are closed.

I’ll get around to submitting that definition to the committee over at Webster’s after finals are over later this week.
More after the jump….

I did manage to get my sandblasting cabinet into use. I blasted some of the rust off the brake caliper I was complaining about a few posts ago. I also de-rusted the bracket that holds the air conditioning dryer. It was bad. It is now coated in gray primer and re-installed.

I have to complain again about the crappy selection of fittings available at the two Lowe’s stores in my area. Seriously?! are they trying to reduce stock so they can pull those cabinets out? If I was their hardware vendor I could retire on the order that would need to be filed to replace the stock that was missing between the two sites. I’m not kidding. They should just pull the sections of stainless fittings out. MOST of the drawers were empty.

Lowe’s in Moore Oklahoma

Ridiculous. I’ve complained before, I need to complain more. Maybe they will send me a coupon. I know they will never fill their drawers so I’m not really sure what I’d buy with the coupon.

It’s almost like I’m living back in 1975. Back then, if my dad wanted any kind of hardware he had to drive to Oklahoma City. So we would drive 30 minutes (one way) up to the 74th Street Expressway and get what he thought he needed and anything else he might not. I was a lead-pipe cinch we would not make another trip to OKC if he needed something. One trip would kill half a day. Who has that kind of time?

To be absolutely honest…I was pretty sure they wouldn’t have the hardware I needed. In fact, it was just a whim I decided to check.

So back to the sandblasting cabinet, I need a new plexi-glass window and I need to replace the media inside. Overall it worked pretty great. I need to sort out what setting to set the air compressor on. Hopefully full blast will not be the setting necessary.

I like to give a shout out to one of my good friends and fellow Marine. I saw Scott at church on Sunday and he told me he always reads my blog. He mentioned trouble with commenting. Mrs. OkieRover mentioned the same trouble. In Mrs. OkieRover’s case its probably a “how to” in Scott’s it was something else. More on that, later.
Ooo-rah Scott, keep on truckin’ brother.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

Happy Festivus (Post #278) 12/23/2011

 As is the tradition with Festivus, I thought I’d start with the traditional “airing of grievances”. In no particular order (that’s why I numbered them). All questions are rhetorical and if you sense what I am saying has a hint of sarcasm, it is sarcastic.

  1. The first has to be with the price of ignition coils. Seriously, why does a coil have to cost so bloody much? 140$(US) is just silly.
  2. Why can’t we get a diesel motor option in America from Land Rover? Every motor company in the world has a clean diesel engine. Make it happen…FOR ALL LAND ROVER MODELS. Period.
  3. Why do I have such a hard time with electronics? I have to blame all the 16-18 year old GIRLS I went to school with for being so distracting. If I’d gone to an all boys school perhaps I would have paid more attention in vocational training.
  4. Why is taking care of leather seats so damn much work? I can polish a shoe as well as anyone, but I can’t save a leather seat from disintegrating under my ass.
  5. Why do automotive engineers think we all have lifts in our garages? Why do they feel compelled to bury parts that are listed on tick sheets to be replaced at intervals in places that require the engine to be removed to easily repair. Think about the ignition wires and coil packs on a 2000-2004 Discovery That is simply asinine.
  6. You design a car that can be driven from Solihull to the Horn of Africa. But if you roll down the windows more than 6 or 7 times the window regulator becomes wad of metal that resembles a pretzel inside the door panel. Think about our beloved Discovery 2 models again.
  7. ABS pumps. You make a vehicle that requires power brakes but the pump you use has only a 10 year lifespan if you are lucky and after 10 years becomes more difficult to find than the effin’ Holy Grail. And when you do find one, it costs more than the value of the vehicle it goes on. This is not helping brand sustainability.
  8. Cars in general. Think about the military contracts your country has to provide airplanes and tanks and trucks. Its not the initial cost of the item its the spare parts that you sell that make the money. If you want to be green, hug some trees and stop filling the land fills or in Oklahoma filling the washes next to creeks and streams, build a car that the owner wants to drive for more than 5 years and can get fairly prices parts for. 
    From http://www.surfaceandsurfacephotography.com/photoblog

This will conclude the “airing of grievances”.
Happy Festivus and Happy Rovering everyone.

My Farm Girl is Wearing a Prom Dress (Post #200) 9/2/2010

Check out these videos. Those guys are wearing suits! That fellow there is wearing a sweater and tie AND operating a open belt PTO driven table saw! That’s just Crazy-Awesome. If this feature was available on today’s Land Rovers I can assure you the lawsuits from idiot misuse would fill the bloody Superdome. I’m also guessing that poor lady’s Jaguar or MG was in the shop when her husband suggested she do the daily shopping in the Series 1.

And part 2…

What was that in the 36th second of the first video? “the strong aluminum body… no corrosion, no rust in the corners, no laying up for painting.”

Later the narrator says, “The most reliable vehicle in the world.” Perhaps the Series 1 Land Rover was all of this. The Range Rover Classic? I’d say not so much.

Land Rover engineers need to hear the narrator’s words again. Perhaps these videos should be required viewing.

Having watched these videos and after re-reading “The Range Rover Story” on Ovalnews.com a question comes to mind.

Am I asking too much of my Range Rover LWB?

It’s a fair question. Am I asking a beauty queen to be a farm girl? I realize that I am restoring a RANGE ROVER and not a Defender or Series truck. If you listen to the narrator, Land Rover was once careful about construction. When did they drop the ball?

I highly recommend you read, “The Range Rover Story” you can get the complete story of how a utilitarian work vehicle became the Best 4x4xFar. You can see the direction of the company begin to snowball into maintaining its high end SUV reputation. If you’ve read it, read it again.

The Range Rover was designed to be a higher end vehicle from the beginning. How much higher than the utilitarian run-about, has been a creeping mission statement coming up on fifty years. Wearing the name “Rolls-Royce of Off-Roaders” would probably dictate something perhaps no longer indented to be utilitarian. About the time I was promoted to Lance Corporal in the USMCR, circa 1983 according to the article the “hose it out interior” was replaced with lush carpet. This perhaps is the defining moment when our farm girl started wearing make-up and stopped wearing her boots.

I would never imagine anyone taking today’s Evoque and making it a serious off-road or even driving it on a lovely greenlining tour of Uncle Billy’s sheep farm. Sure there’s a possibility that someone would do it as a stunt, but there is no way anyone would seriously expect an Evoque to be used as a trail vehicle.

Look at it. It’s a CAR for God’s sake. It’s a car wearing the Range Rover name. It is available in TWO-WHEEL DRIVE! What.the.hell? Is the marketing department so inept that they couldn’t launch a new vehicle line with a new name? Is the mother company so afraid of leaving the Range Rover name that they have in fact created a separate brand?

Here is a partial list of the models of Range Rovers taken from RangeRovers.net and Wikipedia. It’s not a complete list nor does it cover any the Special Vehicles modifications. This list spans the three generations of Range Rovers.

Vogue
Hunter
County
County LSE
County LWB
County Sport
Great Divide Edition
Desert Storm Edition (only one made)
25th Anniversary Model
Brooklands/TWR
4.0 SE
4.0 SE Panther Edition
4.0 SE Polo Edition
4.6 HSE
4.6 HSE Panther Edition
4.6 HSE Vitesse Edition
4.6 HSE Kensington Edition
4.6 SSE Edition (by Cameron Concepts)
TReK Edition
50th Anniversary Edition
4.6 HSE Callaway Edition
4.6 HSE Autobiography Edition
4.6 HSK
4.6 HSE Linley Edition
4.6 HSE Rhino Edition
4.6 HSE Vitesse Edition
4.6 HSE First Dartmouth Homelink Edition
4.6 HSE Holland & Holland Edition
4.6 HSE Vogue Special Edition
Great Divide Edition
30th Anniversary Edition
Borrego Edition
Westminster Edition
2010 and 2011MY Editions
Range Rover Sport
Range Rover Evoque

Yeah, I had no idea it was so many. I didn’t even list the accessory packages that were available on various models. What do we see here? Do you notice that variety of editions are very important? Owners don’t want the same Range Rover their neighbor drives. People who buy Range Rovers are obviously in the upper income bracket. The average annual income of someone buying a 1992 Range Rover was now at $400,000(US) a year. In 1993 my yearly gross income was $31,000 and we did pretty good on that.

In 1993 a Range Rover SWB’s base price was $45,125, add $4,700 for the LWB (worth every penny I promise). I bought my first house in 1990. It was a small three bedroom home in a good neighborhood. We laid out $29,000 for it.

I bought my 1993 Range Rover LWB for $15,000 in June of 2000. At the time I was looking for a Jeep CJ or even a Wrangler. I wanted one for its utilitarianism. I thought it fit my personality. After describing what, “I wanted to use it for” to Charlie Blankenship of Sports and Classics he said a Range Rover would be much more comfortable. He was right. So at that time I had bought a comfortable utilitarian vehicle.

So back to the question at hand, am I asking too much for my Range Rover to be able to deliver me down the highways and logging roads and gentle green lanes of America without my feet stepping through the rusted out floor boards? I don’t think so and maybe neither do you. I guess the question will be answered by the Range Rovers of today when in 10 years we are reading about how some owner’s supermodel wife punctured her 4 inch high heel through the floor pan of her Evoque in downtown New York City.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.