Diet Mountain Drew - OKIEROVER.COM

January 4, 2012May 15, 2023

That’s not supposed to happen (Post #280) 1/4/2012

QUICK! Name three things you didn’t expect to happen when you got home today.
Was one of them “finding a puddle of brake fluid in your driveway?”
No?
Me neither.

This is what I came home to today.

You will remember in my last post that we had a brake rotor we thought was warped. On first inspection of it, I didn’t see anything like that but the evidence (sound and peddle surging) was there.

My son, Diet Mt. Drew, called today and asked to drive the Range Rover to lunch. He first asked, via text, if it was “safe” and “reliable” enough to drive. THE NERVE! He had to ask to drive my Range Rover because his Scion xB was in the shop. It was in the shop because he hit a curb in front of the Cleveland County Fairgrounds while traveling 40 MPH. Yes, a cell phone was involved. Yes he bent the lower “A” Frame, destroyed two rims…etc… but I digress.

In any event…he drove the Classic today. I did not expect the brake caliper to fail with him at the wheel, but apparently it did. He reported all this to his mother, the noted blogging mechanic in the family “that he had severe braking issues” while driving her today.
Did anyone call me or notify me by text?

I’ve rebuilt that caliper at least once. So today I ordered a couple of re-manufactured brake calipers. They were half the price of new and free shipping, so I bought one for each side on the rear. No core return, so I can rebuild my old and tired ones again and have a spare….just in case Diet Mt. Drew drives to lunch again. (wink, wink)

If you remember the last major brake restore (I keep referring to these previous posts like you all are AVID readers) I swapped brake hoses and ground off all the rust (theoretically) and re-sprayed the brake calipers with some acid-etching primer. It was kind of silly because brake fluid is a paint solvent. But I felt obligated.

When I had them apart I noticed a lot of rust. Especially inside the caliper. I even took a picture of the rusty bleed screw, see below. The picture doesn’t show it very well but it was pitted with rust.

When I did that project, it was determined that I had a bad proportioning valve. I vaguely remember replacing it. But quite honestly if I hadn’t seen the picture labeled “Valve that failed” I wouldn’t have remember it.

It is likely that these old tattered calipers are past their prime. I’m a bit surprised with only 191,000 miles on them. (okay I’m not really all that surprised).

I’ll let you know how the replacements go and whether or not I’d recommend the company as a source for parts for your Range Rover.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

May 30, 2011May 15, 2023

William Andrew Stephens (Post #260) 5/30/2011

The announcer read his name…William Andrew Stephens. And on cue our family and friends yelled as loud as we could for my son had graduated high school.

I remember the little boy Drew, as he is called, more than this six foot version standing over me now. I remember him wearing a path in the grass of the Quanah Parker home’s lawn with his battery powered Jeep. I remember begging him to play that first game of baseball after all the weeks of practice, telling him if he didn’t like it after the first game THEN he could quit. I remember dropping him off at Oklahoma Christian Cage Camp and pulling his luggage for him because it was bigger and heavier than him. That is the Drew I remember.

This new taller graduated version of Drew I barely know. Yet I created it, formed it, comforted it, coached it, counseled it, disciplined it, he is me. And I barely know him. I know I will have decades to “get to know” this emerging man before me. I am excited to see what he will become. Yet at the same time, we start over again, worrying about his future now more than ever. For everything he does now is harder and the consequences are greater.

These days I find myself no longer focusing on the lower portion of my hourglass but at the top portion. The end is inevitable and I can’t help but think, did I do enough? Did I do it right? I’m running out of time to course correct the ships of my children’s lives. Or perhaps it is the ships that no longer are so easy to correct. It is as if the ship’s wheel no longer responds to my efforts to turn it.

What ever the metaphor may be, that first lighthouse has been passed. I remember vaguely my graduation. I remember how it was time to work now. I had joined the United States Marine Corps Reserve and had a semester of college at OU ahead of me. Little did I know at that time that neither would be my course. I wasn’t scared of the future, I was standing on the deck of my life’s ship watching the waves come over the bow and never flinched.

Right next to me my father sailed his ship cringing and worrying as he watched what must have seemed to him to be a ship foundering in the sea. My ship. But as I sailed my ship away from him he grew to worry less and saw the course I had laid out and how inevitably it would be okay. I wish that great old man were here today so I could ask him how to do that very thing, as I watch Drew start to sail his course.

Congratulations Drew. I love you and I know you will do well.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

July 9, 2010May 15, 2023

Real close to starting Range Rover Restoration Part Duex (Post #186) 7/9/2010

I’m getting real close to (or as we Okies say, I’m fixin’ to) moving the Range Rover into the garage for her latest restoration project. The infamous Range Rover Restoration, Part Duex: RovErica’s Revenge. I say I’m “fixin’ to” start the project because I am determined not to use my wife’s side of the garage to store the ~~crap~~ valuable items on my side of the garage. Currently I have a full size box spring for a bed, a giant rocking chair, a box or two of miscellaneous glassware, a book shelf, all my reenacting gear (in stackable tubs), and several other loose items on my side of the garage. There is no room for a restoration project.

Should I have a garage sale? Probably. Do I hate to have garage sales? Definitely. I am waiting for the garage sale because I know when we start working on my mom’s house there will be tons of stuff to sell at a garage sale. Why have a little garage sale when a bigger one will be better?

So I will get the kids to help move the reenacting stuff up to the attic where it was before I used it back in April. I will reorganize the other items and reduce their floor space foot print. Once that is done, I can move the Range Rover in and get started.

Get started? What are you going to do OkieRover? That is a great question oh gracious and loyal reader. Let us begin by describing first why anything has to be done at all. Maintenance, that’s why. When you allow a sixteen year old to drive a 15 year old vehicle of British manufacture, things magically stop working. I know that is hard to believe with kids as great as mine but it is “a true fact” as Diet Mountain Drew would say.

When you can’t get to the vehicle because:

it is busy being a taxi for a dozen children who’s parents were smarter than to give their kids cars,
it is sitting in front of some kids house while your daughter is putting around in that kid’s car because, “Oh, I forgot to tell you, the air condition isn’t cold any more.”,
it arrives home each day on average about 25 minutes after you have gone to bed,
and lastly, because you are only allowed two sentences each time you see your daughter exit the house on her way to work or somewhere else she is late to, and you are sure as hell not going to let her forget to clean her room and do that random chore you asked her to do yesterday before the door shuts and she is gone again. You don’t waste those precious moments on, “how’s your car running?” Which almost always elicits a response like, “Good! That weird noise it was making for the last 3 weeks finally stopped yesterday.”

See, kids don’t equate noises with problems like mechanics do. Just listen to one hour of Car Talk on your local public radion station Saturday. I dare you. Hell, I double dog dare you. I swear I hear the brothers ask the caller, “How long has it been making that noise?” at least 10 times per show. And almost every caller responds with the same answer, “oh, I’d say aboot six munts or so.” [end New Englander accent]

These clueless callers think their mechanic or in my kid’s case, daddy, can sense any automotive problem with his amazing super powers 30 miles away, at work, talking to callers who’ve locked out their accounts on the system for the fourth time that day or can’t remember the password you gave them ten minutes ago, while listening to The Beat Farmers Radio station on Pandora or my Those Darlins CD, while thinking about the roast beef and provolone sandwich he is going to enjoy at VZDs when lunch time rolls around. All the while dreaming up things to blog to you about. (I know what you’re thinking, yeah, I’m a busy guy.)

So after a couple of years of this behavior things get beyond fixing pretty fast. Let’s us now compile a list of just the things I can remember right off the top of my head. In no particular order:

Viscous Coupling
Sun Roof
Brake Discs
Brake Reservoir
Air Conditioning System
Bushings
Sound System
Cosmetic items inside, outside, and under the hood
Cruise Control
Door Locks
Head Liner
Complete Fluid Service
Drive Shaft Seals
Power Steering Hoses
Possible CV Joints
Possible Failed Transmission

That’s about it. If I were to take this bad boy down to a mechanic I’m pretty sure the labor alone for all this could buy a pretty nice used late model LR3 or Range Rover. That leads us to the obvious question, why fix it? Well, you didn’t read this far down this blog post to ask that question, you know why. Because I, like you, love your Range Rover and can’t imagine not having it sitting in the driveway waiting for me to jump in and tear off down the road.

I hope to have all this fixed in time for the inevitable Snowpocalypses of 2010 and 2011. And with my new utility trailer I hope to make a few camping trips with my wife next year.

The good news for my readers is the fourteen new entries to the Tech Tips Section of www.OkieRover.com these projects will create.

All this and I’ve been thinking about reviving the local Land Rover Owners club for the OKC metro area. So look for more info on that in the coming months. I have a photographer and former Land Rover driver (RovErica), anyone know a good web programmer that works cheap?

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

March 23, 2010May 15, 2023

Snow…one more time (Post #172) 3/23/2010

This weekend I let my daughter drive the Range Rover. We had a final (fingers crossed) snow storm this past weekend. I don’t have to tell you it was weird to have 5 snow storms this year. In any event, RovErica claimed she had not been taught how to drive in the slick-ish conditions in her Ford Taurus. She wanted to take the Range Rover due mostly to the ride position.

I was apprehensive to say the least. RovErica has had a poor track record of wrecking the Rovers when she “borrows” them. But I let her drive it anyway. I did caution her to drive carefully and to take it easy on the old broad.

She was good to her. She took care of my weekly driving task. And by running her she took care of the battery maintenance that I have failed to do for a couple of weeks. What makes this whole episode worthy of comment is the fact that she gave her new boyfriend a ride in the Rangie. He seemed tense. RovErica asked him why he was nervous, “Is it my driving?”. His response was not what she expected.

“This thing road walks.”
RovErica was quick to dismiss the issue, it’s always done that. Apparently it was enough to make the new boyfriend pretty nervous. To describe him would be difficult as we have not known him long, but to put it in a word, we could use “country”.

He is country. By that I mean he dresses the part, he’s in the oil business, more specifically he is a rig mechanic, he hunts, he guides hunts, and if we are getting the story accurately he had a scholarship offer to shoot at Texas Tech. That last part needs some confirmation but for now we’ll leave it there. He should be used to vehicles with eccentricities. Hell his pickup truck doesn’t even have a muffler that is up to code, nor does it have heat, RovErica mentioned a few other things too, which was precisely the reason they wanted to take the Range Rover.

Spring is now upon us and it is time to start working on the Range Rover in earnest. I want to the family camping this Spring and I need to get some things fixed first. The list seems to grow every month, but right now its the viscous coupling on the transaxle that demands immediate attention. With RovErica’s new beau’s concern for safety, maybe I should finish the bushing project I started last fall as well.

I have to get the garage cleared first. There is just entirely too much stuff in there to work on the Range Rover. I think I could do the bushing job laying underneath the Rover if the garage was cleared of storage stuff. It would be better to do it on the lift at JagGuy’s shop but I may need to make this a multiple weekend project. Which I really can’t do at the shop.

So I have the wife convinced we need a storage shed. She has said we needed one since we moved into this house. I had been holding off because I thought I wanted a shop instead of a storage shed. But all I really need is storage. I can still use the garage as the “shop” if I had a place to put all the crap.

And by crap I mean, a box spring, the mower, Diet Mountain Drew’s weight lifting bench that he never uses, half a desk, my table saw, the big ladder, the camping gear we never use, my lathe, and probably half a dozen computer parts. There is a bunch of crap in there.

So after I spend a weekend building the storage shed, a weekend of repairing the viscous coupling, a weekend for the bushing project, a weekend camping, a weekend of Chicago Fire soccer, a weekend at Maribone Springs playing cowboy, a weekend at Fort Washita reenacting the Fur Trade period in Oklahoma, and probably a weekend shooting a docu-drama on the Seminole removal, and several weekends at mom’s house getting it ready to sell, it’s football season again.

Will the madness ever stop? Probably not.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.