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April 12, 2012May 15, 2023

It’s been a long year already (Post #287) 4/12/2012

My Classic in front of our domicile for the weekend

It has been a really long year. I know it is only April but I have had more than my share of being a grown-up this year. As many of you read last year, my adopted mother passed away in August of 2011. On March 30th of this year, my biological mother passed away. We have been burning up the highway between Houston and Norman the last few weeks.

Last week we made the last long hard drive down when we were called by the hospital and notified that she had passed. We were prepared for her passing. We knew for a few weeks that things were not good. We were expecting the bad news.

In addition to taking care of all her affairs, we needed to empty her condo out. I have long been blessed by great friends. A few weeks ago I talked to my friend and neighbor Larry Fisher and told him that I might need help with the move project. He agreed without reservations. When the time came it took me two hours of hard decision making to make the call to ask him to drive 16 hours in 3 days to help me. He was there the next day. I can’t say thanks enough.

In addition to all this we have been trying to get my childhood home ready for my daughter and her family to move in. The painting and repairs have been extensive. The costs have been extensive. My stress over this has also been pretty high.

My completely awesome wife has been by my side the entire time. She has even kept my spirits up with clever quips. My favorite this week, “I am sure you will be full on gray by summer from all this stress.” She also scored big points in her bid for “Wife of the Year” and insisted that I go on my history trip. “I hope you can find a happy place.” she texted to me as I drove down.

So I took off on Thursday evening to see my friends and participate in some living history. As usual it was a great time. We tried some different things this year. My friend Cody is perfecting his Surveyor impression and we, as natives, scouted for the survey team.

Cody, Tim, Stan and Dale

Dave and Correy

Correy did a great impression of a Scot living among the Cherokee. This was actually very common in the early 1800’s. Most Cherokees I know are some portion Scot. My wife’s family is this way. I got to see Leeann Gentry, she is one of my dear friends from high school. She came down and her son helped on the survey chain gang. I also saw a Norman North student and she turned out to be a friend of my youngest children. I had a nice chat with her as well.

That’s me on the right in the back

We didn’t take nearly as many pictures as we normally do. The crowd was pretty interested in the impression and took lots of pictures of us, as they always do.

We missed our friend Matt as he was in Los Angeles…doing something I was told, was work related. I’m sure he would have rather been with us.

Red Squirrel (Me) and Cut Finger (Dave)

My favorite part of these trips is when spontaneous history sneaks up on us. We took a stroll to help with the “Mountain Man Walk”. As we walked we strayed into one of those moments when what you are doing is what the people you are portraying would have been doing. It is very rewarding. It is hard to describe, but all living historians know the feeling and crave it deeply.

We had some pretty serious weather on the last night. Thunderstorms rolled through and soaked everything. As I pulled out to go home, I had occasion to recover a friend’s minivan which was not quite up to the muddy field we parked in.

Andre and his van

The rain continued on the way home sometimes very very heavy.

I heard on Monday they had to close Turner Falls State Park due to the flooding. When I passed through the mountain pass near there, it was really coming down hard. Just a few miles from this picture, a pickup in the south bound lanes of I-35 hydroplaned and came in to the meridian. He made several revolutions and was travelling WAY too fast. I expected him to come into the North bound lanes but he didn’t. He was fortunate to keep the rubber side down and not flip over, considering the speed he left the roadway. Sorry no picture, I was preparing evasive actions at the time.

I got home safely and had a lovely Easter lunch with my wife’s extended family. I got to watch the grand kids hunt Easter eggs and a good time was had by all.

I guess that is enough for now. I am very behind in my school work for this semester so I need to get back at it. I’ll have more next month after the semester is over.

Thanks for reading, thanks for all the prayers for me and my family, and Happy Rovering.

January 6, 2012May 15, 2023

This is some seriously good news! (Post #281) 1/6/2012

I have long believed that the Classic’s ABS pump was rebuildable. It is just an electric motor and a pump mechanism. I personally believe there should be a pump on the Classic that was good for at least two hours of constant running. Perhaps a type of PTO from the motor, nevermind, but that really doesn’t make much sense. I’ve even kicked around in my head building a circuit to light an LED on the dash when the bloody pump is running. All this just so I can catch a failure before it happens. In any event, the pumps are (IMHO) weak and the relays they use can fail and leave you without brakes as you know them.

If you read enough message boards you will see many guys talking about removing the ABS and going to “standard brakes”. Mostly this is because of this failure and the cost of repair. ABS has its place in the universe and I can respect that. But I’d hope it would, in the future, be more reliable over the life of the vehicle. I received an email from George a fellow Rover owner down in Australia a while back and we kicked this subject back and forth.

So today, I’m checking my email and lo and behold I get the following email from my mate down under, George D’Onofrio.

Hey Eric!
Happy New Year!
Just letting you know that ABS pumps ARE repairable!
Got mine back from Al Cowan after a $US378 overhaul (vs $1500 new):
http://www.falconworks.net/britold/brit.htm
along with a new accumulator and 2 new relays.

I held off replacing the accumulator as I wanted to see what it did with a decent pump. The howling has stopped (bearing?) and all I hear is a buzz like a mosquito in my ear. I can also hear the relay click when it starts/stops. AND The Three Amigos have ridden off into the sunset too!

Stationary, I get 3-4 pedal pushes before the pump starts and it only runs for 2-3 secs. On the road, it starts when the brake pedal gets a good push but it stops pretty quickly.

By referring to Al’s bible: I’ve concluded the accumulator is getting near the end of its days but I’m due to change the brake fluid this year so I’ll replace it then.
Cheers George

Thanks George!

Okay my first observation…HOW THE HELL HAVE I MISSED THIS SITE?

This is a great trove of Land Rover information and I have never seen it? I may have to go back to a Google Search 101 class. I really like this site, well except it looks like it was coded by a 13 year old girl. It is chock full of great info. So much so I’m going to put it on the link section.

So thanks to George and thanks to the fun folks at Falcon Works. If I had known about you when we were trekking across the country in the Disco 2 back in 2008 I would have stopped by. We DROVE RIGHT BY THE PLACE! Ugggh! My pal Dave has been begging us to come back out to California so perhaps we’ll stop by on our way home.

Check them out and if you buy something tell them you saw it on OkieRover’s blog. They don’t know me from Adam’s house cat, but I’d like them to know where the referrals are coming from.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

PS. wow this post just just crammed with jargony goodness, wasn’t it!?

February 3, 2011May 15, 2023

A trip to Saturn (Post #244) 2/3/2011

Before the bad weather was about to embrace us, my neighbor Larry asked me to schedule some time to look at his daughter’s Saturn. It was running rough and dying when you came to a stop light. Her 16th birthday was coming and they were giving her the Saturn so the plan was to put a few bucks in the car to “dress it up”. Her sister drove it faithfully until her graduation from high school and it was now time for the old girl to carry another Fisher to and from high school. The mileage on the Saturn revealed that it had probably been driven to Saturn, the planet, and back at least once. 172,000 miles and some change.
[Editors note: I know as you do now, that Saturn “the planet” is 1.2 billion km from earth at its closest point. Not the paltry distance of 172,000 miles which isn’t even a one way trip to our own moon (238,857 miles on average)]

I offered to buy this car from him when his first daughter graduated on to a new car and college. He said he couldn’t, not wouldn’t, couldn’t sell it to me. It wasn’t worth anything and he couldn’t replace it for that. I know exactly what he means. You know these cars. 10 year old cars that have nothing seriously wrong with them that the bank and the people like Kelly Blue Book say are worth about a thousand dollars.

You couldn’t buy a thousand dollar car that is reliable if you wanted to. No matter what you bought you’d immediately be dumping a thousand dollars in it to get it back to running. Its simply economically not worth selling. I didn’t have any hard feelings about that. My buddy JagGuy wouldn’t sell me his Ford Contour beater either. Sadly the Contour was destroyed in the huge hail storm of 2009.

He came over on a Thursday evening to ask and I said we should look at it now. He described the symptoms:

Rough idle
Coughing and choking
Acceleration problems

He also said it tends to die when you corner hard if the level in the fuel tank dropped below 1/8th of a tank. He had a very elegant solution to this problem…He told his girls never to let the fuel drop below 1/8th of a tank. Genius, a man after my own heart. I had a similar request of my girls. I told them if I ever get in your car and it’s below an 1/8th of a tank on the fuel gauge, your driving privileges will be revoked for a week.

Well back to the car problems…Does this problem of rough idle sound familiar? If you drive a Range Rover Classic you know this to be a problem with the air idler valve. A dirty air idler valve will cause rough idle. So I told him this would be no problem. I told him we should check that out first and that my confidence level in this solution was pretty high. The trick was finding the silly thing. He had the Chilton’s book so we found the section with the throttle body and right there was a picture of the air idler valve. It is the same one we use on a Range Rover Classic. I told him it should be easy to find.

I told him if we can find it, it’s an easy thing to clean. We started looking for it and it was not to be found. Finally I told him we should take the throttle body off and the valve would reveal itself. We removed the throttle body. And there was the problem. An eighth of an inch of oily carbon deposits on everything on the engine side of the butterfly.

These photos were shot ~~after a few beers~~ with a cell phone and trouble lights, in the dark, on a moonless night. We took a picture of the inside of the intake and every surface was covered in the carbon oil goo. The detail is not there that would reveal how bad this really looked. I’ve never seen anything like that. I scraped it with a screwdriver. Wow.

I was amazed the thing ran at all. It became pretty obvious that the butterfly was not closing securely. So we proceeded to clean it up. A little brake fluid cleaner and a stiff toothbrush made short work of the majority of it.

The air idler valve was different from the picture. It wasn’t the same as the Range Rover’s. I wasn’t surprised. We removed it and cleaned up the seat. You can imagine it was pretty dirty as well. We got it cleaned up and reinstalled the assembly.

As you can see, it is shiny and clean. It made a pretty good difference in how the Saturn idled. Larry’s other complaint was the acceleration. So I got in the Saturn and drove her. The throttle response was great. Press the peddle and the revs went up. But in first gear of the automatic transmission, you could tell the acceleration didn’t match the revs on the tachometer. Second and third gears behaved as expected but first gear, in my humble opinion, was slipping.

I drove it home and asked when the last time the transmission fluid was changed. “Probably, never.” He hadn’t done it and was unsure if it had ever been done by a previous owner. I recommended he have a transmission service. A batch of fresh fluid might, and I told him might, bring several thousand more miles of Saturn-y goodness and if he was lucky the slipping would stop.

It was fun to find a problem and solve it. It was really, really fun to help a friend make one of his cars more reliable for one of his daughters. I have two daughters and I know the trepidation he feels each time one takes a car out of the driveway.

I could tell you a dozen stories about this daughter, like the one when she was five years old. She was feeling oppressed because she could not run around the neighborhood topless like all the other kids (all boys). But I’ll let her mom post them on her knitting blog. Happy Birthday Laurianne.

Thanks for reading and thanks Happy Rovering.

December 21, 2010May 15, 2023

The one where I catch myself on fire in the furtherance of Land Rovering (post 234) 12/21/2010

I started a little slow out of the gate Saturday. My good friend, the Evil German Dude (EGD) agreed to help me weld in patches for my rusted passenger side floor. So the plan was to get up on Saturday and drive to the lovely town of Jones, Oklahoma where EGD has his evil lair. It didn’t help that I had what would be considered a bad dream the night before. In the dream I forgot to get up and go to EGD’s house for the project and I couldn’t get him on the phone to tell him why. Weird.

My slow start was mostly due to me failing to move all the crap that was piled on and around my Range Rover. I had to move two cars and it simply took longer than I planned. It turned out not to be a big deal, but when you are dealing with Evil German Dudes you want to be punctual. The drive was unremarkable except for the big hole in the floor letting in the morning chill. The heater kept it comfortable so it turned out not to be the issue I expected. I did see one thing on the way in that disturbed me though. A sign at the city limits of Jones read,

It is illegal to dump animals in Jones.

Is this a big problem? I guess it would make sense to drop an unwanted animal off in “the country” instead of feeding it and loving it. Jones is definitely in “the country”. But Jones is having none of that. It must be a big enough problem that the City of Jones sprung for a sign to declare its intention to fine you if you are caught.

I arrived at EGD’s evil lair and with some pleasantries we got the Range Rover into the garage. “Back it in.” was my first instruction. I asked why, to whit he responded, “it will be easier to push it out of the garage if it catches on fire.” DULY NOTED! That had not even crossed my mind.

The project at hand was to weld in replacement floor panels to cover the rusted holes that I cut out of the floor. EGD’s evil mistress is EGB, the Evil German Broad. She had a project as well and so we all assembled in the secret lair and got started. I’m substituting broad for bitch. I like her, so I tend to think of her in a better light than the later word would denote.

I failed to do my homework so we were set back while I made my templates for the holes. Templates are a good idea. With the price of sheet steel and the distance required to retrieve more if you screw up makes mistakes like poor cutting a show stopper. I got the card board and cut the template.

My next task was to cut the steel to match the template. All this would be duplicated for the second set of holes in the front of the floor pan. I transferred the template on to the steel by tracing the outline and got to cutting. I positioned our old friend, the angle grinder, now fitted with a cutting wheel, and got to cutting.

This is the part where a quote from a movie is necessary.

“Stupid is as stupid does.” – Forest Gump

I can just hear you all out there, “But OkieRover, I always thought of you as a pretty sharp guy.” Well that is a nice thought my dear readers, but let me tell you the facts. As my cousin Victoria will assure you, “Marines are NOT the sharpest knives in the drawer.” She would also be the first Army dog to tell you, “Marines may well be the biggest and scariest knives in the drawer, but not the sharpest.”

You can see from the picture that something ~~funny is about to happen~~ is about to go horribly wrong. On my third cut the sparks flying at my thigh were hot enough to ignite my Levi’s 501 jeans.

On the first and second cuts I had noticed that the spot where the sparks landed on my leg got warm. But I’m a Marine and I am not phased by such annoyances for my pain threshold is high and my discipline is unwavering. Sadly that level of pride proved too much when the warm spot on my leg got A LOT WARMER, you might even say damn hot.

I looked down just as the Evil German Dude said, “You are on fire.” Before the last syllable of –ire was said I was already slapping the fire out. I did not feel “stop, drop and roll” was appropriate so I just slapped my thigh until the flames were gone.

We all had a big laugh. EGD said, “If you would have left it burning for another minute I would have had a picture of it.” I’m not sure that would have been worth the photo. As it turned out I only received a small blister and a bruised ego.

Growing impatient with my pathetic attempts to cut the steel EGD leaped into action. He took over the cutting. Perhaps he was wanting to have all the fun. I know he has had extensive training in metal working, shop procedures, welding, and nuclear reactor construction techniques from the ~~Stadtweke Bremen AG~~ Academy of Evil Villains. We often tease him that he could build a fully functioning nuclear reactor from two paper clips, a nine volt battery and a piece of cork. We also know he minored in earthquake manipulation while at the Academy. It should then come as no surprise that Jones Oklahoma experiences an extraordinary number of earthquakes. We have not yet gathered the evidence that he is guilty of the earthquakes, it’s only a hunch at this point. Update: The evidence is getting stronger.

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The next step was to cut holes in the steel plate to make tack welds. Unfortunately I had only two thicknesses of steel to choose from at Lowe’s, 16 gauge and 22 gauge. Sixteen gauge being the thicker steel. EGD’s pneumatic punch tool was no match for this thickness and it was determined to edge weld the larger patch.

With that in mind we had to remove the paint I sprayed to protect the naked steel from rusting. I marked the outline of the panel and EGD ground the paint away with his air tool.

Then it was on to the welding. Originally I had intended to learn this task and do it myself. I was pretty sure I wasn’t ready for this today. EGD was the accomplished welder and I just stepped aside and assisted when necessary holding the plate down as he made the tack welds.

Pretty soon he was done and I was back in there to make the template for the last two holes. I’m now an expert at making templates. I also cut this panel out and managed to not catch myself on fire for a second time. 22 gauge is pretty thin so I cut this one out with the metal shears.

To get the flex and bend necessary for this section we went with the 22 gauge. The punch was easily able to penetrate this thickness and EGD went to work. He also gave the piece a nice bend in his vise and it was back in to weld it down.

I got in and used the air grinder to get the paint off to insure good welds. This time I ground the paint back inside the template marks due to the punch method being deployed.

EGD fired up the welder and got the last panel welded in place. He used the hammer to assist in holding the plate in place with the proper bend. It was necessary to have the air compressor fitted with a blowing tool and at the ready. As the welds were made, several times the rubberized undercoating Land Rover saw fit to install caught fire. It was easy enough to keep under control with a few hundred PSI of forced air to blow out the flame and cool the steel after the weld.

The final step was to knock the high spots of the welds down with the angle grinder. I got that task knocked out in no time.

All that was left was cleaning up. I grabbed the shop vacuum and cleaned up the floor pans the best I could. The grinder wheel and slag from the welding can leave a pretty good pile of debris.

We finished up the day with a lovely meal. EGB had prepared chili and cornbread. It was delicious. I bid them a good day and I was on my way home.

On the way home the alarm went off inside the cab. This is the same alarm that sounds when the transfer case is in neutral. I thought I had eliminated all possibility that it would sound again.

I pulled over in Nicoma Park, Oklahoma and shifted the transmission to PARK. I grabbed the shifter and fully expecting the damn thing to sound, I shifted back to DRIVE. Nothing, no alarm, WHY.THE.HELL did it do that?

I proceeded on home and one more time the alarm sounded. Just a short beep and then no more trouble. The road noise was reduced by the new panels, so I thought I’d listen to the radio. I punched in my CODE and the radio did not spring to life. Maybe it’s the wrong code. So I’ll have to pull the radio again and get the code. My good friend and former roommate Master Guns has a radio from one of his cars for me. I have to get it from him to see if it will fit in the limited space of the Range Rover’s dash. Maybe we’ll just go with a whole different system, I don’t know.

I got home and jumped out of Range Rover. As I passed the front of the Rover I heard a high pitched sound from the engine compartment. I went back and popped the bonnet and listened. My guess is I am loosing the bearings in my alternator. I have a lifetime warranty on the alternator so I guess I’ll pull it and take it down for a replacement. I didn’t expect a new project but I am not surprised by it either.

On Monday evening, Oklahoma was blessed with some unseasonably warm weather. We topped 73 degrees (F). That is very unusual for this time of year. Consider last year at this time. The weathermen were predicting a snow storm for Christmas Eve. What we got was a blizzard with five foot snow drifts that crippled the metro area for 7 days. We named the event Snowpocalypse 2009 mocking the news coverage of the event.

So, with seventy degree weather I was determined to paint the new bare naked panels before surface rust sets in. After Mrs. OkieRover and I got dinner (Chick-Fil-A), mom’s grocery shopping (Homeland), we had to take a roll of tape over to our friend who owns Rusty’s Frozen Custard. When we were neighbors he would always come over on December 23rd or 24th and ask if we had any tape for he had exhausted his tape supply wrapping presents. So after the second year of his late season visits, we started buying extra rolls and giving them to him as a present. Eventually we moved away, and now we take the tape to his store and leave it for him. On and off for fifteen years we have been doing this, a very long running joke.

With all our duties done, we still had time to go to O’Reilly’s for paint and bed liner material. If I hurried I still had time to get some of that paint on the metal before bed time.

We went into O’Reilly’s. Mrs. OkieRover said she “always” goes in with me. I told her she NEVER goes with me to the parts store. I can’t honestly remember the last time we were even at the parts store together. So once again her ALWAYS and my NEVER come up short on reality.

Castrol Edge Synthetic was on sale, buy five quarts get a Mobil One oil filter free. The Scion and the Civic both need oil changes so I grabbed 10 quarts. I don’t know anything about Mobil One oil filters. So that’s something I’m going to have to look up today.

So I look at the receipt,

2 cans of bedliner, =”>
2 cans of MarHyde acid etching primer, =”>
10 quarts of synthetic oil.=”>

130$(US)! WTH? Wow that was a lot. I have to get it out of my head that a quart of oil costs a dollar. So you can imagine I was not expecting 70$(US) for two oil changes. I guess I know what I’ll be doing during the day on Christmas Eve. I’ll probably take advantage of the situation and extend it to a learning situation to the boys. Diet Mountain Drew graduates this year and needs to know about this stuff.

The next steps are to see about sealing up the floor and getting the bedliner sprayed on the new panels. There are some unavoidable problems already popping up. The best way to have done this job was to take the body off the frame and weld in a new floor for this section. With that in mind, it is going to be a challenge to seal out the water. I’ll have pictures of the underneath in another blog post this week. It will become clear why this task is going to be such a challenge when you see the pictures.

One more time, I’d like to send a big thanks out to my friend EGD for his help and to EGB for the great meal.

And to everyone else thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.
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August 20, 2010May 15, 2023

Its been a crazy week (Post #195) 8/20/2010

My half shaft arrived from Paul Grant yesterday. I also got a hit on my Discovery 2 rims from a chap in Colorado. I’m hoping he will pull the trigger on the rims. I’ve made him a good price and am willing to drive halfway to meet him to save on shipping. It’s insane what it costs to ship something that weighs 30 pounds. Basically it costs more than the rim is worth to ship the rim. At least doubling the rim’s cost. In any event if I can move the rims I can fund the first half of my Range Rover restoration and that would be nice.

Seamus came over yesterday for some help. Seamus is my son’s friend and I genuinely like the young man. He is funny and has a great view of the universe. He often comes over just to chat but yesterday he needed automotive assistance.

His 1991 BMW 325i is truly a sweet car. For a kids first car, it is a dream auto. Lately though according to his mom it has become a money pit. A money pit insomuch as it needs a few maintenance items and the clutch failed. Seamus has a great outlook on it all referring to the age, “Well, my car can vote.”

Seamus asked for help in sorting out a few non-functioning tail lights. So we popped the boot and I showed him the access panels and how the lamps were removed. We sorted out which ones were working and which were not. I went to check the reverse lamps, neither of which worked, when all of a sudden Seamus killed the engine. I told him to fire it back up but he politely told me the temp gauge was in the red. I said, “In the red? but it…” and then I saw the puddle under the front.

The BMW had spilled the magic cooling fluid all over the driveway. The air temperature was over 100F. And I thought it odd it would dump fluid. Seamus reported it had needed a bit of cooling juice just a few days ago and his dad had showed him how to add it. But this was probably not just a little over filling. I believe he has a bad radiator.

I pushed the car back down to his house and told him to leave it so it would cool and tomorrow we could work on it. The radiator is not a huge project and I couldn’t see them paying for labor when it was a couple of screws and its out kinda job. Getting a radiator is the hardest part of the project. To reinforce what his mom Kasey said, “That thing is a money pit.” they will be out around 200$(US) to pick up another.

I don’t believe you can fix a plastic tank radiator. So I suggested picking up a new one and if it wasn’t bad after we got it out, they could just take it back. Disappointing? yes. Devastating? no.

IF I can get the radiator done and Zacker’s football scrimmage (Go Lions) out of the way, the afternoon is set aside to remove the differential from the Range Rover and get it cleaned out and ready for the new(used) half shaft.

Thanks for reading, Go Lions, and Happy Rovering.