Category: grand children

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Floor Pan Repair on a Range Rover Classic: Fitting the bed Part 1 (Post #682) 12/10/2024

In this post my grandson and I work on the floor bed to get it to dry fit. The first thing we needed to do was to get the Z bar into place. This required us making the side rail straightened and in some places cut some useless steel off.

The next thing we needed was to tack weld the Z bar into place. This was quite the challenge. I tried tacking and it didn’t take. I finally got my weld to hold. I let Grady weld too. His welds would not stick either.

After some frustration we determined that likely we didn’t have a good ground. I put in a lot of effort to get this steel painted so it wouldn’t rust. That unfortunately also prevented us from having a good ground for our welding.

I ground off a lot of paint. This is going to be a problem. The whole reason for the paint is to prevent the damn rust in the first place. So once I get the Z bar in place I’m going to need to paint everything again.

We finally got the Z bar into place and tried to fit the panel. We are about an 1/8 to a 1/4 of an inch off. This is going to require some additional cutting and more fitting to make sure we have it right before we start attaching the braces.

This is part 1 of 2. We spent WAY too much time with welding and prepping. So I cut this down to under 30 minutes.

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Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Changing Oil on a Range Rover Classic (Post #669) 8/31/2024

In this episode I change the oil the my Range Rover Classic. My grandson Grady came over to help so we tried to make this mundane task fun!

The good news is we got the Big White Bus running and drove it out of the shoppe! This was huge. It’s been a while and to see her running and driving was pretty awesome.

Not much to say about the oil change, I done this somewhere around 73 or 74 times. Every 3,000 miles, or in this case, after sitting for 4 years. I know, I know, but it all worked out. It’s got fresh oil for now and we’ll be starting and running the Range Rover Classic every week from here on out.

We also gave her a bath. 4 years of dust had settled on her and it was badly needed. Also helps me keep a cleaner shoppe.

That’s about it for this week. Hopefully Mrs. Okierover has won her third straight Oklahoma Senior Games Over 55 Women’s 3v3 Basketball tournament. With a win, they advance once again to Nationals. I’ll report back next week with the results.

Like and Subscribe. Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

https://youtu.be/8GifXAydNmU
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Footwell Repair Part 7: Floor Panel Repair, Final Assembly (Post #666) 8/12/2024

Post #666!!!! Not today Satan, I finally wrap this fender up. Maybe a proper Devil Dog would have made a more creative 666 post. You’ll just have to settle for one of my old tags.

Mrs. Okierover made me get a new tag…she’s religious that way.

Anyway, I got this beast reassembled. Mostly reassembled…okay I got the fender on and the wiring loom back in place. It’s significant okay!? Dang!

My grand son Grady came over (mostly because he was bored at home) to help. And help he did! A lot of what I filmed before he got there was lost. I truly hate this GoPro, if its not overheating halfway through a shot, it’s dropping files, or losing the sound track off a segment. Trash. I’ve read a bunch of complaints about this GoPro 11. Several telling everyone they’ve fixed a bunch of the overheating in the GoPro12!! Now it overheats 1/3 less! Nope. Not gonna fall for it. GoPro, if you want to redeem yourself you can send me a 12 for free and I’ll give it a review. You probably won’t like the review, but I’ll give one an honest one.

Back to the assembly, I got the wiring loom put back in place. It went surprisingly well. The fender went on pretty easy. I did make one mistake in the building of the side bulkhead. I should have made it longer. The result was I didn’t have one of the two fender mounting places. I also lost some hardware. So I went to the hardware store to get replacements. Met a fellow Marine building a Skoolie camper for his family to travel in. Sounded like a fun project.

When I got back and Grady and I had wrapped up the video I was finishing the assembly and guess what I found?? Yeah, the missing screws and bolts I stopped looking for 3 hours earlier. Isn’t that just typical.

On an annoying note… the damn Big Whit Bus wouldn’t start. So I get to deal with that issue again. YAY! /sarcasm font.

Like and subscribe! Or whatever.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Footwell Repair Part 5: Floor Panel Repair, Panel Finally Installed (Post #664) 7/27/2024

Yes! I finally have the panel welded in. Is it pretty, oh hell no. Is it water tight, not even close.

I will liberally apply seam sealer. You’ll see that in my next video. I had a helluva time getting that panel held in place. I finally came up with a solution. Use a 50lb bag of sand to hold it in place while I set some welds. This could not have worked better.

I was also able to hammer the panel grooves flat. I went and got my grandson “Thumbtack” and had him hold a 10lb weight against the panel while I hammered on the opposite side. This work pretty well I guess? I don’t know. If I was better at body work I would have built a jig and made a panel with the same grooves. But I’m not a good body worker.

I covered as much of the panel in primer as I could reach. What I learned when I crawled underneath to spray primer on the panel was a big bummer. I found the welds had heated the rubber covering on the transmission tunnel. This caused the rubber to separate from the panel and you can guess what’s going to happen under there.

No, that was a terrible guess….really? It’s going to rust, rust a lot. I haven’t a clue what I’m going to have to do to get to this area and get it covered with paint and rust preventative coverings.

As I’ve said it a dozen times, every job creates two more jobs.

I have a shout out to Tumbleweed Garage [Youtube]. He’s working on a 1948 Willy’s Truck. I enjoy his work.

Thanks for reading, like and subscribe, and Happy Rovering.

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Footwell Repair Part 2: Floor Panel Repair, Well Sort Of (Post #661) 7/6/2024

What a day.

I started out with all the intention I could muster to complete the floor pan. Unfortunately Fate had another plan for the day.

My plan started out solid. Paint the panels and while it dried see if I could get the Scion started and moved. The Scion as you may (or may not) remember is my son’s first car and he was still driving it until he was rear-ended by a mid-90s model Chevy pickup. The truck was moving at 35-40mph when he hit Rooster sitting still in bumper to bumper traffic. The pickup was completely disabled. The Scion had it’s rear tucked under and was touching the tires.

The though was it wouldn’t take that long to get the wheel wells pushed off the tires. I was wrong. The more I fought with it the hotter the day got and I finally reached my limit. So I went inside to cool off. I was watching the Germany-Denmark match when I got a call from Mrs. Okierover telling me the Honda Pilot with all of the grandchildren in tow would not start.

There is a whole long drama about a forgotten cell phone and a melt down of worry and a lot of really important details about how the battery got run down were left out. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Here we go.

  • Grandchild #1 left her cell phone at bathroom break an hour back up the road.
  • My oldest son who was following along in his car take said grand back to her phone.
  • Grandchild #2 melts down with worry.
  • Mrs. Okierover tells him to go sit in the car and calm down.
  • Grandchild #2 thinks he starts the car but places it in accessory mode and proceeds to sit in the car for more than 30 minutes.
  • Dead battery.
  • Not confident of the traveler’s ability to purchase and install a new battery I begin googling likely reasons of dead battery not aware of the 30 minute accessory episode.
  • Eventually Answers Online mechanic calls wife and diagnoses dead battery.
  • Oldest son returns and we attempt to jump battery.
  • Battery is buried under the air intake and only the positive is visible.
  • Plastic parts removed we finally ground to an engine lift point.
  • Car is started.

I learned a lot watching Law and Order: Criminal Intent and I use all those skills to interrogate everyone after they all arrive home. I had the battery tested and it was good, just needed a charge. I also watched a video about placing a new mount which is easy to reach for jumping. So I installed that M6 1.0 bolt and marked it for future reference.

So long story longer, the day was a complete loss. The following day I did get the Scion sorted out and back to running thanks to a sawzall (aka reciprocating saw), a floor jack, a 4 pound hammer, and gravity.

Next week end we’ll get more done ON THE BIG WHITE BUS…hopefully.

Happy Independence Day.

Thanks for reading, like and subscribe, and Happy Rovering.

https://youtu.be/gHdUjYCurx4
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Fender Repair Part 6, Reassembling the Fender and Mud Flap (Post #623) September 9, 2023

What?

Finishing up.

In this video I’m wrapping up the quarter panel rust tasks. I got a rattle can of “bed liner” sprayed on. It took the entire can! I will probably apply another application just to be sure.

The fender install went “smoothly” until I realized later that I forgot to plug the light cluster in. So I got to do that job twice. You only get to see the excruciatingly painful initial time. I saw a funny meme. The scene is a spring install with the narrator saying something to the effect that doing a job required on both sides of the vehicle.

  • First time 2 days and 89 hours.
  • Second time 29 minutes.

Ain’t that the truth though! So it’s been a hot minute (as my kids say) since I reinstalled a fender. So it went not quite so well the first time. I did cuss some. But that’s the nature of working on cars after all, is it not?

I talk about having to remove the glass on the passenger (starboard) side to complete the welding that needs to be done on the D pillar. I also talk about how outrageously expensive new window seals will be.

I did watch a couple of videos on how to do it. One of them is listed here:

The the hell is “duck water”??

So you can see getting the window AND seal out in one piece is going to save me a LOT of money.

Lastly I tried to start the Big White Bus. After charging the batter over night, she would not start. I got one cough, but otherwise a whole lot of nothing. The relay is working, but I am not hearing the pump run. I’ll need some help with diagnosing spark and electrics at the pump. So I put this off until next weekend when I can either get my buddy Larry over, or press my son into service.

I also tried out a new camera. My son had a GoPro Hero 5 just sitting around so I

confiscated it indefinitely borrowed

asked him if I could use it. Yeah, he’s not likely to get it back. I bought a new SIM for it. The SIM I was using doesn’t work in my Hero 11 and gives me a message about that. The Hero 5 did not give me a similar message so I thought it was good to go. It was not. So you missed out on 5 minutes of riveting footage of me walking back and forth in front of the camera and using a dustbin to sweep up and spraying bedliner. I’m sure it was the difference in this week’s video being a smashing success. Que sera, sera.

Thank you for reading and Happy Rovering.

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