Surface Rust Under the Passenger Side Fender (Post #635) 12/18/2023

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In this short video I take care of the surface rust I found under the passenger side fender. There were some unpainted surfaces notably under the rubber washers at the top of the quarter panel. There were also some pin hole spots of rust.

They look like dirty spots until you put the wire wheel on them. Is that primer? this stuff Land Rover used under the panel just flaked off in spots. In the video there is a segment that has some leopard spots…that’s where the paint just came off.

The two rust spots in the arch will be ground down again. I don’t think I need to fix them, just stop the rust. The holes are on the outside of the vehicle so water getting in won’t be from these two spots.

I wire wheel all the rust I could see. Then I washed the panel with acetone. This was to remove any lingering dust, dirt, oil, whatever.

I then coated the panel with primer in a green color I really like. I could see myself driving a vehicle painted like that. I’ll watch the weather and give it all a second coat when it warms up a bit. The temp in the shoppe was 54F when I started the work and 52F when I started painting. That’s just barely above the paint range listed on the side of the can.

A big shout out to my fans in Norway. 31 views from that country on 12/12! Tusen takk!

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Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

Fender Repair Part 4, Fixing My Crappy Welding of the Large Fender Patch (Post #621) August 27, 2023

The weather cooperated, but my back didn’t so much. The temperature was mostly pleasant compared to the scorchers we’ve had lately. My back however was not very cooperative. I’m pretty sore after just a few hours of work.

The work on the fender from the last post was, pretty terrible. I had trouble shaping the 16 gauge steel. The patch after shaping was also the wrong size. Couple that with running out of shielding gas and my welds being pretty terrible, I needed to start over. Without shielding gas protection you have a brittle weak welds. Not to mention holes in your weld called porosity.

I cut the patch out with a cutting wheel. Some of the welds were actually pretty good, so I must have run out part way through the welding. I made a patch with a piece of paper and cut out a new patch out of 20 gauge steel. When I was getting the shielding gas at Chickasha Industrial I noticed they had a lot of steel in the shop area. Turns out they sell steel. So I picked up a few “cutoff” pieces for a good price.

The new patch with some help from a ingenious use of a 2×4 and a bottle jack fit nicely. I welded it in and it worked out pretty well. I struggled with one spot when the welding blew through a thin patch of original fender. With some creative welding I got the holes patched.

I still have to weld up the underside. Welding upside down is difficult. I’m going to have to figure out how to do that. Maybe watch some Youtube videos or something.

I will use the 16 gauge steel to reinforce the 20 gauge and weld in the seat belt mount. I don’t plan on having seat belts in the rear again but if I did, I’d need a place to mount them.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Fender Repair Part 1, Welding Patches (Post #616) July 25, 2023

Welding a patch for the body mount

I finally broke down and welded something on my Range Rover. While I will admit freely, I am NOT a welder, but I did enjoy getting the patches welded on. I took a few hours the day before this video was shot to “practice” welding with some scraps I had cut off the Big White Bus.

One of the difficulties is the metal on the Range Rover and the metal I am patching with are different thicknesses. I believe the OEM body panels are 18 gauge whereas my patching material is 16 gauge. I watched a YouTube video where a young man from Weld.com showed how he setup his welder to weld different thicknesses. It’s pretty good stuff and I recommend it if you are still wondering how to setup your welder and what settings you might want to start with. His settings for 18 and 16 weren’t different so I just need to find the same settings he suggested and convert those values to the letter equivalent on my Lincoln MIG Pro 180.

I also watched a fellow from Make It Kustom that has some great tips on welding and patch making. Good stuff there too. This guy is obviously an artist and I imagine has, “done this a time or two.”

In my video there is a lot of grinding and sparks flying and hopefully some good tips to help you weld your patches on your Range Rover Classic. I sped a lot of it up so I’m not consuming a lot of your life watching my low grade videos.

The camera overheated at the end for the second time that day. The temp inside the shoppe was above 110°F (which is 43.3°C for you metric system types). Yeah that’s pretty hot for this old man. I’m seriously going to investigate getting an exhaust fan installed to pull the hot air out.

Overall I’m pretty excited that I can weld stuff. I did fix a yard swing that one of our trees landed on and crushed. I’m looking forward to finishing the welding on the rust and turn my attention to making stuff like a 270 degree awning, a rear bumper, and lots of other stuff.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering

Tunes (Post #560) 6/6/2016

Radio

I got a wild hair this weekend and decided to see if I could get my radio reinstalled. I’ve been using the cell phone for my tunes and news for quite a while. I thought it might be nice to have tunes and my Weather Band back on-board provided by something other than my phone.

In all honesty I could care less about local radio. The “We’re OVERSTOCKED car ads” alone make me want to drive off a bridge to my certain death. I mean seriously, how is the fact you were stupid enough to become “overstocked” on automobiles make you think I need to come down and buy one? If you are that bad at managing your business I’m certainly not going to help you continue to be stupid. Darwinism isn’t just for animals, you feel me? I listen to KGOU NPR in the morning. I really hate listening in the election years because they start leaning to left so much it makes me want to yell at the radio. Our neighbor Hardluck Jim’s weekend Blues show is a true bright spot. I also like KOSU’s The Spy programming. It’s always something you are never going to hear on the other commercial stations. And how many radio shows do you know of that pair rock-n-roll with a bottle of wine?

Back to on-board tunes, I got the radio reinstalled. I scavenged some parts mainly the antenna wires from Ole’ Blackie and that made it all possible. Once I got the wires behind the radio sorted out and the rear heater tubes sorted out the radio slid right in. I turned her and the magical air waves came across the speakers but it seems my sub-woofer is not working.

The speakers in the back were never great. Also the speakers in the doors were buzzing badly. I had already replaced the door speakers once around 12 years ago or more. You can imagine how bad the rear one’s were considering they had been delivered with her from the factory.

I’ve always had a soft spot for Pioneer. My first and only “boom box” was a Pioneer (SK-210). I miss that old thing. Jack Shepard and Bill Colston borrowed it when they drove to south Texas to retrieve Jack’s stolen Honda motorcycle. Bill’s truck didn’t have a radio. I remember their comment, that sucker really eats the batteries. There is one on eBay as of this writing and at 79.99$(US) I think its more expensive than the one I bought new back in 1983. I had friends who had Pioneer car stereos. Good times…

pioneerboombox

I digress, I went to Best Buy and bought two sets of speakers.

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The blue-coned speakers are the old replacement ones. The originals were already in the bin. The TS-G1045R’s will suit me fine. I’m not an “audiophile”. I know people who’ve spent more on a car sound system than I’ve paid for some cars I’ve owned. I like loud tunes as much as the next guy. But I’m not going to spend the “Gross National Product of Chad” to have them. Hell, I don’t even have air conditioning yet. I’d rather spend a thousand dollars having cold air blowing on me all summer. Maybe if I got that fixed perhaps Mrs. Okierover might even ride in the Big White Bus again? Stranger things have happened.

Some observations…

I’d really like to plug my phone into the on-board sound system. But if the sub-woofer is toast what would be the point? I know John Monahan will put an  AUX input on this model of radio. I’m not sure what that would cost.

The plastic bits on the dash are starting to become terribly brittle. If only there was a warehouse somewhere that had OEM parts sitting on the shelf that I could source. Maybe there is such a thing in England, highly unlikely in the good Old United States of America.

That’s all for now except you’ve probably noticed the new format. I hope you like the new look of the blog. I thought the site needed an update and I really liked this one. I’m still messing with it so be patient with me.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

 

Exhaust Gasket Blow Out (Post #545) 9/21/2015

The Big White Bus started sounding like she was losing a catalytic converter. The sound started as a ticking. However yesterday and today I knew it was a blown exhaust gasket and a missing exhaust stud. I naturally assumed the worst had happened and I would need new exhaust pieces. I was prepared to replace the exhaust starting with the Y. It’s Frankenstein’d together as it is. The next problem or failure is going to require a new exhaust system. I thought that was now. Continue reading “Exhaust Gasket Blow Out (Post #545) 9/21/2015”

Too Hot to Land Rover (Post #542) 8/12/2015

Blasphemy! you might say. So I’ll qualify that to it’s too hot to wrench. It is the height of summer here in Oklahoma. Temperatures while they haven’t been anywhere near the lovely year of 100’s, they have been close. Our exiting of the drought in such a dramatic way this year (2015) has the humidity up to the levels I remember it from before the drought.

So your greasy fingered blogger has not put much effort into much of anything Land Rover. That is not to say I don’t have a handful of project to do, I do.

Continue reading “Too Hot to Land Rover (Post #542) 8/12/2015”