Category: music

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Imagine the fluid level sensor plug WTH? (Post #208) 10/11/2010

Google honored John Lennon’s 70th birthday on October 9th. My own birthday is on October 11th. In the real world my ideology doesn’t line up with John’s. I do like his music and not counting the thousand of so times we heard the songs when my oldest brother and sister played the songs in the early 1970s, I spent three summers in the late 1970s listening to the Beatles and John Lennon’s music. My brother was a huge fan and that’s all we played on the turntable.

So with that let me begin the post…
Imagine you are looking at your handy work from the previous day.
Imagine that you see that you forgot to connect a plug and you reach out and grab the plug.
Imagine that just as you turn the plug to reconnect it, one of the wires breaks.
Imagine that as you turn it back to you to see the end, another wire breaks.
Image how pissed you are at that point.

If one of the neighbor kids weren’t in the garage telling me about how his dad burped the BMW cooling system and cured his overheating I would have gone on a explicative laden tirade. That is not supposed to happen. Well it’s not supposed to happen, but it does on Land Rovers. Matter of fact I would be comfortable in saying anyone who has ever worked on their Land Rover has had this happen.

You could see the corrosion on the wires. It was so corroded that even a few millimeters down the wire it was still corroded.

To get this fixed I would have to take the wire connectors out of the plug housing. Normally these connectors are held in place by a tab on the plug which fits in a channel on the plug housing. Getting the tab recessed and the plug out is usually not too bad. I had to struggle with these a bit.

The plug housing had clip that had to be pried open.

I was hoping the connectors would just slide right out after I had the clip open. No such luck was to be had. I got out a small pair of very narrow needle nosed pliers. I had them inserted and with a little effort finally got the connectors out.

I now had to get the wires connected. I used a small screwdriver to get the wire end opened up to hold the wire once I got it cut and stripped. I decided to solder the connectors to get a better connection. That was good except the worst of the corroded wires would not hold solder. I tried to clean it with flux but that didn’t work. I finally decided to just crimp it in place. There was really no other choice.

I guess I could get new connectors but I’m not sure where I would find them. I know everything is available somewhere, but it’s the looking that makes it hard. Back in the day I would just drive down to Radio Shack and pick up a matching connector and crimp them in place. But I’m not as impressed with the available parts at my neighborhood Radio Shack.

So I just slipped some new heat shrink on the wires and did what I could with what I had. The good news is it is working, at least for now.

On a side note you can see my experiment of putting the O rings into brake fluid there on the fender. It turned that the O ring didn’t dissolve. And the growth after it was wet with brake fluid was acceptable. I would even say it expanded just enough to make a good seal. While digging for a wrench in my on-board tool kit I found my spare ABS pressure switch. I had forgotten I had it in the on-board tool kit. I will probably move it to the parts shelf. In any event there was a good O ring on the unit and now I know I have a spare.

Thanks for reading imagining and Happy Rovering.

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Garage preparation complete (Post #187) 7/14/2010

I set out on Saturday to get started on the now infamous Range Rover Restoration Part Duex. Hopefully it will be slightly more popular at the box office than the first restoration. Sometimes sequels don’t have near the success of the first episode.

I can site a few examples…

  • Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo
  • Caddyshack 2
  • Highlander 2: The Quickening
  • Grease 2

So with those stinkers out of the way, I’m hoping this sequel will be very successful, much like these sequels, that were better than their respective originals.

  • Christmas Vacation
  • Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior
  • Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
  • Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
  • The Godfather: Part II
  • Aliens

So to get a production like this off the ground and guarantee success we have to hire great actors, we have to have a really great script, we have to prepare the garage for the beloved Range Rover.

I needed to move a lot of items to make room. I took the giant rocking chair back to mom’s house. I moved the historical reenacting stuff back up to the attic. And I basically just organized all the rest.

Now I know you are looking at that picture and saying, “You call that organized?” Here’s the deal, I couldn’t afford a “garage system” when we moved in. I wasn’t even sure what I needed and wasn’t about to drop a few grand for the fancy cabinet systems and have them under utilized. So I got some shelves and made due. I don’t even have a work bench. That is definitely one thing I miss. So with that said, there is a method to the madness, lets just hope I don’t have a stroke and forget where I put stuff.

 In my neighborhood people use their garages as second living rooms, especially during the football season. I started to add some furniture so I could “entertain”. But me, being me, I just couldn’t have any furniture. So I made a chair out of an old Range Rover seat.
I also added the bench and driver’s chair from an M35. I have many fond memories of driving trucks in the Marine Corps and therefore I snagged these from one of my buddy’s M35 projects.

I couldn’t just toss these or bury them when the project started so I moved them to strategic places so they would still serve some function in the garage.

After I got the major items sorted and moved, I checked my supplies to make sure I have enough to get started on a project like this.

Beer? check. Soft drinks? check. Mustard? check. Giant jar of pickles? check. Music?

What kind of music do you listen to when you restore / work on your Rover? I prefer the classics. So I broke out a couple of my favorite greatest hits albums (she how I went old school there with the terminology?). The Essential Clash and The Cars Complete Greatest Hits.

How can anyone work on a British auto and not have some Clash on hand?

London’s burning! London’s burning!
All across the town, all across the night
Everybody’s driving with full headlights

Great stuff, good times, good times.

Okay back to the project at hand, getting the Range Rover into the garage. I moved the parking lot of cars from the driveway and lined the Range Rover up and moved her into her new birth for the next few months. Just like the last time, she fits.

She’s snug. I’ll have to work around the mower location and many items will need to be stored on top when I start stripping the interior out. But she’s in there.

I’m still considering a storage shed for some of the items I store in the garage. All the camping gear, the table saw, the furniture items, the wood scraps, the mower and trimmer, the fuels, the weight bench my son never used but we had to have (rolls eyes), all that could go into a storage shed and free up a “shit ton” of space.

Immediately I know I need to rethink how I am lighting the garage. More light is almost always a good idea. I need to look into some lighting options.

Well that’s it for now. I have already begun work and assessed the problems and have a couple of new ones to add to the list.

  • Sound deadening in the rear and under the bonnet (hood)
  • Rust removal and rust proofing

I’ve already discovered those two problems that I hadn’t thought of previously. I’ve always wondered why it takes people 2 or 3 years of work to restore a classic car. When you start on one you quickly learn about the huge amounts of time that “the little things” take up. Every little thing has to be addressed. And you can never estimate all the rust you will find. All of it has to be removed with extreme prejudice or you will just be back in there again removing what you probably should have taken care of the first time.

I will probably be a Waxoyl and Rustoleum expert when all this is done. There are a great many other new skills I’m going to have to master as well. Welding, body work and painting being three that immediately come to mind.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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1 x Coveted Mug (Post #166) 1/28/2010


Coveted indeed.

It is official I have finally been rewarded for sending in a Sighting. Rovers North gives away their very coveted mug for a submission of a Land Rover sighting in popular culture. A month or two ago, I sighted a white Land Rover Defender 90 behind Jay Leno during a commercial promo. It was a quick shot of the Defender driving by, when he was doing one of his man on the street segments. If you blinked, you missed it. Me and two other gentlemen caught it. I even sent in a screen cap.

You can find the page in the Rovers magazine that hit your mailbox in January 2010. What is that you say? You don’t get Rovers Magazine? Why not? It’s free. You should contact them and get on the mailing list. Its got great articles and helpful tips. Hell, Bill Burke, master of off-roading, even contributes a column. And as you know from reading my blog, I could use a few tips from Bill about getting unstuck. And I’m sure if you like to off-road you could use a few tips from Bill as well.

The mug could not have come on a more perfect day. It was 65 degrees outside when it arrived. Very unseasonable weather for Oklahoma in January. But what seems like unseasonable is only normal for Oklahoma as the next day the weathermen were predicting an ice storm. I have already enjoyed a cup of tea and am on my second cup of hot chocolate. Yes, I’m buzzing pretty hard.

Jed Castles (a local weatherman) on his Facebook page said we would quickly forget the Christmas Eve 2009 Snowpocalypse. The Snowpocalypse was a true “once in a hundred years storm”. It set the record for snowfall in a 24 hour period for Oklahoma. This storm was also a blizzard that shut down the state for 4 days. Thirty five mile per hour winds with gusts to 50 mph caused snow drifts that closed highways all over the state. As is the custom in news, we must name the latest storm, because that’s what the newscasters do. So my friends are sure this has to be ICEPOCALYPSE 2: Electric Boogaloo.

When we get ice storms in Oklahoma we normally lose power due to the ice on the electric transmission lines. SO, Electric Boogaloo seems totally appropriate. So far this morning it has only rained and the temperature has finally dropped below freezing. Sunday night’s forecast called for 3-4 inches of ice and 6-7 inches of snow after that for central Oklahoma. Schools and businesses were announcing they would be closed while we were enjoying the 65 degree day. Last night the news scaled the storm back and said 1/4 to 1 inch of ice and 2-3 inches of snow. We all know why they do that, it’s so you the gullible viewer will tune in to the ten o’clock news every night where you normally get to hear that Mrs. Johnson’s third grade class made balloon animals in art today at some elementary school you never heard of and to hear the latest news on the end of civilization as we know it the coming ice storm.

So this morning after we were cut loose from work I got back to Norman and I gassed up the Range Rover, picked up a gallon of milk, some cinnamon rolls, crackers, and bacon from Braums. When you shop you must totally grab random things as you progress to the check out line. That way the clerk will think you are crazy eclectic. I took the movies (that were late) back to the video store. And now I am sitting here in my office rocking out to Devo’s Oh No It’s Devo, looking North at the wet landscape and wondering if we will all die tonight when the rain begins to freeze. Do not fear my fair reader, the good news is it will be 50 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday and all the ice will be gone. And civilization will not have come to an end, and every one that raided the Super WalMarts last night to stock up on provisions will wonder if they can drink all that milk before it spoils.

Thanks for Reading and Happy Rovering.

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