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.
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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. |
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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.
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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.
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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.
