Category: okierover.com

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A new decade of driving Land Rovers (Post #163) 1/6/2010


I received a comment recently to one of my posts which was

很讚的博客……………………………….

I had the characters translated by a Chinese friend and it was roughly translated into English as good blogger. Sadly the dots following the comment were each a link to a different porn site. So it was not so much a compliment to me as a SPAM for some porn sites and that got me thinking.

And it made me curious to look and see where my users come from. The StatCounter.com software that tracks my hits can give you some really fun statistics. Like how much time users spend on my site. A lot of the links are 0 (zero) seconds. I guess after they see the picture Google directed them to my site to see they click Back and go on to another site. Or it could be the random Blogger Next Site link they just clicked and then clicked again when they weren’t interested in my content. It’s all good though.

As the site says about the stats page…

What use can the Country Stats have?

Well the best thing about the country stats, is the ‘kick’ you get out of seeing how many countries from around the world are visiting your website! But after the initial kick has worn off, it can also let you decide whether you should be targeting your international visitors more.

I posted the chart of the current visitors. As this new decade begins I’d like to thank all the readers out there for visiting my blog. I don’t make a single dime from this site. I love Land Rovers and the feeling I get with helping others is all I get out of it.

So when you read the last line on a post, believe me I really appreciate it.

So to the guy in Heredia, Costa Rica who checked out my post of Marilyn Monroe in the Land Rover. You were my only visitor from Costa Rica. You weren’t the only visitor to that page as it seems it was one of the most popular.

And to the guy in Gaborone, Botswana who checked out my blog. You were the only person in Botswana who did that, so you are pretty special in an elite sorta way as well.

I’m also comfortable in saying that my visitor from Perth, Australia in November should update his Mozilla and I hope you also liked the picture of Marilyn. I am also pretty sure you are my most remote user depending on how you calculate remoteness.

I have another Australian visitor that is a fairly frequent visitor. Info about you didn’t come down but you are on Westnet Internet Services. I hope the article about Rust on the frame of my Discovery 2 was something you could use. You are my most frequent Australian visitor.

And to the guy in San Jose, California, coming via your Comcast Cable ISP, you are my most prolific visitor. And for that, thank you very much!

And to my second favorite visitor in Brewster, Massachusetts with a few more clicks you will pass the fellow in San Jose.

And to the visitor from London on the 6th of January, 2010 13:14:21 (Central Standard Time) I’m sorry you missed this post and hope you come back to see it soon.

I hope to update the Blog site a bit more often and I have some ideas for some new pages on the parent site www.OkieRover.com. I have been collecting Google Street Views that have Land Rovers in them. So when I’m really, really bored I electronically drive up and down the streets of the world looking for Land Rovers. Yes, I know it’s a sad existence. If you know of a street with a Land Rover on it, send me a link. I’ll add it to the site.

Once again thanks to everyone out there. I know there are a million other things you could be doing instead of reading my blog. I hope 2010 brings you good fortune and a lot of maintenance and repair-free driving.

Thanks for Reading and Happy Rovering.

Posted on

New Blog (Post #78) 7/27/2007)

I have finally moved the Rover Log over to a blogging site. It gives me a lot of freedom and a little more exposure to the blogosphere. Like that matters.
Anyway.
All the post from the old blog are here and with the labels at the bottom you can see related posts. Neat-o, right?
Thanks for reading, and happy Rovering.

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December 27th, 2004 (Post #55)

December 27th, 2004
Head liner, New tires, Recovery points, Got stuck, FTP down, Lense project, Transmission service

Head liner
I pulled the fabric off the moon roof cover this past Sunday. It seems the cover is made of fiberglass. The fabric came off faily easy. I was surprised by the noises you normally don’t hear when the head liner is removed. I will try to refit a new liner cover on the moon roof cover hopefully this weekend if the weather holds.

I have decided NOT to take the moon roof cover out of the truck to put the fabric on. I have several reasons for this but the biggest is: I don’t know if the cover will come out of the moon roof assembly. I will have pictures in the write up but it is not easily assertainable how this would be accomplished. So I will cut the fabric just short of the edge and glue it in place while the roof is still in the truck.

As the glue is “spray glue” this shouldn’t be too much trouble to get the glue on there but the potential for mess is high. So I will treat it like a painting project and use a drop cloth just in case. Check the head liner page for more details soon.

New tires
I have been researching new tires. I originally wanted to put 235s on the Big White Bus but after asking several friends it seems a body lift and lift kit would be advisable. So I would need to also replace my springs and probably do my break lines while I was at it. So I will wait a bit and see if I can get off-road instead. While I would love to do all this I just can’t justify it right now
and will put Bridgestone Dueler A/T Revo (235/70R16) on the BWB. They seem to score really high. I’d love to put Michelin XZLs on the BWB the pocket book and their availability due to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan prohibit me from pursuing that option. Some boards say I could get a used set from Canada but I will wait.

Recovery points
A recent episode of getting stuck reminded me that I have no recovery points on the front of my Rover. This is a major problem. So I did some asking on several message boards and decided to get a couple of simple hooks from one of the many domestic trucks available in the U.S. I went down to Del City Pickup Parts salvage yard in Del City, Oklahoma (405)677-2431. They had a few hooks on a display but did not have two of a kind. So I asked about a Ford F-250 and he directed me to the yard where I found an F-250. It had a closed loop “hook” on the truck and the base of the hook was too wide for the mounting point I was hoping to use. Right next to
it was a Suburban. It’s too hooks were easy to see and were very long on the attach side of the hook. That would give me enough distance to clear my brush guard. I believe I will have to drill a hole in the hook to match up with my connection point but that shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

I had considered J.A.T.E. rings available from OKRovers and other sites. They have a ‘cool factor’ of 10 but I would have needed to manufacture a connection point and I would have to remove my air damn permanently. I am not ready for that as I like the look of the truck with the air dam on it. I know the air dam will need to go if I am off-roading. It only gathered a bit of mud in my recent incident getting stuck.

I am planning a quick release method for quickly removing the air dam. I already have the lamps wired with plugs so they can be disconnected.

Getting stuck
Many of you have probably read my posts titled “NOT AS FUN AS IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN”
and “Dumbassery”. Dumbassery is my new catch phrase and I hope I can get it registered as a trademark. Sorta like Trump and “you’re fired”. Just kidding. You all are free to use the word as much as you like.

I wish I could say I had fun doing this but it was just pure and simple stupidity. When I had nearly given up hope I found a tow truck driver with some moxey and with his 100 foot of cable and my newly purchased 70 foot of tow strap and 30 foot of chain we got it out.

I was doing pretty good until I hit the giant red sandstone rock. Then all my progress was going down instead of forward.

I know now my tires must be replaced. And my transfer case wouldn’t go into low range. I have an appointment about the transfer case and the tires are coming pretty soon.

Check out the Got Stuck page for pics and more text describing my recent episode of dumbassery.

FTP service down
My host CRT Online has been having FTP problems as of late and I haven’t been able to update. Hopefully each of you have been busy with projects and toys Santa brought you to miss any writings I may or may not have been putting up.

Lens problem
My right turn signal indicator lens fell out of it’s position a couple of weeks ago. As you know my truck was wrecked way back before I bought it and this was a simple problem that finally failed. I have a write up about the lense repair you can check out on the Lens repair page. Getting the right materials was the key.

Transmission service
My recent episode of getting the center console back in the Rover and my getting stuck pointed out that my transfer case would not go into low range. I am having Cottman’s do a transmission service on the BWB on Wednesday of this week. I asked them investigate why the transfer case was also stuck. Cottman’s rebuilt my transmission a few years ago and I so far have trusted them with fast service and have had no problems with the rebuild. So again they will get my business to do a service on the fluid that is now approximately 2 years old.

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August 30th, 2004 (Post #50)

August 30th, 2004
Wet carpet, wet pad, and I didn’t even get in the river
I noticed that my Rover doesn’t leave a little puddle underneath like most cars in the semi-arid desert that is Oklahoma when the air conditioning is running. Guess where all that water is? Come you can do it…YES! right in the floor board of the passenger side. Evil German Dude offered the advice that my drain tubes were clogged. I knew that but I’m thinking it may not be. But I’ll try to find the drain tube and try to clear it first. Thank heaven for compressed air.

Carpet cleaning
As I stated on the OkieRover home page I have pulled the carpet out of the front of the Rover.
It required the complete removal of the console and was quite a mess. There are only 5 million
wires, two air vents (for the back foot area), 4 relays and 18,000 connectors, and some petrified cheese from a taco or some other mexican fast food. The nickel and four pennies I found are offsetting the repair costs too! I also found an old note reminding me of some awfully important information. I couldn’t decypher my codes on the paper, but I think it was a part number for something on the air conditioning. But who knows. I took some pics and will share in a tech tip on carpet cleaning which was the purpose for removing the carpet. I can tell you my good friends that I will not be putting it back in one piece. I will cut it in half and install it as two pieces. I don’t
think you should remove the center console to clean the carpet. That’s just silly.

Center console
My center console has seen better days. I have repaired the flip top door a couple of times. The switch panels don’t fit well and a couple of the braces are broke. The kids when they were younger were disposed to sit on it when they were switching places in the back or just to chat with one of the front passengers when the other one of us ran into a store or such while they waited. That and the occasional climb into the back seat from the front seat using the console as a step on the way over have taken their toll.

The console is basically two parts fitted together with a couple of flimzy plastic pieces. The first part holds the ashtray and the shifting levers protrude from there. The rear part is the box and houses two cup holders.

All this console talk is due to the fact that I have need for a Citizen’s Band radio when we off-road. I would have liked to mount it on the back of the present console. The Infamous Perrone Ford installed his this way as did Chad Manz but Chad doesn’t like it there and describes some problems with that location on his website, AzArmadillo.

I thought about building a new center console box to conceal the CB radio. I haven’t ruled that out yet. I use the box to hold quite a managery of items that would, if I had one, fit in the glove box. Most modern American cars have a glove box. The glove box must have in the early days contained, well gloves. In the early days of driving with out full enclosed coaches the need for gloves in the colder months must have necessitated a place to store them. This and the popularity of gloves at the transition of the 19th to the 20th century made a glove box an absolute necessity.

In my Rover the absence of a glove box and the center console box have caused me to use this space to store everything but gloves. In it you will find a dizzying collection of items including: a cup full of spare change, a calculator, several ink pens, a tape of my favorite Pow Wow music, a bottle of Visine, a US military issue pocket knife, an eyeglass repair kit, dental floss,
finger nail clippers, and my window punch for blasting out the windows if I ever turn the Rover into a submarine and go submerged. So as you can see I use the box to it’s utmost so shrinking the size of the box to mount the CB radio inside is mostly out of the question.

I could get a new CB radio. One with the spiffy controls on the mic. There are several available. Cobra makes the 75 WX ST it has weather band too, but so does my stock Land Rover radio. But I inherited this one from my departed father and if it still works it may have a few more years left in it. And it was free. I got some cool power meters with it too. So the radio location is still pending.

Posted on

June 26th, 2004 (Post #47)

June 26th, 2004
New Site, New Shocks
I decided that I needed a site for the online display of my Big White Bus. So as you read this
OkieRover.com is up and running. It contains the same old stuff I had before just in a different format and with a different look.

I was finally able to get some money together to replace the shocks. The control of the dead shocks is starting to scare me on bumps. It’s adventure to go from I-235 on to I-40 west bound. That’s what I call “real driving”. Anyway…I bought Old Man Emu shocks from Ryan at Rover Cannibal. They should be in any day now. Hopefully I can put them on this long weekend. I’ll post the models and maybe some links when they arrive.

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