Patching and Painting the Floor Pan on my Range Rover Classic (Post #687) 1/12/2024

In this week’s post I continue my work on the floor pan. This time it’s patching the panel wear rust munched it’s way through. I patched a roughly 4″ x 5″ piece and three holes. One was about the size of a quarter the other about the size of a nickel.

I made up a template cut it out for the 4×5 hole. For the smaller holes I drilled them out to make them uniformly round. This helped greatly with making the patches. The third hole I just welded shut by building up the weld to bridge the hole.

I had a bit of trouble getting the welder dialed in. I haven’t changed the setting but for some reason it the welder was being difficult. Once dialed in (set back to the original settings) I managed to get good penetrating welds.

Once it was all patched up I got some paint on every thing. I was also able to get some rattle-can rhino-liner/stone chip sealer on the Z bar. I still believe this is crucial to keeping the rust at bay for a few more years. I will likely put a bunch of seal sealer in there as well. Belt and suspenders if you know what I mean.

My next episode will be getting the cross beams installed. This will be a challenge I can assure you.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

https://youtu.be/uoWbYqQfFh0

Diagnosing a non-starting Range Rover Classic and Painting the Floor Pan (Post #686) 1/4/2024

Happy New Year!

In this episode I diagnose a non-starting Range Rover. Turns out it was actually pretty simple. I do some mostly-questionable things in this video. When working with gasoline (petrol for those of you in the “other English” speaking countries) you need to be VERY careful. More careful than I am in this video.

First, I try to catch fuel from the return line, which would not have come out of that line, it would come out of the rail on top the engine. In itself not terribly dangerous on a cold engine. The second is opening the fuel lines from the fuel pump. Again not terribly dangerous in itself, but not smart either. A little static electricity and this may have been my last video. So don’t be stupid.

SPOILER ALERT: Don’t read the next paragraph if you haven’t watched the video and still want to be surprised by the cause of my non-starting Range Rover Classic.

Ever run out of gas? Well, I have now for my second time in 44 years of driving. I ran out once when I was 18 years old. I was 2 miles from the gas station and just forgot to fill up the FIRST time I passed the station. My dad was cool, and came and got me, chastised me the 2 miles to the gas station and was kind enough to drive me back to my 1973 Ford Maverick.

The second time I ran out of gas…was apparently last week after I parked the Big White Bus. I guess I had just enough gas to get her back into the garage.

Yeah, my non-starting was due to an empty fuel tank. I put 8 gallons in and she started right up. LOL.

I took the rest of the day and finished welding the Z bar on to the rear floor pan. Then I painted it. I spend a little extra time spraying paint into the gap between the Z bar and the floor pan. The idea here was the liquid paint would go between the metals and hopefully coat between the two pieces. I will also file the space with rattle-can rhino-liner, chip sealer, or whatever you want to call it. Then I will fill the gap with seam sealer.

I got to some length about perhaps melting some wax and making it run in there. Sounds like a great idea, but probably not a great idea. I’ll stick to seam sealer.

That’s about it, Like and subscribe.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

Floor Pan Repair on a Range Rover Classic: Fitting the bed Part 2 (Post #683) 12/16/2024

This week is part two of Grady and I trying to get the damn Z bar attached to the bed. We had a helluva time getting our welds to stick. In the end it came down to me removing a lot of the primer and paint I spent so much time getting into place.

The welds were not taking because the ground was poor. It required me to grind off a lot of paint and to get new vice clamps to hold the steel together.

Taking that paint off was no challenge for the power tools. It was painful to me because my ultimate goal in all this was to put this floor bed back together BETTER than it was before. The better is that I don’t have to worry about it rusting out.

Once I get it back together, I am going to spend significant time getting it recoated with paint and rust preventative coverings. This may be challenging with winter now upon us. It was 70F today but it is in the thirties in the mornings. I’m hoping for a warm spell around the new year so I can get the paint applied.

That’s about it for this episode. Like and Subscribe.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

Upper Tailgate Repair on a Range Rover Classic, Part 2 (Post #672) 9/22/2024

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In this video I continue to refurbish the upper tailgate frame. It’s crusty. I ordered some 30 inch wire bottle brushes to attempt to get the rust out of the frame.

They worked great. I ordered them from Justman Brushes. Made in America too!! I eventually nipped the ring off of one and inserted it into my drill. This was pretty clever of me if I do say so myself.

Once I got as much of the rust out as I thought I could get, I moved to get the paint in there. It did occur to me that I could have dipped the frame in sulfuric acid. But I would have had to start all over and in the end, I still had to rely on the paint pouring to coat the interior.

I will still have to lightly sand the frame to even up the paint. The rust preventative paint is some very thick stuff.

At the end of the video I go on a rant that I liken never finishing the Range Rover Classic to Shipwright’s Disease. I posted on this previously back in 2022. You can see that by clicking the link Shipwright’s Disease [Okierover].

Read Tailgate Repair Part 1 here….

Carry on to Part 3…

Thanks for listening to me whine, like and subscribe, and Happy Rovering.

Rear Floor Pan Repair on a Range Rover Classic (Post #670) 9/7/2024

In this post I play a chemist and use muriatic acid to de-galvanize the zinc off my Z bar. Some time ago I sourced some Z bar to rebuild the rusted ledge of the floor panel. Welding galvanized steel can make you sick. It requires a well ventilated space and likely a respirator. There are lots of videos on the YouTubes that show guys welding galvanized steel. I’ve seen enough warnings to know I don’t want anything to do with it.

So using some of the acid for the swimming pool I decided to chemically remove the zinc. This too is very dangerous. So this is fair warning, don’t try this at home kids.

I got the zinc off in short order and got the Z bar double primed and double coated with black paint. I have no fantasy that this will never rust. I just don’t want it to rust through in the next 10 years.

I also got the sunroof drain installed. This was rewarding. Getting little jobs done is great. I bought a “step drill” and am now wondering why I didn’t buy one A LONG TIME AGO. This was pretty awesome. It was expensive at $58.00(US) for one that would cut mild steel.

My next step is to dry fit the panel to confirm the Z bar and panel will fit in the place it once was. I also reached out to my biological brother’s sister (we didn’t grow up together) to see what getting the panel stripped with her metal stripping service. I really can’t go forward without that step completed.

That’s about it for this week. Like and subscribe on YouTube. Subscribe to the blog so you get notifications. I had a hit with…

Footwell Repair Part 6: Floor Panel Repair, Seam Sealer (Post #665) 8/5/2024

As of this post it has more than 1,000 views!!! I have no idea why. Most of my videos don’t get to 100 views.

Thanks for ready and Happy Rovering.

Footwell Repair Part 12: Wheel Well Panel Assembly (Post #659) 6/23/2024

It was a rare week that allowed me to work on the Big White Bus two days in a row. I was able to install the panel I built from the last video and post. I was also channeling my inner Christopher Walken from The Dearhunter (1978) wearing a bandana with my hair doing it’s own thing up there.

I started the day by painting the panel. The humidity and the heat kept the paint from drying quickly. So while I waited I checked out a package I ordered from eBay. I watched a video by Steve Winkelman where he had a  Camp Chef Griddle on top his Coleman 425C camp stove. I HAVE A Coleman 425C! So I ordered one. I got it for something like $25.00(US). It was a steal and accomplishes a goal I’ve had. I don’t need a Blackstone…I just needed to find a griddle that fit. What luck!!!

Camp Chef Griddle FTW!!!!

It needs some clean up and will need to be re-seasoned. It came with a bag with a zipper, but the zipper was crunched. So I split the zipper with a box knife. This is going to be awesome to make fajitas on and breakfast and burritos and….

I also learned this week that I’m going to need to replace the hubs on my F150. On the advise of a friend at work, I ordered some Timkin hubs and I’ll need to replace the brake discs and pads.

My plan was to weld the panel into place with plug welds. I saw a video on Eastman where they painted everything up and then used a special drill bit to take the paint off on JUST the part you are going to weld.

I thought this was a good chance to practice for the rear floor panel. So I took a broken drill bit and ground it down to mimic the tool. Good news, it works great! Bad news, I had no way to hold these panels together while I welded them. So I decided to punt on the welding and went to the hardware store and bought some stainless steel self-tapping screws.

So the paint finally dried (enough) and I began installing the panel. I had some trouble with the holding of the panel and the driving of the screws. See my 5/16th driver didn’t have a magnet so the screw continued to fall out. It was very frustrating.

I put it together and then realized I hadn’t installed the seam sealer. So I had to take it all apart and do it twice. Also I got the seam sealer ALL over me. I had to clean up with mineral spirits.

I have the panel in place. I’m not happy with it. I also took a few minutes to look at putting all this back together. I may or may not have forgotten where everything goes. Soooooo… This is going to take a little while to get this back together. Lots of trial and error.

That’s about it. I’m going get the floor put together THEN I’m going to reassemble everything. I’m hoping this coming Saturday I’ll be able to start the floor. The shape of the panel is going to be big challenge.

Like and subscribe, and as always Happy Rovering.

https://youtu.be/G6JN5VOZt-I