July 8th, 2005 (Post #61)

July 8th, 2005

There is a huge update in the works. I have started on it now twice, once yesterday, and again today, having deleted several days work. Very frustrating.

Engine
JagGuy and I have the engine in. We started on it April and finished it after three long weekends. JagGuy has all the skill necessary for a successful transplant. And it showed. He had the heads off and the engine built before I could get in the shop each weekend. He has the luxury of Fridays being fun days and he used his “fun” day for my engine. What a great friend.

With the engine swap we found several other problems. I will start listing them and I will probably forget some as there were many.

Radiator
It was indeed a head gasket problem but with that there was also a problem with the radiator. It was clogged again. We noticed that when we revved the engine the hoses would flex. Meaning there was a lot of pressure in the system. Frustrated I replaced the radiator with a new one from Atlantic British. Cooling problems vanished.

Heater Core
One of the final things to be blown by the old engine was the heater core. I have heard horror stories about getting the dash off to replace this part. I will wait for a weekend in September or October when it gets cooler to replace this. I bought the replacement core when it came up on British Pacific’s Steve’s Deal of the Day.

The wife
While I’m sure some of you were expecting me to say I was replacing my wife, I have not. She has been harrassing me lately about the costs of the BWB. Keeping a 12 year old car on the road in good working order is hard. It is harder when it was designed in a British Pub by 12 drunk engineers. But for my piece of mind and to reassure her that I was not spending the milk money for frivolous toys I pulled a report out of Quicken of all the auto repair expenses. I was surprised by the amount, surprised in a good way. She was surprised in a bad way. 2800 dollars (US) was the tally for the period since I made the final payment back in November 2004.

Not bad for all the things I’ve bought for the engine and including oil changes for both cars. She still believes with all her heart that a $450 a month car payment would be cheaper than putting parts on the paid off Rover. I have now classified the Rover as a restoration project. So the costs are easier to stomach as I am restoring a car, just like on TV!!!!

Steering seal
The morning after I got the BWB home with all the overheating problems we planned to return her to the shop in Edmond, it was a cool April morning so I figured the heating problems would be less if I went in the morning. After I pulled into the gas station to fill up I got out and noticed the long red stream of fluid leading from the street to underneath the Rover. Transmission fluid, but from where?

After a long look it was the steering box. Since ATF will burn and considering the blow back to the exhaust I drove her home defeated and disappointed. We put a seal on the next weekend.

Steering Shaft
Once again on sale at British Pacific. If you look at the steering shaft you will notice a rubber grommet there. Mine is hard as a rock and cracked. Obviously failed. Now the question begs why can’t we just replace the rubber bits. Well I bought a new shaft and will investigate if the old can be repaired when I get it off of there. Hammerin’ Dan observes that the heat from the headers is probably to blame in the rubber failing. Possibly some asbestos wrap might be in order.

Brake Switch
The ABS lights came on and with some investigation and a clever way to short the diagnostic plug I learned my brake light switch had failed. I got a replacement on sale from British Pacific’s Deal of the day. The installation was not any fun due to the location and the contortionist position you have to get in. Also my eyes don’t work that well up close and so most of the install was done while guessing on a blurry image.

Radio
The steam that escaped from the blown heater core filled the cab with nasty antifreeze steam. The radio immediately from that day forward would act like it lost power often loosing the code. Occassionaly it would not work at all. I thought sure the steam killed it. I was wrong. The ignition switch is failing. You may say, “what the hell?” Well it would be a good question.

The accessory function of the switch that powers many things like the windows and other stuff is apparently shorting out or not making connection. So among the other things the ignition switch is failing and needs some help.

Carpets
Had to clean the carpets again due to the antifreeze leak inside the cab. Due to my previous planning I did not have to remove the center console. Sweet!

Exhaust
Having spent a good three hours under the BWB during the engine project I noticed that none of the hangers were replaced the last time I had the exhaust worked on at University Muffler. That is disappointing cause I like those guys their work is just not very good. I had it in there again recently to have a torn exhaust pipe fixed. Due to the hangers being unhooked the only place the exhaust was attached had stressed the pipe to the point that the silencer at the rear was about to break off. I had them cut it off and weld on a pipe. It changed the sound some but not too bad. Well the weld for that section broke. So I took it to Discount Muffler just up the road from the office and had them put a good weld on it. It cost me 25 bucks but it’s now welded. I will come back to them to have the new cats welded in as soon as I buy them.

Archive

I broke up the archive in to sections based on the year. I’ve been doing this
Rover Log for 3 years now. Wow.

So be patient with me as I get the new pages up. Thanks for reading and happy
rovering. Tell your friends about the site.

October 26th, 2004 (Post #53)

October 26th, 2004
No console, window problems, leaky windshield
Had to put off putting the console back in. It really needs to be glued properly. I have it sitting in the garage while I finish the painting on the house.

The window ECU fried a week ago when I was picking up my daughter from one of her cheerleading assignments. I rolled the window down to offer one of the kids a ride and there was a spark and then another and the windows all rolled down. I futzed with it a bit and then drove home in the 49 degree weather. It wasn’t too bad. I spent 40 minutes figuring out which of the relays allowed the windows to be rolled back up.

I couldn’t get the part that late on Saturday. So I made sure the windows were up just incase of bad weather. Low and behold it was like 85 that day and I really wish the windows worked. We used the air conditioning to keep up cool and avoided the restaurants with drive thru windows.

Monday I went down to Rover Cannibal and picked up another ECU. Now I can roll up and down the back windows and the front windows. How exciting!

I haven’t been getting anything else done on the truck other than adding the “horse pills” to help with the head gasket leak. I have an engine in the works and if everything goes well I should be putting a rebuilt 4.2 in by Spring. JagGuy and I will rebuild the 4.2 then rebuild mine and put it in his 90 Range Rover. Replacing his anemic and failing 3.9. We will probably rebuild the 3.9 and offer it for sale to cover the costs. More news on that as soon as the deal is done.

I got a quote for removing the windshield and refitting it to hopefully stop a leak that I believe is there. “Hopefully” is not the word I would like to be using but it’s the best I can do for now.

July 15th, 2004 (Post #48)

July 15th, 2004
Shocks On, Radiator Woes, Work and Weather
Over the Fourth of July weekend I finally got all four shocks on. I took some pics
and will have an update with that when I can get around to it.

As I had just finished the last shock, I was collecting tools and getting everything gathered up and noticed a puddle under the front left side. Antifreeze was dripping out. What? I didn’t even
touch the radiator. I wasn’t even up there for anything. Being as it was a million degrees outside I took the Rover down to Sooner Radiator on Porter Street in Norman. Sports and Classics uses them a lot and I have had them work on the Rover before. This was July 5th and I was hoping they were open considering the government holiday. They got it done and told me it was a bad tube and the tank had started leaking too. Both due to pressure most likely. Pressure, as we all know is coming from the head gasket most likely. $100(US) later I’m back on the road. So I take my wife to the Target store and when I come out there is a huge puddle of antifreeze under the truck. I was none to happy about it I can assure you. I got under bonnet and sure enough a hose clamp not properly secured. It dawned on me that they did that last time I had it in there too. No big loss but you would expect that if I had been out on a trip and I lost that much coolant I would have been in trouble.

I’ve been really busy with work lately and have not been working on the site or the Rover. It is now summer here and you can’t really comfortably work on anything without suffering.

I’ve got a great idea for a camper but I’m not ready to tell you about it. But I think it would be a one of a kind and be a lot of fun to make.