Category: restoration

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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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Real close to starting Range Rover Restoration Part Duex (Post #186) 7/9/2010

I’m getting real close to (or as we Okies say, I’m fixin’ to) moving the Range Rover into the garage for her latest restoration project. The infamous Range Rover Restoration, Part Duex: RovErica’s Revenge. I say I’m “fixin’ to” start the project because I am determined not to use my wife’s side of the garage to store the crap valuable items on my side of the garage. Currently I have a full size box spring for a bed, a giant rocking chair, a box or two of miscellaneous glassware, a book shelf, all my reenacting gear (in stackable tubs), and several other loose items on my side of the garage. There is no room for a restoration project.

Should I have a garage sale? Probably. Do I hate to have garage sales? Definitely. I am waiting for the garage sale because I know when we start working on my mom’s house there will be tons of stuff to sell at a garage sale. Why have a little garage sale when a bigger one will be better?

So I will get the kids to help move the reenacting stuff up to the attic where it was before I used it back in April. I will reorganize the other items and reduce their floor space foot print. Once that is done, I can move the Range Rover in and get started.

That's a true fact dad.

Get started? What are you going to do OkieRover? That is a great question oh gracious and loyal reader. Let us begin by describing first why anything has to be done at all. Maintenance, that’s why. When you allow a sixteen year old to drive a 15 year old vehicle of British manufacture, things magically stop working. I know that is hard to believe with kids as great as mine but it is “a true fact” as Diet Mountain Drew would say.

When you can’t get to the vehicle because:

  • it is busy being a taxi for a dozen children who’s parents were smarter than to give their kids cars,
  • it is sitting in front of some kids house while your daughter is putting around in that kid’s car because, “Oh, I forgot to tell you, the air condition isn’t cold any more.”,
  • it arrives home each day on average about 25 minutes after you have gone to bed,
  • and lastly, because you are only allowed two sentences each time you see your daughter exit the house on her way to work or somewhere else she is late to, and you are sure as hell not going to let her forget to clean her room and do that random chore you asked her to do yesterday before the door shuts and she is gone again. You don’t waste those precious moments on, “how’s your car running?” Which almost always elicits a response like, “Good! That weird noise it was making for the last 3 weeks finally stopped yesterday.”

See, kids don’t equate noises with problems like mechanics do. Just listen to one hour of Car Talk on your local public radion station Saturday. I dare you. Hell, I double dog dare you. I swear I hear the brothers ask the caller, “How long has it been making that noise?” at least 10 times per show. And almost every caller responds with the same answer, “oh, I’d say aboot six munts or so.” [end New Englander accent]

These clueless callers think their mechanic or in my kid’s case, daddy, can sense any automotive problem with his amazing super powers 30 miles away, at work, talking to callers who’ve locked out their accounts on the system for the fourth time that day or can’t remember the password you gave them ten minutes ago, while listening to The Beat Farmers Radio station on Pandora or my Those Darlins CD, while thinking about the roast beef and provolone sandwich he is going to enjoy at VZDs when lunch time rolls around. All the while dreaming up things to blog to you about. (I know what you’re thinking, yeah, I’m a busy guy.)

So after a couple of years of this behavior things get beyond fixing pretty fast. Let’s us now compile a list of just the things I can remember right off the top of my head. In no particular order:

Viscous Coupling
Sun Roof
Brake Discs
Brake Reservoir
Air Conditioning System
Bushings
Sound System
Cosmetic items inside, outside, and under the hood
Cruise Control
Door Locks
Head Liner
Complete Fluid Service
Drive Shaft Seals
Power Steering Hoses
Possible CV Joints
Possible Failed Transmission

That’s about it. If I were to take this bad boy down to a mechanic I’m pretty sure the labor alone for all this could buy a pretty nice used late model LR3 or Range Rover. That leads us to the obvious question, why fix it? Well, you didn’t read this far down this blog post to ask that question, you know why. Because I, like you, love your Range Rover and can’t imagine not having it sitting in the driveway waiting for me to jump in and tear off down the road.

I hope to have all this fixed in time for the inevitable Snowpocalypses of 2010 and 2011. And with my new utility trailer I hope to make a few camping trips with my wife next year.

The good news for my readers is the fourteen new entries to the Tech Tips Section of www.OkieRover.com these projects will create.

RovErica aka RovErica

All this and I’ve been thinking about reviving the local Land Rover Owners club for the OKC metro area. So look for more info on that in the coming months. I have a photographer and former Land Rover driver (RovErica), anyone know a good web programmer that works cheap?

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Encourage them (Post #168) 2/12/2010

For a moment I want you to think about how your Land Rover makes you feel. Soak it all in. No matter which model you drive, be it one of the modern classics like a 90s model Range Rover or a 1947 Series 1, you know how proud you are to drive it. You are proud because you know how much work goes in to keeping that beauty ON THE ROAD (or OFF as it may be).

If you are a steady reader you know there are probably two dozen issues outstanding on my 1993 Range Rover Classic LWB. Many of you have referred to your vehicles as “rolling restorations”, and they truly are. Finish one project and there is another to start and if this goes on continuously you qualify for the title of rolling restoration.

I have taken my Range Rover off-line one time for a restoration. It was 3 years ago. I needed to get a great many things fixed in anticipation of my daughter RovErica driving the Classic as her first car. Now while the logic of allowing a 16 year old to drive such a classic Land Rover can be debated, the repairs were long over due. We could also debate whether or not a 1993 Range Rover is even classic, but lets pretend it is for this argument. I could not imagine passing a Series vehicle on to a teenager.

The Range Rover Classic was just enough different from everything else in the parking lot and had a high enough “neat-o factor” that it would deflect the inevitable scorn of her classmates. When it started to show the two years of hard driving RovErica gave her, the neat-o factor digressed to the what a piece of junk factor.

Waving at vehicles is a man thing. Motorcycle riders wave at each other with a hand extended low about where the hands of a clock would be at 4 or 8. They are way too cool to wave up high. Jeep drivers wave to fellow Jeep drivers. Jaguar drivers wave at other drivers. And following suit Land Rover Drivers wave at fellow enthusiasts. I qualify that with the word enthusiast because I have learned that in only a few cases do women wave. I’ve been smiled at once by a woman I waved at. She was in a Discovery 2. In my experience, NO WOMEN wave. Women driving Freelanders, LR2 and LR3s or any of the new Range Rover models refuse to wave. Zip, zero, zilch. I’m not sure if it is self absorption or what, but they don’t seem to appreciate other Land Rovers. This will lead me now to conclude they are not enthusiasts.

Now compare that to when you see a Discovery heading your way and a fellow male of our species is driving, you will get a wave if they see you. You can almost gauge the involvement or pride by how they wave. They are probably at the very least an enthusiast and they might even be a hobbyist if the wheel wells are full of mud and there is any measurable amount of kit hanging off their Landy.

Discussing this with my wife reveals one universal constant. Women are not automobile enthusiasts. For the most part women don’t really care what they drive. My wife, like many women, does not understand the male fascination with cars or even motorcycles for that matter.

This year’s snow storms here in Oklahoma often clear the roads of the casual driver. Your Land Rover to Everything else with tires ratio goes up drastically. This is expected, as road clearing in Oklahoma is more of a hobby of a municipality than a mission. And if the cars in your driveway were priced at 60,000$(US) or more you are 34.67 times more likely to have your neighborhood streets cleared by the city than any of the “other areas”. Squeeky wheel gets the grease, etc…

So the road conditions often dictate the vehicle you drive. Ground clearance is everything. My son’s Scion xB sat idle for six straight days. When you venture out on the snow covered roads you see a lot of Jeeps, Toyotas and pickups. This is when you see the Land Rovers. And this is when you see the enthusiastic Land Rover drivers.

You will get waves and driver’s often point and give a thumbs up when they see you passing the opposite way. They know you are in a capable vehicle. They also know that it took a lot of work to get your Land Rover out on the road to drive down to Braums to get milk.

I have found myself lately recognizing other classic vehicles on the road. And this is where I tie the whole theme together. Encourage the brave men who choose to drive a rolling restoration.. If we are to see the truly classic cars on the road we need to encourage the drivers when we see them. Tell them you like their cars. Give them a thumbs up.

One of my favorite shows on the air today is Wheeler Dealers. I’ve mentioned them before. Mike Brewer and Edd China buy and restore iconic cars (60s, 70s, and 80s) and then try and sell them on for a profit. I them on my local HD cable provider on the HD Theater Channel. You can watch these guys take a beater of an auto and transform it to a usable daily driver.

You can follow the rest of the show by going over to Youtube. Its a great show and it follows the theme here, keeping the classics on the road.

I have seen a few classic cars lately that are really great. I’ve gathered a few pictures of vehicles that are similar so you will know what I’m talking about. There are others driving around the little burg I live in. These are the latest I’ve seen and were fresh in my mind.

A classic Ford Falcon is now buzzing around Norman. I pulled up next to him on Porter Avenue and with my window down I told him I

really liked that, with a point, and said good job. His reaction was to smile and say thanks.
Ford Falcon Wagon
My best friend drove a Ford Falcon in high school so these vehicles have a special place in my heart. The difficulty of keeping it on the road was evident the moment you got in. The passenger side floor board was completely rusted out and a speed limit sign had been commandeered to serve as a floor board.

Just this Friday morning I saw a 1965 Chevy C10 blazing down I-35. It looked even worse than this example. I rolled up next to him and drove next to him until he noticed me. I gave him a big thumbs up. The smile on his face was indescribable. It was obvious that this truck represented something special to him. It looked like a labor of love as well. The panels were mostly straight and it was in need of a paint job.
1965 Chevy C10

When the snow was falling yesterday I saw an 80s model Jeep CJ7 on the I-40 MLK off ramp. He had a high lift jack mounted next to the external spare tire. He had a winch on the front and this Jeep looked like it was well loved and well used. The scruffy fellow behind the wheel smiled and waved when I pulled up next to him and pointed and mouthed “I liked that”.

So as you are driving around waving and recognizing your fellow Land Rover owners, give a shout out to those other auto enthusiasts that choose to drive other classic rolling restorations.

Thanks for Reading and Happy Rovering.

Posted on

A few more things (Post #144) 5/11/2009

So I’ve been driving the Range Rover this week, on and off. And I have some additions to the “little list” in the previous post. It’s amazing all the things you forget when you don’t drive something everyday.

Additions:

  • Driver’s side door latch is mostly failed.
  • Code 69.
  • Central locking system is toast.
  • Rear center brake light non-functional.
  • Passenger side seat leather beginning to split.
  • Carpets need to be cleaned/replaced.
  • Cupholders, lack there of.
  • Power steering lines leaking.

Getting out of the Big White Bus (BWB) is quite a challenge these days. My daughter has been just jerking on the door release several time very hard to get the door to open. All that is needed is to pull the door to you and then pull the latch. In either event the door needs to be sorted out and possibly the driver’s side door latch needs replacing.

Code 69 has popped up on the on board diagnostic display. That is the position sensor for the automatic transmission lever. In addition to that failure the high-low transfer case lever does not move due to a common failure with the solenoid failing. I had forgotten about that problem. Looks like I will be underneath the middle of the truck for a couple of problems.

The fob to unlock the truck has been not locking the door locks. The weak state of the actuators is probably to blame. I really like pressing a single button and listening to the doors lock. This will be one of the first things I need to sort out. The central locking system is going to be very important if I am to upgrade the sound system.

The rear center brake light stopped working. I know I hooked it up, but I’m pretty sure the slamming of the upper gate by my daughter, knocked the lamp loose and probably damaged the bulb.

No amount of leather feed/leather conditioner is going to stop the passenger side seat leather from splitting. I tried to condition it again this weekend, but until I get the tint on the windows its probably all for naught.

Who doesn’t like clean carpets? The carpets in the BWB need to be cleaned or even better replaced. I’m not sure I have the budget for that so it’s a low priority for now.

The lack of cupholders was pretty evident the last time I drove the BWB as I watched my cellular phone slide off the dash and out the window. Just kidding it just slid into the dash cubby but it scared me just the same. I have invented my own style of cup holder and am debating whether or not I turn a couple more or just install my spare Discovery cup holders. The jury is still out on this one.

The perenial power steering leak is still there. I haven’t bothered to just replace every hose. It doesn’t leak all that much, just enough to make the bottom of everything wet with fluid.

Well that’s about it. At least that’s all I could come up with for now. I’m not sure if I’ll find anything else after I start driving her. As right now if I had all the money for repairs, it would take me 10 days to sort it all out, if I did nothing else. Once again the term “rolling restoration” works very well for the Range Rover LWB known affectionately, once again, as The Big White Bus.

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66,666 (Post #79) 7/29/2007

With 66,666 miles rolling past on the odometer a couple of problems have popped up. I have had the dreaded “Three Amigos” light up on the dash 3 times now. Each time they pop up I seem to be applying my brakes on bumpy road surfaces. And each time I stop the Disco and shut off the engine, when I return to start her up again they are gone. I’m sure it’s the brakes as I have a squeeking pad somewhere on the vehicle. I purchased new pads that should arrive this week.

I also have been getting the Service Engine light. It stays on for a few hours but it has not stayed on continuously. So I purchased an Innova Equus 3130 code reader.

I got it for a good price off of eBay. This model allows you to get live data from the vehicle while it’s running. The sole set back at this time is the RS232 cable it shipped with. Most modern computers don’t use serial connections. So I’ll have to buy a serial port for my computer. Hopefully I will be able to catch the code the Disco is throwing and get it corrected.

Other than these slight annoyances I have been happy with the Disco. I really enjoyed the air conditioning on the drive home from the 35 and older Senior Division softball tournament I play in on Sunday. Our team was terrible, but what did we expect for one practice with 6 players showing up. Several of us had not even played this year. I saw guys out there that I played with 15 years ago, and I know they still play twice a week at least.

I have lots still to do on the Rangie, including getting the bushings swapped, the exhaust, recharging the air conditioner and the rust on the lower tail gate. Those are the three big projects I still haven’t completed. I’d like to replace the head unit in the sound system and have seen some Range Rover II radios for as low as 65 bucks on eBay. The original unit can be repaired for a cost of around 200 and I’ve gotten quotes for about the same amount for another one. Thats a bit pricey considering what you can buy in the retail shops.

Thanks for reading and happy rovering.

Posted on

February 16th, 2007 (Post #71)

February 16th, 2007


A nice drive.
I took the Disco down to do some work for JagGuy in far Southwest Oklahoma. I wrote about it and posted it A Nice Drive.

Restoring the Rangie.
Started putting the calipers together. It’s pretty scary to me to think this work will be tested when I try to stop. The brake fluid is taking the Self Etching Primer off. I thought it wouldn’t. But I was wrong. I’m not sure how I’ll clean that up.

I have one of the swivel seals replaced and put all the way back together. I’m going to do the other side and try to photograph every step. Which there are many. But when I’m done I’ll have a complete tear down and reassemble of the hub to the swivel seal. Hopefully that will help someone out someday.

I also wrote up the Ice Storm of 2006.

Hope you enjoy the read.

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