A Blog About Land Rovers in Oklahoma
JagGuy, now a new Land Rover owner (he has his and her’s Discoverys), called me and told me there was a, “mostly intact Ranger Rover Classic at Pull-a-Part.” That is a sad and happy thing all in one.
Continue reading “Scavenging a Classic (Post #550) 12/11/2015”
There is a great post on the Land Rovers Only Forum that has compiled a great collection of the part numbers for the Air Idler Valve. The part is very pricey if you source if from the major Land Rover online sites like Atlantic British and Rovers North. Those are the two I use, there are others as well.
The part is a common GM part for Chevy Astro vans and S-10 pickups. You can read the post to get all the part numbers and then you can source the part from your favorite provider.
http://www.landroversonly.com/forums/f8/idle-control-valve-idle-problems-get-know-1843/
It’s basically a reprinting of the great stuff found on Rangerovers.net at this link with even more part numbers.
http://www.rangerovers.net/rrparts4.html#efinew
Finding parts for 20-year-old Range Rovers is getting harder and harder every day. Have you looked for a fan resistor kit lately? There are none to be had presently.
Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.
During my recent repairs of radiator cooling fans and power steering hoses I came across a couple of broken bits. While discussing the electric cooling fan project with the Evil German Dude we noticed the belt that drives the air conditioning compressor was very loose. So while I was under the bonnet for the hoses I thought I’d just sort that out. I didn’t have the replacement hose and it was New Year’s Day so there was no way to get the hose.
I got the pulley in place and began tightening the bolt on the belt tensioner. It never got tight. At some point I decided something was not right at all. At first I figured the bolt was stripped. That has been my experience in the past so my brain naturally went to that first.
I removed the bolt and the bracket and found…
it was broken. Wow. That is disappointing. As you can see in the picture above there are two of these on a Range Rover Classic 1987-1994. The 1995 model has a spring driven unit. This spring driven unit is common to most “modern” cars. This friction method is serious old school. I didn’t say better, I said old school.
I knew finding this part was going to be a nightmare. I immediately called Paul Grant. He is a master of parts and he told me he thought he had one in inventory. I ordered it. It should be sitting in my mail box when I get home today. According to Paul, these are threaded on opposite sides so the one that works for the AC belt will not work for the water pump belt. I’m guessing this is going to added to the list of parts I pull from Range Rovers I find in the breaker’s yards. If you are looking for parts I highly recommend Paul. Stop by his eBay Store and buy something.
The second wasn’t really visible until I had the belts out of the way. Some how the Oil Pressure Switch lost its spade connector. I had noticed a couple of wires loose but was unsure where they went. The spade end doesn’t look like any thing I’ve ever seen before.
The oil pressure switch is found on the side of the engine right where the oil filter is screwed on. I know I’ve changed my oil at least once recently and I should have noticed this but didn’t.
I did find an interesting thing when researching parts sites. Rover’s North lists this part with a really great diagram of it’s identification and location. It also lists for 54.95$(US). However on the Atlantic British site it lists for 7.95$(US). On the Rovers North site similar ones for Discovery II’s also list for 8.95$(US).
I find that a helluva difference in price. I’m almost afraid to ask why. I think I’ll order the 7.95$(US) one from Atlantic British. I’m running out of funds for this round of repairs and I still need to purchase some oxygen sensors.
In my quest for improving the gas mileage by swapping to electric fans I will need to only change one variable at a time. There are potentially four things I believe I can do to improve gas mileage:
For the sake of the scientific process I think I’ll change only one variable at a time. I can run a couple of tanks of fuel and get a few MPG readings. I’ll report them all back as soon as I get the data.
Thanks for reading,
You are driving a brick what do you expect your gas mileage to be?
and Happy Rovering.
I have long believed that the Classic’s ABS pump was rebuildable. It is just an electric motor and a pump mechanism. I personally believe there should be a pump on the Classic that was good for at least two hours of constant running. Perhaps a type of PTO from the motor, nevermind, but that really doesn’t make much sense. I’ve even kicked around in my head building a circuit to light an LED on the dash when the bloody pump is running. All this just so I can catch a failure before it happens. In any event, the pumps are (IMHO) weak and the relays they use can fail and leave you without brakes as you know them.
If you read enough message boards you will see many guys talking about removing the ABS and going to “standard brakes”. Mostly this is because of this failure and the cost of repair. ABS has its place in the universe and I can respect that. But I’d hope it would, in the future, be more reliable over the life of the vehicle. I received an email from George a fellow Rover owner down in Australia a while back and we kicked this subject back and forth.
So today, I’m checking my email and lo and behold I get the following email from my mate down under, George D’Onofrio.
Hey Eric!
Happy New Year!
Just letting you know that ABS pumps ARE repairable!
Got mine back from Al Cowan after a $US378 overhaul (vs $1500 new):
http://www.falconworks.net/britold/brit.htm
along with a new accumulator and 2 new relays.
I held off replacing the accumulator as I wanted to see what it did with a decent pump. The howling has stopped (bearing?) and all I hear is a buzz like a mosquito in my ear. I can also hear the relay click when it starts/stops. AND The Three Amigos have ridden off into the sunset too!
Stationary, I get 3-4 pedal pushes before the pump starts and it only runs for 2-3 secs. On the road, it starts when the brake pedal gets a good push but it stops pretty quickly.
By referring to Al’s bible: I’ve concluded the accumulator is getting near the end of its days but I’m due to change the brake fluid this year so I’ll replace it then.
Cheers George
Thanks George!
Okay my first observation…HOW THE HELL HAVE I MISSED THIS SITE?
This is a great trove of Land Rover information and I have never seen it? I may have to go back to a Google Search 101 class. I really like this site, well except it looks like it was coded by a 13 year old girl. It is chock full of great info. So much so I’m going to put it on the link section.
So thanks to George and thanks to the fun folks at Falcon Works. If I had known about you when we were trekking across the country in the Disco 2 back in 2008 I would have stopped by. We DROVE RIGHT BY THE PLACE! Ugggh! My pal Dave has been begging us to come back out to California so perhaps we’ll stop by on our way home.
Check them out and if you buy something tell them you saw it on OkieRover’s blog. They don’t know me from Adam’s house cat, but I’d like them to know where the referrals are coming from.
Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.
PS. wow this post just just crammed with jargony goodness, wasn’t it!?
QUICK! Name three things you didn’t expect to happen when you got home today.
Was one of them “finding a puddle of brake fluid in your driveway?”
No?
Me neither.
This is what I came home to today.
You will remember in my last post that we had a brake rotor we thought was warped. On first inspection of it, I didn’t see anything like that but the evidence (sound and peddle surging) was there.
My son, Diet Mt. Drew, called today and asked to drive the Range Rover to lunch. He first asked, via text, if it was “safe” and “reliable” enough to drive. THE NERVE! He had to ask to drive my Range Rover because his Scion xB was in the shop. It was in the shop because he hit a curb in front of the Cleveland County Fairgrounds while traveling 40 MPH. Yes, a cell phone was involved. Yes he bent the lower “A” Frame, destroyed two rims…etc… but I digress.
In any event…he drove the Classic today. I did not expect the brake caliper to fail with him at the wheel, but apparently it did. He reported all this to his mother, the noted blogging mechanic in the family “that he had severe braking issues” while driving her today.
Did anyone call me or notify me by text?
I’ve rebuilt that caliper at least once. So today I ordered a couple of re-manufactured brake calipers. They were half the price of new and free shipping, so I bought one for each side on the rear. No core return, so I can rebuild my old and tired ones again and have a spare….just in case Diet Mt. Drew drives to lunch again. (wink, wink)
If you remember the last major brake restore (I keep referring to these previous posts like you all are AVID readers) I swapped brake hoses and ground off all the rust (theoretically) and re-sprayed the brake calipers with some acid-etching primer. It was kind of silly because brake fluid is a paint solvent. But I felt obligated.
When I had them apart I noticed a lot of rust. Especially inside the caliper. I even took a picture of the rusty bleed screw, see below. The picture doesn’t show it very well but it was pitted with rust.
When I did that project, it was determined that I had a bad proportioning valve. I vaguely remember replacing it. But quite honestly if I hadn’t seen the picture labeled “Valve that failed” I wouldn’t have remember it.
It is likely that these old tattered calipers are past their prime. I’m a bit surprised with only 191,000 miles on them. (okay I’m not really all that surprised).
I’ll let you know how the replacements go and whether or not I’d recommend the company as a source for parts for your Range Rover.
Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.
Last weekend I dragged my neighbor Fish4OSU up to JagGuy’s shoppe to see if I had a spare starter on my spare engine. Unfortunately I did not. On a whim and a suggestion we went by the local “pull-a-part” which I learned today is not part of the national chain. It is U-Pull-It, whatever.
Fish4OSU needed a fan motor for his daughter’s Saturn LS-1 and a mirror. I needed a starter. I’ve been to this breakers yard many times, they seldom have any Land Rovers. But I thought what am I out, a buck…what the hell.
We found lots of Saturns and the mirrors were not in that great a condition. Fish4OSU commented it must be a thing with these cars. Bad or missing passenger side mirrors. Nearly everyone had either swapped paint with something or been driven behind a truck pulling a sand blaster down I-35. While he sourced the fan I went in search of a diamond in the rough.
I walked the 200 yards to the “import” section. I stopped to admire a Mercedes Benz 300SD with a diesel motor. As I walked on, I dreamed about dropping that into my Range Rover. I looked right and what did I see?
The second day’s parts were more pricey, 87$(US). But the air conditioning compressor costs twice that so I’m still “standing in tall cotton” as we say in Oklahoma.
I am really happy I found her and was able to get some parts off her. I was sad to see her in the breaker’s yard. It just makes me realize that Classics are getting harder to come by and getting parts for them will be getting harder and harder. I guess when I can no longer get the important parts, I’ll just have to buy a Series 2a or Series 3. You can still get most of the parts for one of those from Rovers North.
Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.