SCARR – Day Four (Post #481) 4/9/2014

Sunday the sun came up as expected in the east and we realized it was time to go home. We started packing up the kit. The tent fit in the amazingly small bag with a little coaxing. The boxes were all loaded and I lashed everything down on the roof rack.

Jayden and John in their Discovery 1.
Jayden and John in their Discovery 1.

John and Jayden were keen to caravan with us home. It couldn’t hurt to have a support vehicle after what we had just put our Rovers through. We agreed to meet at the main pavilion.

The night before after I found my on-board air compressor, I had aired up my tires . When we got to the top it turns out they have an airing station right there on the site. What a great amenity to have for the off-roaders. Continue reading “SCARR – Day Four (Post #481) 4/9/2014”

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.

February 5th, 2007 (Post #70)

February 5th, 2007


Restoring the Rangie.
Took the brake lines off this weekend. I took the hoses down to Hoseco in south Oklahoma City.
JagGuy recommended them and so I took the old hoses down there to get the new hoses made. I had them put an extra 3 inches on the hose to allow for a lift kit if I choose to go that route in the future.

I also cleaned up the brake calipers for the paint job. I really wanted to paint the calipers or have them nice and shiny clean. Well after cleaning on them they cannot be cleaned back to shiney. So I am going to paint them. The fact that brake fluid will strip an and all paint off made that a challenge. So JagGuy suggested that I use self etching primer. It will be gray. I bought Mar-Hyde Self Etching Primer. I bought it at O’Reilly’s Auto Store. I can live with gray considering after a few months I’ll be surprised if I can tell I ever painted it.

I am dreading the swivel seal replacements. I really didn’t enjoy those jobs the first time. This time I get the added fun of it being cold in the garage while I do it.

I’m running out of weekends to get projects done. I still have to do the painting and I also have to get the drive shaft on the Discovery replaced and do all that drive line stuff. I need the lift to make that an easy job. And it right now has an Isuzu Trooper on it. I just need to schedule a day and get it down there. I’d like to have that done before I drive to Houston to take care of some family business.

January 22nd, 2007 (Post #69)

January 22nd, 2007


Cadence Marie is doing well and growing like a weed.

Restoring the Rangie.
Did a bunch of work this last weekend on the 93 LWB.

Headlamps
Replaced the head lamps with some Hellas. They are sweet. German engineering in da house! I love that commerical for VWs. Check it out.

Heater fan resistor.
Replaced the resistor for the fan. It’s located in the vent cowl. Nice place to keep it cool but
a horrible place due to water and rust and such. The replacement was no picnic. But wasn’t as bad as I expected it to be. I think I’d recommend anyone tearing out the dash to replace it when the have it all apart. The instructions say you can pull the plug out through the hole but that was not the case.
I’ve finished the write up on the Heater Fan Resistor. Check it out.

Brake Calipers.
I have the brake calipers off. They are soaking in a bucket of diesel in the garage. I want to paint them but not sure how that will go yet. The kit is coming in this week to replace the seals and such. You can check out my progress on the Brake Caliper page.

Swivel Seals.
I ordered the swivel seals. I’m not looking forward to tearing that apart again but it must be done. Maybe this next weekend I will tear them down. OR at least one of them as they are no fun to work on. You can see some of that work here on the Swivel Seal page.

November 9th, 2004 (Post #54)

November 9th, 2004
Head liner, oil change, noisy lifters, head gasket failure, leaking seal, console back in

The hur-rah for good weather seems to have been this weekend. It was perfect weather on Sunday so I took advantage to wrap up a few jobs.

Headliner
The head liner on the moon roof/sun roof cover came off today. I decided to close it before I got to work and it fell right off. I managed this summer to get it wet when I forgot to close the sun roof. As usual one of the very frequent rain showers broke out and got it really wet. That was it I guess and it decided to come off today. So I guess it’s time to revisit the liner project and try to match with the liner I replace sometime ago. Which means taking it all out AGAIN!

Lifters noisy, change oil
I have been noticing for a few thousand miles that I have a very noisy engine sound. I couldn’t decide whether it was an exhaust leak again or if a valve was sticking or if I was having some other engine related problem. It is time to change the oil and I have noticed since using the Castrol Extended Life oil sometime ago that the oil seems to fail a little faster than before. Unfortunately I can’t seem to find that flavor of oil any longer. Either they don’t stock it any more or Castrol quit making it. Either way the good ole fashioned Castrol 20w50 I use seems a little too thin at the end of it’s 3000 mile life in my engine. To kill one bird with two
stones I bought a bottle of Chevron TECHRON® Concentrate Fuel System Cleaner and put it in and I changed the oil.

The noise is, I am glad to say, no longer there. I’m not sure which of the solutions solved the problem. But my engine is nice and quiet again. Well relatively quiet.

Head gasket leak
As I have been reporting for I don’t know how many years the head gasket has been pushing fluid out of the system. In a desperate attempt to put off the obvious top end engine repair I tried some “horse pills” which sadly have failed to stem the tide. Good news is another engine is in the works. But it will be after Christmas before we get started. So I’m hoping I’ll make it through the winter like last with not too many problems. The price of coolant/antifreeze is too high to pour it on the ground like this.

Leaky seal
My swivel joint seal on the right side had a nice big blob of grease on it this weekend. So I will eventually have to replace it. I have the seal in the garage, but not the place to work on it right now. I’m not really looking foward to removing the CV joint again. But it will give me a chance to document in pictures the procedure again. This time hopefully everyone will heed my advice and replace EVERYTHING that could fail when you tear something down.

Console back in
I have the center console back in. It was more challenging getting it back in than it was to take out. I’m guessing they assemble it in two parts and attach the two pieces afterwards. I had to loosen the emergency brake bracket, pull the big screws and hold my mouth just right for an extended time to get it back in, in one piece.

But I have it all hooked back up and it looks great. I got a little to carried away with the dremel and had to correct with a couple of washers. Which made the window switch panel screws a close fit. I’ll write it up when I get the pictures off the camera tonight probably.