Holy Crap! What a week. (Post #136) 4/7/2009


Let’s start with the good part. I took my son-in-law to his first living history event. We attended the Fort Washita Rendezvous. He has been interested in his Pottawatomie heritage lately and wanted to “do it old school”. So I dressed him as best as my kit would allow and we went to the event and had a great time. We are dressed as Natives in the Fur Trade Period from the 1820-1830s time period in what is today Oklahoma. I am dress as a Cherokee and he as a Pottawatomie.

Some nice panoramic photos of the fort can be found HERE.

I’ve posted some pictures. One has me tomahawking a man in the “mock battle” we had for the spectators on Saturday afternoon. It was great fun.

On the way home we “took the long way” due to a train parked across the tracks in Madill. There was no sign of it moving so we headed north towards Tishimingo. Along the way we pulled off the road several times to gawk at the old farm houses mostly abandoned. We didn’t think to take pictures. We did stop on the side to take a picture of a weird sculpture outside a welding shop.

Sunday night was full of fun. RovErica called from her cellular on the way home from dropping off DietMtDrew’s friend to report the Range Rover was very hard to keep on the road and was shaking “like last time”. The last time was the loose lug nuts incident. I had rebuilt the left rear brake caliper and failed to tighten up the lug nuts completely.

Well this time I was sure it was the steering box. RovErica reported a steering problem a month or so ago. I had been reading on the forums about steering boxes and thought that was it for sure. I tighten the steering box up and the problem seemed to go away.

So I took the Rangie out for a test drive to confirm my suspicion. It indeed wobbled all over the road. I had only drove a couple of blocks and it was really bad. How she managed to keep it on the road was amazing.

I called my buddy JagGuy and asked him about steering box replacement. He had done some work recently on his and I wanted to find out what I had gotten myself into.

I crawled underneath to investigate and found. The nut holding the pitman arm to the steering shaft was nearly completely off. My youngest two kids and my niece were in that Rover. If that nut had come off it could have been really bad.

I was thinking the slotted washer that is designed to keep the nut from spinning had failed. Well that washer is NOT slotted or keyed. I was shocked. What’s the point of bending the washer to hold the nut from spinning if the washer is not held in place by some manner?

So I cleaned off the arm and the shaft and the nut and the washer. I wire brushed as much of the old lock-tite from the threads.

OH I didn’t mention that? Yeah I had blue thread locker on it from the steering seal replacement from 3 years ago.

I got the nut tightened down and added some more thread locker. I then bent the washer again. I’m not sure why but I did. A quick test drive to the Norman North crosstown clash with Norman High in soccer, North took both games, proved that it would be safe to drive again. This week I am going to be attempting to get as many of the bushings from the bushing kit on her in JagGuy’s shop. He has a lift and that should help greatly getting the bushings replaced.

But Monday was not done. At lunch RovErica managed to hit a Dodge Ram Pickup on Gray street and totally destroy the front of the Discovery. AWESOME! So just to keep the score straight. RovErica 4, Discovery 0. Yeah in some manner or other she has wrecked the Discovery 4 times. She was hit from behind. Bumper checked a car during the ice storm, backed the Discovery into the Taurus which took out the B piler on the Taurus. And finally she smacked the pickup truck. She has also been rubbed by a kid in the parking lot of North while she was impatiently waiting to leave the parking lot.

Awesome start to a week don’t ya think?

(I’ll post pics of the Discovery’s front tomorrow.)

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.