Floor Pan Repair on a Range Rover Classic: Part 3: Z Bar (Post #684) 12/22/2024

In this episode. Grady and I get the Z bar welded to the floor pan panel. After the debacle of last week was finally solved, we had some new tools and great grounds to work with. These allowed for our plug welds and our panel butt-welds to hold.

I also noticed I had the heat up too high on the welder. Once I lowered that, the welder didn’t blow through the panel. There were a LOT of welds. We went through a half tank of shielding gas. And in the end we ran out of gas. So next weekend I’m going to need to get down to the welding supply house and get a fresh tank of gas.

If you remember the first video we determined we needed to cut about an 1/8th of an inch off one side. It turned out to be closer to 1/4th of an inch when I finished. We used the pinch vise clamps, some hammering, and a lot of bending to get the panel flat enough to make good welds.

Grady got to weld quite a few welds. I think I need a second welding mask so I can watch his technique and help him to get better. He did a pretty good job after he got the hang of it. Its fun for me to see him engaged and wanting to learn.

We have 2/3rds of the sides on now. Our first task will be to get the last one welded on and to fit it ONE MORE TIME. We fitted the panel and I’m 92.6% sure the panel will go in cleanly and fit properly.

That’s all for this week.

We wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

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https://youtu.be/F3x3iota0Dw

Floor Pan Repair on a Range Rover Classic: Fitting the bed Part 2 (Post #683) 12/16/2024

This week is part two of Grady and I trying to get the damn Z bar attached to the bed. We had a helluva time getting our welds to stick. In the end it came down to me removing a lot of the primer and paint I spent so much time getting into place.

The welds were not taking because the ground was poor. It required me to grind off a lot of paint and to get new vice clamps to hold the steel together.

Taking that paint off was no challenge for the power tools. It was painful to me because my ultimate goal in all this was to put this floor bed back together BETTER than it was before. The better is that I don’t have to worry about it rusting out.

Once I get it back together, I am going to spend significant time getting it recoated with paint and rust preventative coverings. This may be challenging with winter now upon us. It was 70F today but it is in the thirties in the mornings. I’m hoping for a warm spell around the new year so I can get the paint applied.

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Floor Pan Repair on a Range Rover Classic: Fitting the bed Part 1 (Post #682) 12/10/2024

In this post my grandson and I work on the floor bed to get it to dry fit. The first thing we needed to do was to get the Z bar into place. This required us making the side rail straightened and in some places cut some useless steel off.

The next thing we needed was to tack weld the Z bar into place. This was quite the challenge. I tried tacking and it didn’t take. I finally got my weld to hold. I let Grady weld too. His welds would not stick either.

After some frustration we determined that likely we didn’t have a good ground. I put in a lot of effort to get this steel painted so it wouldn’t rust. That unfortunately also prevented us from having a good ground for our welding.

I ground off a lot of paint. This is going to be a problem. The whole reason for the paint is to prevent the damn rust in the first place. So once I get the Z bar in place I’m going to need to paint everything again.

We finally got the Z bar into place and tried to fit the panel. We are about an 1/8 to a 1/4 of an inch off. This is going to require some additional cutting and more fitting to make sure we have it right before we start attaching the braces.

This is part 1 of 2. We spent WAY too much time with welding and prepping. So I cut this down to under 30 minutes.

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Floor Pan Repair on a Range Rover Classic: Part 2 (Post #681) 12/2/2024

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

I am back working on the floor bed in this episode. The bottom half of the bed had not had the surface rust ground down. So I turned to and got some grinding done.

I used the wire wheel to get started. There is some use of factory seam sealer. I can’t imagine what the factory was thinking. There is nothing to “seal” on the underside of the truck in the places this was used. Now that I am adding new sides…there is definitely some seams to seal.

Everything will be covered in paint. When the welds get applied there will be some gaps between the new Z bar and the old bed. I’m thinking seam sealer will be helpful to keep water out. I’m also thinking of some sort of wax I could heat up and pour in the gap. I’ll do some additional research but this has possibilities.

I get all the rust off. I also used the sanding disk on some of the more pitted rust. That seemed to work pretty good. These sanding disks are expensive in my opinion. They still might be worth it but I’m not sure.

That’s about it for this week. Next week I’ll be fitting the Z bar and making sure everything will fit in the gaps.

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Diagnosing Parasitic Draw on a Range Rover Classic: Part 3 (Post #680) 11/25/2024

If you’ve been following along I’ve been trying to find the parasitic draw for quite some time. I finally put my head on straight and dug in.

Having found the circuit that was giving me the trouble it was then time to call in the brains and ask some questions. So I called JagGuy. Mike is a genius and understands more about the physical universe than is possible for most mere mortals.

In our chat he said it about the time the thought was pulling up in the driveway of my mind, “You need to check your relay.” He said he’d look at the schematics (which he said were terrible by the way). It indeed came down to the relay. I have the WRONG relay installed.

I don’t remember when I came up with the fact the OEM relay failed. I do remember bringing it into my house were it sat on my end table and then in the drawer of my end table and then moved to the office? and then lost forever. SO I suspected the relay, I just forgot why.

So back to “the wrong relay” this is the one I had installed…..

What I should have installed was this relay…

You can see the slight difference. The 87a relay has 87a hot. the 87 87 relay is NOT hot all the time. How he came up with that I will never know. What he shared was the 87a relay might be the most common relay in the “relay world”. He has purchased and installed 1000’s of them making his trailer wiring converter boxes for military to civilian service [xm381.com]. He said they are common on fuel injections too if I remember the conversation.

Anyway, he said the far LESS common 87 87 relay is the one I needed. I promptly ordered one from Atlantic British an hour before he texted me back all the great details.

So there you have it. Something as simple as that can disable you. It is good to know that your can use an 87a in a pinch if your 87 87 fails. But you will want to pull it before you park it for any length of time.

UPDATE: The part has arrived and I’m going to test this weekend to confirm by parasitic draw is gone!

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

Diagnosing Parasitic Draw on a Range Rover Classic: Part 2 (Post #679) 11/18/2024

The Grounding.

Let the grounding begin!

When adversity strikes, that’s when you have to be the most calm. Take a step back, stay strong, stay grounded and press on. – LL Cool J

Authority is supposedly grounded in wisdom, but I could see from a very early age that authority was only a system of control. – Joe Strummer, The Clash

I’m quite grounded. – Enrique Iglesias

Like Enrique…the Big White Bus is now very well grounded. In this installment I install the grounding cables from the battery to the body and the frame. Very important things to have grounded.

The driver’s side is well grounded too. Those ground points to support the ignition system and the engine being grounded to the body. They are lovely.

The passenger side, I couldn’t say that before I finished this job. The ground points probably had not been removed and freshened up since it was wrecked by the previous owner some time in 2000.

The job was not difficult. I got side tracked with a bunch of rust and that removal made this video creep over the coveted 24 minute mark. I actually don’t know what the best length of video is. If you have a sweet spot, comment and let me know.

Three points in this job were the control module for the electric fans. The body which you connect to the fender. And finally the frame connection just behind the recovery points on the front of the frame.

All it took was a little wire wheeling with the Dremel. Cleaning he frame connector. I used a little dielectric grease between the metals. I have no fantasy that this grease will still be there even a year from now.

I found some rust and I knocked that out with some wire wheeling and applying the rust encapsulating paint. Maybe if the painting gods smile that will help keep the rust away.

That’s about it for this week. Like and subscribe and I look forward to your feedback.

Thanks for readying and Happy Rovering.