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Too Hot to Land Rover (Post #542) 8/12/2015

Blasphemy! you might say. So I’ll qualify that to it’s too hot to wrench. It is the height of summer here in Oklahoma. Temperatures while they haven’t been anywhere near the lovely year of 100’s, they have been close. Our exiting of the drought in such a dramatic way this year (2015) has the humidity up to the levels I remember it from before the drought.

So your greasy fingered blogger has not put much effort into much of anything Land Rover. That is not to say I don’t have a handful of project to do, I do.

Continue reading “Too Hot to Land Rover (Post #542) 8/12/2015”

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Car Spider? (Post #541) 6/30/2015

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Here in Oklahoma if want to keep the inside of you Land Rover from reaching cookies baking hot you must Crack your windows during the day. At a minimum at least the inside temp will be close to the air temp outside.

When got in the Big White Bus the other day the sun was shining just right to illuminate the webs you see above. It’s quite a set up. I wondered which species I had this month. A day or two went by before I saw the spider.

I was about to merge on to the street outside my office and there he was swinging from the rear view mirror. He doing his best Tarzan impression and too quickly for me to get a picture.

Normally I wouldn’t have shown any concern for the webs but we have had an unusually populous spider season. Thankfully I’m 90 percent sure the spider I saw was my man. It wouldn’t do to have a Black Widow or Brown Recluse in the Big White Bus. Because if I felt a spider crawling up my leg while I was driving I’d most likely kill myself trying exterminate it with extreme prejudice. At least I’d have the satisfaction that the fiery crash would extinguish it and it’s offspring’s lives.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Family Reunion Road Trip (Post #540) 6/17/2015

The Courtright Family Reunion was this past weekend. I am a Courtright on my biological mother’s maternal side. Mrs. Okierover normally attends this yearly event with me. This year a church carnival demanded her time. So traveling solo gave me an opportunity to drive the Big White Bus to Stillwater, Oklahoma and as you can imagine, I took the “back roads”.

I’ve had recent trouble with the Range Rover’s normally trouble-free 4.2 motor. She doesn’t want to idle correctly. That normally means the air idler valve is dirty. Saturday afternoon I went about cleaning it. It was indeed filthy. I was kinda happy about that. If this maintenance fixed my problem I’d be even happier because it meant I diagnosed and repaired the problem.

While I was at it, I cleaned out my flame trap. Apparently you can Australian Land Rover Forum Post. “Templ4r” has Land Rover UK Forum of what this emissions item does for you on Land Rover UK Forums. I started with running some parts cleaner/diesel through her. This was not dislodging the crap as I hoped it would. I did not have a can of brake cleaner but my neighbor Nick had a can of carburetor cleaner. I used the entire can to clean it out. Chunks of nastiness came out. I reassembled it and hoped for the best.

She seemed to idle well in the driveway. Good enough for me/close enough for government work/redneck repair complete.

Sunday morning I took off. My plan was to drive I-35 to the “Mother Road”, Interstate 66 to interstate 177 to Oklahoma highway 51. This route has some fun names of roads and creeks you will pass along the way.

You will pass Triple X road, sometimes Triple XXX road. You will pass Wild Horse Creek. This is one of the three Wild Horse creeks in Oklahoma I am aware of. You will also cross over Bell Cow Creek. Yes, Bell Cow, not Cow Bell.  Continue reading “Family Reunion Road Trip (Post #540) 6/17/2015”

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SCARR 2015 – The Trails (Post #539) 6/15/2015

Panoramic of the East Texas hills.

With all the rain we had at SCARR 2015 the trails were muddy. But unlike Oklahoma’s red clay this soil took the water very well and drained away. That didn’t mean it came off any easier than Oklahoma red mud, but it was not as nasty when you were driving through it. We had quite a few creek crossings to add to the mud.

Arto and his well equipped Discovery 2.

We started the first day with a lecture from Arto Pullinen. Some of us (read that as NOT Mr. Fisher) learned some new hand signals that trail guides would be using.

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SCARR 2015 – The Weather (Post #538) 6/10/2015

This year the weather was a “little wetter” than last year. In official terms, it was downright amphibian compared to last year. We enjoyed thunderstorms every evening we were there. “Enjoyed” is a relative term.

We arrived on Thursday night and immediately began to put up camp and get dinner ready. We knew weather was heading toward us. We had it on our phones and in our bones. Our phones gave us the radar and my bones told me it was going to rain and rain hard. It did.
Continue reading “SCARR 2015 – The Weather (Post #538) 6/10/2015”

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SCARR is in the Books (Post #537) 4/20/2015

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We are home and safe from the 2015 SCARR event. Nothing broke or malfunctioned. If you ever wanted to experience what driving in a Camel Trophy event was like this would have been your weekend. Lucky 8 has a great video I will try to link to in coming posts.

The torrential downpours and thunderstorms made this year “quite wet”. It was thick mud and creeks were up. All this made for a very fun driving experience.

Mr. Fisher cut his driving teeth by taking on a 4 diamond trail. He learned some new hand signals from our guide Arto. And at the end, you couldn’t have wiped the grin off his face with an angle grinder.

The prize raffle was fun with many great prizes from the sponsors. Thanks to all you that sponsored. Thanks to Texas Rovers for another fine event.

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As soon as the videos get through post production and editing I’ll get them up for your enjoyment.

SCARR 2015 – The Weather

SCARR 2015 – The Trails

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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