Tag: Big White Bus

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Replacing the Fuel Pump (Post #626) October 2, 2023

Fuel Pump Swap

In my previous post I talked about the fuel pump and it’s lack of suckage of fuel to make the Big White Bus go down the road. Or more importantly in the short term, get out of the shoppe so I can proceed with the rust repairs.

I ordered the fuel pump from Atlantic British. As I’ve said earlier. If you order from them the part will not officially ship until the day after the first business day in which they receive the order. So if you order on Saturday, they will see the order on Monday, and it will be picked up on Tuesday. Then it will be in transit. For us here in the central southern plains that means a minimum of 6 days to arrive. I think I got this one in 7 days. I’ve come to accept this as the way it’s gonna be. Since the Range Rover is not my daily driver this does not upset me anymore. It just takes extra planning when you need something.

Removing the derelict pump is pretty easy. Turn the ring first. This may take some tapping with a screwdriver and a hammer. Take it easy and take your time. Don’t damage the ring.

The second step if it wasn’t your first step is take the fuel lines off. You will need a pair of 15mm wrenches. Once the lines are out of the way you can rock the fuel pump back and forth while pulling up. It will eventually come up.

The “bowl” will have fuel in it commiserate with how full the tank is with petrol. Pour this out while the fuel pump is still over the tank opening. Be prepared to clean up some petrol if it spills.

Reassembly is a reverse of the process. The most difficult of the tasks is getting the rings of the seal past the tank opening. You can gently coax it past the lip with a flathead screwdriver and steady pressure pushing down on the pump.

Is there a way to use a lubricant…maybe, I didn’t research that. I’ve never used lube for the install, so its not necessary for success.

Take it easy with the float and its electronic bits. Don’t bang it around.

That’s about it for the swap. I need to test the pump and get the the BWB running again. I’ll give it some test cranks to get fuel back up to the fuel rail then reinstall the plugs and fire her up. If I’ve sorted everything we should have a running Range Rover.

Thanks for ready and Happy Rovering.

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The Big White Bus Will Not Start (Post #625) September 25, 2023

spark plugs

In this post I am sort of after the fact prepping the motor for it’s first start in several years (at least 3 years). I was given some advise that I should lubricate the cylinders prior to starting for the first time. The reason is obvious. The cylinders are dry.

I’ve already tried to crank the engine. That was evident in the last video. So perhaps doing this NOW is a bit superfluous. Meaning I’ve probably already damaged something. But maybe not, I’ll know when I get the engine started.

I’ve pulled plugs and I’ve squirted some WD-40 inside each cylinder. How much you say? That’s a great question. I was told at least a couple of seconds of spray. The WD-40 fluid is going to adhere to the cylinder walls and if the rings were stuck, would have acted on them hopefully freeing them. They make a special “foggy spray” for this application but I was told just to use WD-40. I highly recommend you do your own research on this. I’m damaging my own stuff. I don’t want you to damage your stuff if I’m wrong.

The fuel pump is on the way and might arrive today 9/25. That would make it 8 days since I ordered it. They don’t work on Saturday or Sunday so Monday was the first time they started to “fullfill” the order. I am also in the farthest away region from their shipping hub. So a minimum of 5 days of transit. Looking at their location, I could have driven up there, picked up the part in person, and arrived back at base camp before the shipped part arrived.

Next step is to get a fuel pump installed and the Big White Bus started. Drive it to the top of the driveway. Hose off the parts so I can coat them with rust conversion paint. I will then turn her around and have the starboard side on the same side of the shoppe as the welder. I have some rust under the starboard rear wheel well the might need some patching. I also have the repairs to the existing rust spots identified in other videos. B pillar, D pillar.

You can support me on Patreon if this content is appealing. I would be greatly appreciated. Like and subscribe to the video channel.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Fender Repair Part 5, MORE Crappy Welding of the Large Fender Patch (Post #622) September 2-3, 2023

Super happy

In this installment I finish the left rear fender panel. And by finish I mean I had to completed replace the outer fender I had previously welded up. I added a strap to attach the inner fender to the outer fender.

The outer fender’s welds were compromised because I ran out of shielding gas halfway through. The panel was 16 gauge and I swapped it with an 18 gauge. The right thing to do was replace it and “do it right”.

Now, I’m no body man and right to me is probably not right to someone who actually knows what they are doing. As I mentioned in the video I need another 10 or 20 years of welding experience to be “competent”. Over all I’m a lot happier with this replaced panel. The 16 gauge panel would not have worked. It would not have been watertight no matter what I did.

I covered everything with yet another coating of primer. I also put seam sealer in the appropriate places. This only seemed prudent as I am almost certain this will rust again. My hope is it will take at least 20 years to rust out.

I thought some of the welding went a lot better than the previous attempts. I want to say, “I’m getting better.” but I’m pretty sure I’m fooling myself. Most people could probably weld if shown how and a little practice. Welding WELL however is really hard.

So add to the fact I’m saying welding is hard…and welding UPSIDE DOWN is another level. We did not go over this scenario in my class. I’m half tempted to take the class again and do the entire class upside down. I finally figured out the I could weld sideways that worked pretty good. Even with my new sideways technique it didn’t stop me from getting some new holes in my PPE and my skin from hot slag dripping down. My grandson Grady was horrified by the scab in the crook of my elbow. The chunk that got me on the chest made a similar hole there.

I also did quite a bit of cutting and the sparks flying back on me warmed me up a bit. Thankfully my Round House Overalls1 deflected the sparks and only “warmed” my family package. If you remember this post from December 2010, “The one where I catch myself on fire in the furtherance of Land Rovering” [Okierover] I caught myself on fire cutting the passenger side floor panel. What I learned from that was:

  • Blue jeans are not safety gear and are a sad substitute for PPE.
  • Longjohns [IBC] (aka long handles [Collins], thermal underwear, etc…) will keep the flame off you for a brief time.
  • Your best friends don’t want you harmed, but also want to take videos of you when you are on fire so they can tease you later.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering

1This is my unsponsored review of Round House Brown Duck Overalls. It is a solid 10 out of 10. They are made in Shawnee Oklahoma (Home of Brad Pitt) and at $60.00 a pair (on sale at the time of this posting) a real bargain.
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Fender Repair Part 4, Fixing My Crappy Welding of the Large Fender Patch (Post #621) August 27, 2023

The weather cooperated, but my back didn’t so much. The temperature was mostly pleasant compared to the scorchers we’ve had lately. My back however was not very cooperative. I’m pretty sore after just a few hours of work.

The work on the fender from the last post was, pretty terrible. I had trouble shaping the 16 gauge steel. The patch after shaping was also the wrong size. Couple that with running out of shielding gas and my welds being pretty terrible, I needed to start over. Without shielding gas protection you have a brittle weak welds. Not to mention holes in your weld called porosity.

I cut the patch out with a cutting wheel. Some of the welds were actually pretty good, so I must have run out part way through the welding. I made a patch with a piece of paper and cut out a new patch out of 20 gauge steel. When I was getting the shielding gas at Chickasha Industrial I noticed they had a lot of steel in the shop area. Turns out they sell steel. So I picked up a few “cutoff” pieces for a good price.

The new patch with some help from a ingenious use of a 2×4 and a bottle jack fit nicely. I welded it in and it worked out pretty well. I struggled with one spot when the welding blew through a thin patch of original fender. With some creative welding I got the holes patched.

I still have to weld up the underside. Welding upside down is difficult. I’m going to have to figure out how to do that. Maybe watch some Youtube videos or something.

I will use the 16 gauge steel to reinforce the 20 gauge and weld in the seat belt mount. I don’t plan on having seat belts in the rear again but if I did, I’d need a place to mount them.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Fender Repair Part 1, Welding Patches (Post #616) July 25, 2023

Welding a patch for the body mount

I finally broke down and welded something on my Range Rover. While I will admit freely, I am NOT a welder, but I did enjoy getting the patches welded on. I took a few hours the day before this video was shot to “practice” welding with some scraps I had cut off the Big White Bus.

One of the difficulties is the metal on the Range Rover and the metal I am patching with are different thicknesses. I believe the OEM body panels are 18 gauge whereas my patching material is 16 gauge. I watched a YouTube video where a young man from Weld.com showed how he setup his welder to weld different thicknesses. It’s pretty good stuff and I recommend it if you are still wondering how to setup your welder and what settings you might want to start with. His settings for 18 and 16 weren’t different so I just need to find the same settings he suggested and convert those values to the letter equivalent on my Lincoln MIG Pro 180.

I also watched a fellow from Make It Kustom that has some great tips on welding and patch making. Good stuff there too. This guy is obviously an artist and I imagine has, “done this a time or two.”

In my video there is a lot of grinding and sparks flying and hopefully some good tips to help you weld your patches on your Range Rover Classic. I sped a lot of it up so I’m not consuming a lot of your life watching my low grade videos.

The camera overheated at the end for the second time that day. The temp inside the shoppe was above 110°F (which is 43.3°C for you metric system types). Yeah that’s pretty hot for this old man. I’m seriously going to investigate getting an exhaust fan installed to pull the hot air out.

Overall I’m pretty excited that I can weld stuff. I did fix a yard swing that one of our trees landed on and crushed. I’m looking forward to finishing the welding on the rust and turn my attention to making stuff like a 270 degree awning, a rear bumper, and lots of other stuff.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering

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Shipwright’s Disease (Post #598) 8/23/2022

I need to add a “Mad Max Edition” badge.
Take a moment to consider the tragic condition known as Shipwrights Disease:

Sailor owns boat.

Boat has burned out light in galley.

Sailor decides to replace bulb.

Sailor notices socket is corroded, decides to change socket.

While changing the socket, sailor notices wiring is frayed.

Sailor decides to change wiring.

While replacing the wiring, sailor finds galley ceiling slats are rotted.

While replacing the galley ceiling slats, sailor notices …

… And so on, and pretty soon, the boat is in dry dock undergoing a major restoration because of a burned out light bulb.

Source: Robert Couse-Baker, flickr.

I‘m OFFENDED!

Wait, no I’m not, maybe I’m guilty. My best friend JagGuy diagnosed me. He’s probably right.

So let me defend myself. Why did I pull the Range Rover into my shoppe and park it four years ago? I had two major problems when she was parked:

  • Ignition system became entirely unreliable
  • The heater blower motor let some of the magic smoke out of its wires

Were there other things that needed some attention when I parked her. Yes, yes there were. I’ve listed them in another post. We can add rusted panels to that list.

In my defense, I believe it was time for the Big White Bus to get another restoration. She has 280,000 miles on her clock.

Do I want her to be a show queen? Not by a long shot. I’ve never owned a car I was afraid to drive through a barbed wire fence. But the interior is looking pretty rough. The condition of the interior and exterior directly affected the insurance pay out I received when that idiot was reaching for the jar of spasgetti (that’s how my grand kids say it) and slammed into the left rear. If you missed that post from 2016, you can read about that here [Okierover.com].

So I’d like to fix some things on the dash that failed after 30 years (she shipped out of Solihull in October of 1992) of sun and cold and sun and poor application of paint at the factory and the sun. You know what I’m talking about. Plastic will eventually break down if exposed to the unforgiving southern plains sun.

Air conditioning…does it make sense to fix the AC? Well hell’s bells I have the bloody dash off why not?!? Have you ever sat in bumper to bumper traffic on I-35 with 110F August heat? I can tell you it will make a man of you, well what’s left of you when you get home anyway.

Rust, I took a welding class just so I could fix the panels…

The paint on the outside is losing it’s clear coat and is badly oxidized….

Seat covers…definitely should be replaced…

Those D pillar vents are looking pretty bad…

Okay. I admit it, it is likely Shipwright’s Disease.

In all honesty, I don’t have the money lined up right now to fix everything and make the Big White Bus my daily driver again. Makin he my daily again makes moderately economical sense because I could drop the 2014 F-150 off my insurance, sell it for what I’m being told is north of 20,000(US)$. (The used auto market at the time of this post is incomprehensibly over blown.) That’s more than half what I paid for her 5 years ago. She’s been a good truck. The reason for her was to pull a camper we bought that my wife later decided was not going to be in our future plans for weekends. Cash out, spend some of that on the BWB, am I right?

Probably won’t happen. More likely the BWB will be my weekend overlanding vehicle. That works too. I miss driving her. I digress.

I’ve said this many times. Every job on the Range Rover becomes three projects. Every bolt you touch either needs to be replaced with stainless, or de-rusted, painted, and the panel you pulled it from rust abated.

Is this Shipwright’s Disease, probably. Am I going to change anything to cure myself? Nope.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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