Tag: friends

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Medical Issues (Post #718) 10/10/2025

Well…I’ve been away. Maybe you noticed. I’ve had some medical issues this September. I’ve had some issues that first looked like a back injury. I thought I was getting better but then I took an overland trip. Mr. Fisher and Mr. Obermiller and I took in a couple of sections of the Oklahoma Adventure Trail. The goal was to overland toward the Northeast part of the state to attend the Overland Expo in Jay, Oklahoma.

The trip was good. Lots of gravel roads. One section was pretty rough and was more like rock crawling. We slowed down to 5mph to keep from rattling the body panels off. We had a plan to get to Mr. Fisher’s friend’s lake house. It was real nice of him to offer us his house.

The heat was a little extreme for September in Oklahoma. Sleeping in air conditioning was far better than sweating it out in a tent. The temps on Friday hit 100°F (37°C), needless to say it was toasty. We slept well and headed to the expo on Friday. We saw some cool gear, shot some silenced weapons and had a food truck lunch.

It was about lunch time that the pain I was experiencing started ramping up. It migrated into my abdomen and was quite painful. Think 5 or 6 on the pain scale. Very unpleasant.

I tried several things and in the end I decided it was best for me to try and make it home before it got any worse. I spent the weekend and Monday on a heating pad living my best life through chemistry.

My concern was I was not getting any better. So a few doctor visits and we still don’t know exactly what’s going on. As of this post I’m about 90% sure I have a hernia of some kind or other. We’ll know more after the radiologist gets back to me.

May the winds take your troubles away, thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

https://youtu.be/GFUQVd7KY20
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Installing the Radius Arms on my Range Rover Classic Overland Rig: Part 4 (Post #714) 8/10/2025

Thanks for coming back. This week I installed the Panhard Rod and got the rear Radius Arms back on the Range Rover. Interesting observation from the install. The suspension had moved due to the poly bushings failing. Probably didn’t help with me driving it.

The new bushing could not be tightened until the axle side had been installed. The was just not enough play in the system. On the first side I first tried to install it with the frame bushing installed. That was a no go. I could not get the axle side to line up the holes for the bush and the bolt.

You may encounter that when you are doing yours. I also had some trouble with the port side bushing due to my use of the cutting disc. It had carved a ridge on the mount that I couldn’t slide the bushing past. That took a little extra encouragement to get it lined up.

I used anti-seize on all the bolts. I feel pretty good about that. I’ll need to replace these at some point and it doesn’t help when they are rust welding themselves together.

The panhard rod still did not want to get lined up when I tried to install the bolt. I used the old bolt and drove it through the bushing to eliminate what ever was keeping me from installing the bolt.

I took her out for a drive down and OH MAN what a difference. This small upgrade fixed a bunch of the issues. She’s safe to drive again.

It was soooooo hot today. I tried to start early but just couldn’t get out of bed and started. By the time I was cleaning up the garage floor it was 105F in the shop and it was really taking its toll on me.

Mrs. Okierover got home from the National Senior Games where she competed in the Women’s 3v3 basketball in the over 60 age division. They did not have big point differentials so they were relegated to the Bronze Division this year. They swept all the teams but the last one out of San Diego.

The ladies of the Oklahoma Wolfpack played well and we were extremely proud of them.

My wife took our oldest grand daughter Cadence along as well as my son Drew. Erica even drove up from Spring Hill, Kansas with the boys so they could spend some time with Mimi and so they could watch her play.

I added a short clip of one of her games on the end of the video I posted.

I had some website trouble this week, so hopefully you didn’t come by and find it down. I got some TERRIBLE advise from Go Daddy’s online chat support (from India) and they managed to get my page hijacked by a restaurant somewhere in Maine(?). I also had no way to make any changes. They just kept suggesting I add products that would help me. It was all in vain because I had no protection after they had me remove my SSL certificate. Idiots.

I called back and talked to two help desk technicians (American) and they were awesome. The first guy was awesome. “Why didn’t they just put it back to the original configuration?” I said, “EXACTLY!” They nearly lost my business over this latest SNAFU.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering. May the wind take your troubles away.

https://youtu.be/b23aFdQC_0E
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Removing the Radius Arms on my Range Rover Classic Overland Rig: Part 2 (Post #712) 7/27/2025

Sorry no post last week. I was really tired and my back was really acting up. All you missed was three hours of frustration and a hot ember flying off the cutting wheel and landing in my ear. WHICH I didn’t manage to catch on the video. Stupid GoPro. I’ll post the link to both videos down below.

This weekend I pulled the second radius arm off. I went straight to the cutting. There was no resolution to remove the bolt with a wrench. The bushing sleave was completely rust welded to the bolt. I banged and banged on the first one to NO avail. I even managed to hit my hand at the wrist with the hammer. OUCH does not cover it. Two pound hammers win EVERY time when they meet bone.

Once off everything needed to have rust removed or nasty old sticky polyurethane failed bushing material removed from it. Think, chewing gum, but it doesn’t dissolve in acetone. Nasty.

After I spent 30 minutes at the bench wire wheel, I remembered I own a sandblasting cabinet. So I blasted all the parts. So easy. It did reinforce that I need to improve that cabinet by relocating the pick up tube like they do on a hundred YouTube videos.

Once clean all the parts got a nice couple of coats of primer and a coat of matte black paint in the vain hope that rust and corrosion will not cause me trouble later. I know I’m fooling myself, but it’s become habit at this point.

I found a nice surprise… I have already replaced the poly bushings on the front half!!! Yeah! Holy unexpected outcomes Batman! I am swapping the panhard rod bushing because its been sitting soaked in steering oil for 5 years. I wonder if a put a boot over it, it would not deteriorate….. hmmmmm.

Next step is getting the new bushings pressed into the radius arm and the panhard rod. For this I will need to visit one of my friends shops that own a press. That’s either the Evil German Dude or Mike the JagGuy. You’ll see who wins next week.

That’s about it for this week. Thanks for visiting.

May the wind take your troubles away…. Happy Rovering.

Part 1

Part 2

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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.

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Footwell Repair Part 9: Seam Sealer (Post #656) 6/3/2024

In this installment I apply seam sealer to the most recently welded “L”. Seam sealer was not how I wanted to seal this joint up. I wanted it to be welded closed. That is just not possible. It wasn’t originally built that way. I can only hope the seam sealer I’m using will last long enough for me to quit this Overlanding Hobby.

I also look at the floor patch I’m going to need to build. I talk about the two structural bends in the panel. I saw the guy on Make It Kustom [Youtube] build a jig and a tool to make these kinds of bends. You can look through his videos to find it. I’m going to think long and hard about this before I tackle this problem.

It might be fun to build the jig. I will need to buy a router bit to get the jig in the right shape. I’ll probably need to build a special air hammer bit like he did too. It would be a one off fix. I don’t think I will ever tear this apart again.

It’s a short video and I know it’s über riveting content watching me smear seam sealer. In my defense I didn’t have time to produce anything else this weekend. Saturday we visited the Evil German Dude and his lovely wife. Paparazzi Ford was there too. The Evil German Broad made brunch for us and we all got to catchup on the latest happenings and see their almost finished “cabana”. That’s what the county commissioners called it for tax purposes.

It’s an amazing space and it took a lot of forethought, planning, engineering to make it as awesome as it is. Several things I saw had me comparing how much time I’ve spent thinking about the future state of the Big White Bus. I know I’ll have some great ideas that will need additional thought and probably re-engineering to get them right.

I picked up a parts washer from EGD too while I was there. So that’s pretty cool. That’s all for this week. Like and subscribe to the blog and the Youtube channel.

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Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

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Footwell Repair Part 3: Investi-Disassembly (Post #651) 4/12/2024

thumbnail Footwell Part 3

UGGGGGH!!!!!!
Will this ever end?

I think I know the answer to that. But I have to show my exasperation. This rust find is possibly the worst thing ever. It’s in the most terrible of locations.

Mrs. Okierover said, “Maybe you should call it Rusty Rover instead of Okierover.”
She’s not wrong.

Every where there’s red its rusted through.

It’s as bad as you can imagine. There are at least four different panels converge in this area to form the firewall, fender well, and the foot well.

There are a LOT of peripherals that run through there too. Including the fuel lines which I may have nicked when I was air chiseling the panels out. If you’ve followed the blog for very long (at least since 2010) you’ve seen The Evil German Dude and I attempt to fix the floor pan when it rusted out.

The one where I catch myself on fire in the furtherance of Land Rovering (post 234) 12/21/2010

We had fun, but we failed to keep the water out and our work finally failed. I had an ongoing issue with water getting in and wetting the fargin’ OPEN CELL floor pads under the carpets. The carpets too we constantly wet. I found the place where water was getting in making the carpet wet. It was through the firewall at the corner where it married up to the side wall.

As you will see in the video, this rust is bad. Real bad. The repair is going to be really difficult and probably beyond my skill set. That being said, I have to fix it myself. There is no money to send it off. The body work itself would likely cost more than the entire vehicle is worth.

I’ve still got a LOT of work to do. I need to find a solution. It will probably be welding several panels together. I’ll need to study it more to make my mind up.

I stared at it at least an hour while I shot the video. Still struggled to sort out a concrete idea.

I am going back out the weekend this is published as OkieF150. We are going to the 200th Celebration of Fort Gibson. Fort Gibson is the oldest town in Oklahoma. Way back when it was still Indian Territory the United States needed a fort to protect the trade from this area.

We are going to make a weekend out of it and I’m hoping we can get some fishing in while we are at it. This will be the last overlanding trip for this year as I will be spending every weekend for the rest of the year trying to sort out all these issues.

Like and subscribe on the videos and the blog.

Thanks for reading, and Happy Rovering.

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