UPDATE (February 22, 2019): Spent a few more hours with George at Tergin Motors today and finished up the first service on the Land Rover. I hesitate to call this a “service” because George was so exhaustive (in a good way) in going over the truck front-to-back. All told, more than 20 hours over the three days and he let me watch every minute. This was not some wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am GoofyLube service. George approached this like it was his own truck and along with the routine maintenance, he found some stuff that wasn’t done right during the restoration (go figure) and could have been big problems down the road.

I’m confident the truck is now in the best shape it has been since it rolled off the assembly line in Spain back in 1979. We’ll do follow-up inspection but the truck is already driving better.

What started out as a routine service has turned out to be more like a visit to Mayo Clinic. But in a good way. Several times today George exclaimed, “Oh shit!” as he found several things that were done poorly by the people that did the original restoration. Something of a regular occurrence.

We drained and filled the front and rear diffs as well as the front swivel joints.
While I pumped (I’m now an expert), George patiently and carefully fixed each problem. He took the leaky rear wheel apart — right down to the axel — and replaced seals.

We should finish up tomorrow and then we’ll follow up on the transmission/transfer box issue. Do we have a bad seal between the two or was it a matter of having the wrong gear lube, improperly filled. Stay tuned.