Watch on YouTube (5:30)
PS: Yes, I know the video is not centered…but, fuck it.
Category Archives: My Land Rover
Land Rover “Running strong and happy”
Mr. Wolf: Drove it up and down the street – at a glance it seems to be running strong & happy! A bit of an oil leak on the top side of the engine, and the left front swivel pin housing needs to be rebuilt – it’s dumping gear oil into the brake drum. I’ll put some miles on it to check it all out, then get it up to Philippe to have him fix the leaks.
The circle is nearly complete.
Land Rover Farewell
Today we (George, Barb and I) bid farewell to my beloved Land Rover (YouTube). Next week sometime it will roll into Mr. Wolf’s shop to get prepped for sale (on Bring A Trailer).
It was 7 1/2 years ago —on this exact spot— that I first got to drive the Rover. And it has been my daily driver ever since. When the transport driver started it up I smiled with the knowledge that in all those years, the truck never failed to start on the first crank.
Mr. Wolf will prep the truck for sale and I’ll probably do a couple of posts on those efforts but then we close the book on this most wonderful adventure.
Land Rover: Looking Back
When Mr. Wolf finds a transport vehicle the Land Rover will be heading West for a little spruce-up and a new home. I’m feeling good about the decision to sell but get the occasional bout of nostalgia when I come across something like this timeline.
- 5/1/17 – Emailed Cool & Vintage
- 5/5/17 – Phone call with Ricardo (Cool & Vintage)
- 5/17/17 – Phone call with Arkonik
- 5/19/17 – 1st call with Grayson Wolf
- 5/21/17 – Transferred $ to checking acct.
- 5/28/17 – D90 in Carmel, CA
- 6/22/17 – Mr. Wolf contacts Lucra Cars
- 6/23/17 – Wired $ to Lucra – 1st deposit
- 8/8/17 – Visit Lucra Cars in San Diego
- 9/30/17 – Mr. Wolf has truck – PROBLEMS!
- 10/12/17 – Checklist to Lucra
- 11/1/17 – $1,609 to Lucra Cars
- 11/11/17 – Mr. Wolf on-site inspection
- 11/15/17 – $608 to Lucra
- 11/28/17 – $2,231 to Mr. Wolf
- 12/6/17 – Truck back to Mr. Wolf
Turns out we still had miles to go. Mr. Wolf discovered a problem with the little 4-cylinder engine which necessitated finding a source for a rebuilt engine which was shipped to SF where Philippe spent a few months shoe-horning it into the Rover. All of which took another 8 months! So about a year-and-a-half from beginning to end.
The Art of Resurrection
“To know how a car works and how to repair it is to liberate oneself from an endless cycle of consumption.”
I know almost nothing about “how a car works and how to repair it” and it’s a little late in the game to hop off the “endless cycle of consumption,” but this article by Andrew Messick nicely sums up the appeal of my old vehicles. A few excerpts:
It was a good car, but it operated in a bland, even mundane, way. It performed every action I asked of it without complaint, without grumbling, without emotion, without any sort of personality. It was smart enough to tell me all of its ailments. A flashing exclamation point would show me a low tire. A phone notification would tell me my doors were unlocked. A gentle blue light would show it wasn’t quite warm enough to turn the heat on. But if I so much as put a wrench to the car, it would fall to pieces, and there would be nothing I could do to fix it due to its sheer complexity.
This thing—this slow, lumbering piece of antiquity, this archaic hindrance to staying within the speed limit—has brought me more satisfaction than any flashy new car possibly could. There is an indescribable joy I experience when I pull the choke, press the starter button, and give a slight tap on the gas.
The new car, which was Disposable, was just a machine. Granted, it was a reliable, thoroughly trustworthy machine, but one lacking all soul, all sense of uniqueness. So mundane it blended into the parking lot, it had perfected the art of invisibility through being completely identical to everything around it.
But to own a car that requires only basic maintenance, something that one can do by themselves, to utilize that local corner mechanic, who may even be a staple of your community, to know your belongings beyond simply turning them on and using them, is to liberate oneself from the endless cycle of consumption.
It leaks when it rains. The “new car smell” passed from it decades ago. The factory optional heater—a drum of roughly coffee-can proportions with two small gates that either defogs your windshield or blows out a weak breath of lukewarm air onto your legs—achieves warmth that is only slightly better than freezing. Yet I would rather feel a waft of lukewarm air on my skin than pay a monthly subscription for seat heaters.
Land Rover heater
I’m now in my fifth winter with the Land Rover. And every winter I spend some time bitching and whining about the little truck’s heater. Less since the F-150 joined the fleet because it has a great heater and has become my winter vehicle of choice on really cold days. Yesterday I noticed two white-ish tabs on either side of the Rover’s heating unit near the floorboard.
When I gave it a tug a small door opened on the side of the heater. A vent. Aimed at the driver’s feet. Another one of the passenger side. Fuck. Me. Warm air (not hot, mind you) came flowing out. Since I never have a passenger, I’ll leave that one closed so all of the toasty air comes my way.
My understanding of how the heater works is water gets warmed by the engine after it’s been running for a bit. And that water (somehow) heats the air that gets blown into the passenger compartment. To make this happen there’s a small brass valve that must be opened in the winter and closed in the summer.
Broken rear axel on Land Rover
In the supermarket parking lot last week and shifted into reverse before I had fully stopped my forward motion and heard a loud KER-CHUNK! from under the truck. One of those sounds you know will be expensive. AAA transported me to my long-suffering mechanic who determined I had a broken rear axel.
Replacements on the way. So. I have two 40 year old vehicles in two different shops waiting for parts.
Land Rover go fast
Dan Poettgen and Chief Mechanic Scotty worked some magic on the Land Rover.
Every so often I’ve had to take it in for them to adjust a cable (?) that fed fuel to the diesel engine. As it slipped, I had to push the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor and still wasn’t going very fast.
Like so many things with the Land Rover, this bit wasn’t really done properly the first time. So Dan and Scotty ordered some parts…made some parts and voila!
I have way more “throw” on the accelerator and it feels like the engine is (for the first time?) getting the fuel it needs. Drives like it has twice the power and acceleration it had before.
A great car needs a great video
The handful of readers who followed my Land Rover adventure will recall Grayson Wolf was the young man who found the Series III Rover that has been my daily driver for the last few years.
Based in the Bay Area, Grayson works on high performance vehicles for the well-heeled and finds buyers and sellers for just about any thing on four wheels. He’s been working with a friend to produce videos used to show and sell. I was particularly impressed with the music in these videos, original compositions by Grayson’s buddy. [2000 Ferrari 360 Modena, 1967 Jaguar E-Type, 2001 BMW Z8 Roadster]
Land Rover Hardtop Rack
In a couple of weeks it will be time to remove the hardtop from the Land Rover. (The first true sign of spring.) For the last few years this has involved gathering a crew to remove the top (video) and move it to wherever I could find to store it. If the ceiling of one’s garage is high enough, you can simple winch it up until it’s time to drop it back on in the fall. Insufficient head-room on my garage forced me to store the hardtop in a rental unit which worked fine until a tornado swept through Jefferson City.
After repairing the banged up hardtop I stored it in a basement room, a tedious and cumbersome process. So the next year we suspended the hardtop under the deck. Which worked fine but, again, took a half dozen people. What I really needed was a way to unbolt the hardtop, lift it up, and drive away. I needed a LRHR (Land Rover Hardtop Rack).
A local machine shop has constructed a simple steel frame and it should be ready in a couple of days. I found a good spot for it on our recently acquired acreage. While raking away old leaves and wood chips I discovered big cement slab that was part of a dog run 40 years ago.
It’s almost in the exact right spot and here’s the strange part: the hardtop rack will be seven feet wide and twelve feet long. The slab is 7’5″ wide and 25′ long.
The plan is to back the Land Rover up to the rack, unbolt the top, and back the truck under the frame. We’ll then use tie-down straps to suspend the top to the rack and ratchet it up off the body of the truck. We won’t be adding the hoop kit this year because I discovered I liked driving the truck topless.
UPDATE 4/26/22: The rack has been delivered and assembled. Still have to bolt the rack to the cement pad but the plan is to lift the top this weekend.
