Took the Land Rover to Poettgen Automotive for oil change and service. Owner Dan Poettgen has experience with foreign vehicles and seemed the obvious choice to work on the Land Rover (since my buddy George’s shop got wiped out by a tornado). During his inspection he noticed a leak from the “oil pressure sending unit” and removed it to look for the cause.

Following some phone calls and online research, Dan determined the unit wasn’t installed properly. While waiting for the replacement part, Dan has me running with a unit from a 1977 Chevy Caprice! It works and has stopped the leak.

This little gizmo monitors oil pressure and sends info to a gauge and a tiny green light in the instrument panel. No idea why the Santana Land Rover folks use a green light to indicate low oil pressure. (I have to get in the habit of watching oil pressure more closely.)

In just over two weeks I will have been driving the truck for a full year. Next project: a little body work on the hard-top to repair tornado damage. Hoping to keep the soft top on through September.

We live at the end of a gravel road so the Land Rover gets dusty fast, especially with the soft top. I hosed it out today and tightened up some screws and nuts. The truck is held together with hundreds of the things and the bumpy road shakes them loose. I try to find them before they fall out. I do love this truck.

Back in May a tornado hit Jefferson City and did a lot of damage, including the storage unit where I housed the top to my Land Rover. I replaced a couple of broken windows but had to order a new top to the driver side door.

A local body shop did a fine job of matching the paint but when when I first looked at the old and new top side-by-side, it looked like the angles (see curved arrow) were different. Then I noticed the right side (see red line) of the old window wasn’t square.

Makes sense now because the old top got hammered hard enough to bend the steel (straight arrow). So we’re good to go. My buddy George has taken a hard line on getting the top of the Rover a make-over, too, so that’s next. Hoping I can make it though September — maybe a bit longer — with the soft top.

It’s not uncommon to find a screw or a bolt in the floor of the Land Rover. The truck has some serious vibration and stuff comes loose and falls out. Easy enough to put back if you can find where it came from.

I love this about the old Land Rovers. You can see — and get to — just about every nut, bolt and screw.

Most of the damage to the Land Rover hardtop is easily repaired but the frame around the driver-side window got buggered boogered up and it was going to be difficult to straighten so I purchased a replacement.

It just slots into the bottom of the door with a couple of bolts. Good as new once I get it painted. I continue to marvel at the simplicity of the Series Land Rovers. I can think of nothing analogous in modern vehicles.