Old Land Rovers leak

Posted on by
2

That might be the first thing I heard about Land Rovers when I started searching for one. If it’s not leaking, your fluids are low” is the oft-told joke. Rover Sage Charlie Pendleton advised, “If the leak is the size of a half-dollar, I don’t worry about it. If it’s the size of a grapefruit or larger, I track it down and fix it.” A few weeks back my truck developed a grapefruit size leak. This week George Tergin tracked it own and (fingers crossed) fixed it.

My rebuilt engine originally had a turbocharger. I had them take it off before installing my engine because it would have necessitated some work on the transmission I didn’t want to do (have done). And I was confident I didn’t need to achieve highway speeds. Anyway…

The turbocharger gets its oil from a hole in the engine block. That had to be capped off. In my case, the cap was a little too long and didn’t thread all the way down on the… plug gizmo? Looks like they might have put some goop in the cap to improve the seal and it held for six months before starting to leak.

George got a new cap and then did some surgery on it to properly cap the gusher. Still have some half-dollar leaks but George is determined to track ’em down.

Update 4/12/19: The Big Leak is no more.

Impossible Whopper

Posted on by
4

“If I didn’t know what I was eating, I would have no idea it was not beef.”

Eric Bohl is Director of Public Affairs & Advocacy for Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization. He drove to St. Louis to try his first Impossible Whopper at Burger King. He liked it.

“The two burgers did not taste identical, but the difference was small. The Impossible Whopper’s flavoring seemed a bit more external, as if it came more from something applied to the patty than from the patty itself. The traditional Whopper’s flavor seemed more intrinsic to the meat. That said, the difference was pretty minor. If I didn’t know what I was eating, I would have no idea it was not beef.”

“If farmers and ranchers think we can mock and dismiss these products as a passing fad, we’re kidding ourselves. This is not just another disgusting tofu burger that only a dedicated hippie could convince himself to eat. It’s 95 percent of the way there, and the recipe is likely to only get better. Farmers and ranchers need to take notice and get ready to compete. I’ve tasted it with my own mouth, and this fake meat is ready for prime time.”

Next month I will have been meat free for six years. No beef, pork or poultry. I’ve never been sure if fish is meat but I do eat fish. I haven’t been in a Burger King in years but I’m looking forward to trying the Impossible Whopper.

Update April 12, 2019 – The following is from an article by Mark R. O’Brian, Professor and Chair of Biochemistry, Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. A more technical explanation of some of the science behind the Impossible Burger.

“The Impossible Burger includes an ingredient from soybeans called leghemoglobin, which is a protein that is chemically bound to a non-protein molecule called heme that gives leghemoglobin its blood-red color. In fact, a heme — an iron-containing molecule — is what gives blood and red meat their color. Leghemoglobin is evolutionarily related to animal myoglobin found in muscle and hemoglobin in blood, and serves to regulate oxygen supply to cells.”

“I recruited a scientific colleague in St. Louis to try out the Impossible Whopper, and he could not distinguish it from its meaty counterpart. Although he was quick to qualify this by noting all of the other stuff on the Whopper may mask any differences.”

Hauling trees in the pickup

Posted on by

Barb and one of her gardening buddies went tree shopping today and brought back four pretty big trees that probably wouldn’t have fit in the back of the Lexus. Getting them on the grown without damaging them was a bit of a challenger but Barb and I got ‘er done. A big strong man with mechanized equipment will be moving and planting. I do not know how I made it all these years without a pickup.

Timelapse of the entire Universe

Posted on by


“On a cosmic time scale, human history is as brief as the blink of an eye. By compressing all 13.8 billion years of time into a 10 minute scale, this video shows just how young we truly are, and just how ancient and vast our universe us.”

Melodysheep is John D. Boswell, a filmmaker, composer, and editor from the pacific northwest. There is a version of this video with narration but without the embed code. I recommend it. Thanks to Kent for pointing us to Melodysheep.

Remember the Land Rover exhaust leak?

Posted on by
1

[Update at bottom of post]

Took the Land Rover in to have a brake light replaced. While chugging along at about 50 mph, the truck went from sounding like a big old diesel truck to sounding like one of those gigantic earth movers. Something wrong. Since I was almost to the shop I kept going.

Remember that leak from the exhaust manifold?

The exhaust pipe broke away from the manifold and was dangling from the chassis. Like so many things with my truck, this just wasn’t done right the first time. But George was well on his way to doing it right. Parts ordered. He knows what needs to be done and who will do it. So in a week or two I’ll have a brand new exhaust system that should improve overall performance.

24 hours later. Parts arrived and George met with the muffler pros and explained what he wanted to do. They quickly put together this mock-up to see if everything fits.

The new, thicker flange came threaded. Not what we need so George drilled ’em.

The rebuilt engine in my truck is from a 1994 Discovery (European). People put them in old Land Rovers all the time (or so I’ve been told) but I don’t see how. In the photo below George is cutting off the end of a bolt in an effort to gain a precious half-inch of clearance between the exhaust pipe and part of the steering mechanism. He’ll make it work, with the help of a very talented exhaust guy named Henry.