Thread: I must be insane

Originally Posted by DoubleChevron

No idea, I'd have to find a lake to drive through and check

pouring rain and ****house weather here yesterday, and the gas gauge worked for the first time ever, so I'm going to be searching under it for an dodgy earth with regards to the LPG conversion tonight.

No idea about the auto and vicious coupling. I've done probably 3000kms in it ... never misses a beat, everything works as expected. Auto has shiny bright red fluid, engine pulls strongly and uses a small amount of oil ..... maybe 100ml to the thousand k's (likely sucked through the breather). I was a bit shocked for find it took 3.5litres of oil to bring the oil upto the minimum mark on the dipstick after driving it home though I figure it must have been sucking oil through the crankcase ventilation due to the gas fitters stuffing it up.

The auto does appear to have a new gasket in it's pan. I have no idea if this means it's been rebuilt at some point in the past. After the rain I should back it's back axle into the storm drain in the paddock and see if the front wheels will pull it back out ( ie: verify the vicious couple isn't stuck in "open" position .... which I kinda don't mind ... at least that's a "non damaging" failure mode).

air-con still blows freezing cold, heater blows hot, it never runs warm, even when towing ... door locks and windows are skitzophrenic in operation .... ie: she's a rangie in perfect "normal" working order

seeya,
Shane L.
PS: You reckon fuel consumption is bad .... lpg consumption is downright frightening ... 20L/100 is probably the best it does running along the highway not towing ... I easy 30L/100 towing

Make sure you take a photo for us!
Glad to hear it is all going well. I read that the VC needs to be replaced every 200 thousand k's, either yours is buggered in the good way or you are very lucky!

Hahahahah they do gulp fuel like a schizophrenic too!

Originally Posted by The Mighty Range Rover

Make sure you take a photo for us!
Glad to hear it is all going well. I read that the VC needs to be replaced every 200 thousand k's, either yours is buggered in the good way or you are very lucky!

Hahahahah they do gulp fuel like a schizophrenic too!

Either that ... or the VC and auto were rebuilt at 200,000 ... and I don't need to worry about anything until at least 400,000kms .... How would I ever know I'm sure not replacing something that seems to work perfectly!

I'm not too concerned, if the gearbox or TC ever plays up ... I'll find a Disco to wreck and put a LT230 and R380 5spd into it .... I like my cars to have proper manual gearboxes

seeya,
Shane L.

I spotted on ebay you can buy CB radio aerials quite cheaply .... I wasn't going to bother with the CB ... until I stumbled across a nice looking australian made aerial for $20bucks

Kilpatrick Flexi UHF CB Flexible Dipole Antenna 3nu llGa inSui tsG MEUnid enE | eBay

Line of sight is probably the only time I'll use an aeriel and I have no need to fit something massive.



so I run the cable back in ..... and all the smashed dash plastic around the cigarete lighter is on the floor again ... everytime my wife gets it she knocks all the broken plastic apart with her handbag.

So I figure I better try and repair the broken bits of plastic so they don't fall apart ................. An hour later ..... DONE!!!!




















Yeah right and hour later I'm scratching my head thinking .... bugger me, I was just going to spend 10minutes to run the aeriel wire thorugh






It's like following the bouncing ball.... you pull off the bit of plastic that's broken .... then find the plastic it attached too is also broken .... so you remove that as well... and find the next bit broken and so on ....



I dragged out the plastic welder .... Can you believe it, none of the welding rods I had would work on this plastic.... It's one of the thermoset plastic that can't be welded.



Every single bit of plastic has been smashed in the past ..... The quality of the plastic is absolutely bloody woeful.



Basically I need to build a new center console for it... 'cos this thing is trashed. I don't have the time or money for this right now. It's so fubar, I sure can't make it worse though.







the back of it is broken to the point I can't even tell what is original would have looked like



everything is broken, the fuse box door, the fuse box, the heater control section, the radio surround, center console.... Last week when the door was closing I bumped my knee into the door pocket.... it smashed into about 3 peices and fell on the ground .... So I checked the other doors, and they already match the now broken drivers door ..... How ****ful is the plastic they used ... you just gotta laugh, what else can you do.

seeya,
Shane L.

So I had a look around mitre 10.... being a thermoset plastic it should (in theory) glue quite well with an epoxy type glue.





Mirror switch plate to the front of the center arm rest. You can't just glue cracks together, the glue needs something to brace it with ... so I cut out some sheet aluminium and stuck across the cracks.



I just bent the metal strapping to fit. It's all glued with the super strength araldite. And riveted with aluminium pop rivets (braced with small washers both sides of the rivets. Ugly, but should be strong......



There real frail and ****ty across the back. I run a length of metal the width of the arm rest under the hinge, and another two pieces bent to match up both sides. Glued and riveted again. Then bolted across the top with the hinge nuts/bolts.



Some of the aluminium rivets are visible from the outside ... but hey, it was ****ty to start with, so doesn't look much worse (at least it'll be strong and functional now).



The front above the mirror switch was completely gone too.



The brace is just held in with one rivet each side.









It fits together as well as you'd expect now and doesn't look to out of place. I should actually be able to use it now as a drink holder etc... with the lid open (it would all have collapsed before if you tried).



The radio surround was riveted and glued back into one piece as well.

This wasn't super easy to get apart with it all smashed, so it'll be interesting to see if I can get it back together intact without smashing it somewhere else

seeya,
Shane L.

Typical old Rangie, a 10 minute job has turned into a battle with dodgy old plastic. I don't think the consoles were that great when new let alone 20 plus years later.


Trav

More patience than I.

Hi guys,

while the wiring is exposed I'm removing wiring that "shouldn't be there" You see these were such an expensive car when new, they have probably all have the remains of car phones, alarms, stereos, brake controllers, etc.....

This one concerns me, it is possible it's an "area specific" wiring hack done for the australian market, the fact it's into the computers plug concerns me. This is the sort of **** that'll leave you stranded in the middle of nowhere. If this isn't factory I'll pull the plug apart and check/remove it.





Why go into the wiring plug

BTW: What were land rover thinking putting an computer here.... Where it's guaranteed to get drowned if the car ever wades through something a bit too deep! It should be up high, or in a water proof enclosure

seeya,
Shane L.

Originally Posted by DoubleChevron

BTW: What were land rover thinking putting an computer here.... Where it's guaranteed to get drowned if the car ever wades through something a bit too deep! It should be up high, or in a water proof enclosure

You've got to remember thr Range Rover was not designed to trek off road through river crossings and bog holes. That was the job of the Series/110/Defender.
The Range Rover was designed for such occasions as towing the horse float across damp grassy fields.