Very Coincidental Land Rovering

Very weird day.

We’ve had brake issues in the Series 3 Landy. So, new drums, shoes, slave & master cylinders were fitted.

A binding problem was then causing trouble in reverse, so last night at a weekly engineering evening with good friends, the drums were removed & the problem investigated. Turns out some shoe adhesive was on the shoe face, causing a very slight ‘grab’ of the trailing shoe, which then pulled on tight like a ratchet as more rear moment was put on it.

A hand file to increase chamfers & a clean up has reduced the problem now.

The really odd thing though is that I took a trip today with Christine and Alex. It was a trip to Woking to let Alex spend some of his Christmas money on model making gear at Toys R Us. We’d never shopped in Woking before…

Whilst there I also brought a new waterproof coat in a shop sale in the spur of the moment. I needed one, and the sale one was greatly reduced. Chris waited with Alex outside the shop on a bench.

When I went to join her I saw an elderly gent sat next to her, and they were having a happy discussion about something.

I introduced myself & he made a joke apology about talking with my wife about Land Rovers…

It appears they had sat next to him, and Alex was looking in a closed down shop window and Chris commented that it just had shelves in, and joking said no-one would just buy shelves.

The old chap chipped in and said that he knew of a place that just sold screws and fittings… in metric and imperial sizes.

Chris replied that a shop like that would have been useful this week, as we needed some old imperial sized nuts and bolts.

The man then asked, after assuming it was for a car, what the car was.

Chris replied it was for an old Land Rover… and then they got chatting about Land Rovers… and it was at this point that I turned up.

I then chatted with him about our old Land Rover and recent issues, as he was very well informed about the mechanics involved.

It turns out that the chap, called John, was Dunsfold Land Rover Collection’s mechanic up until he retired.

This in itself was a fantastic coincidence! I took the opportunity to discus the brakes and he said the rectification actions we were implementing sounded just right.

Then he goes and asks if I have the Haynes Series I,II,III Restoration manual.

I replied that I did… and he then explained that he is the only person to have had his belly mentioned (by name!) in a Haynes Manual, as a workshop ‘must have’ tool. To top it off, the section that his belly is mentioned in, is slap bang in the middle if the brake overhaul section…

A really nice chap, and such a coincidence to meet him in a place we’ve never been before, due to a chance visit to a shop sale, a conversation about shelves, nuts and bolts that lead to Land Rovers and then finding out that all the work we’ve done this week links up with the work he used to do… and his belly is famous for!

Owdi A4

The Audi drives like a new car now… So quiet & smooth…

Two years ago my Audi had a front left wishbone changed (dangly bit that holds the wheel in place).

After that my ABS would vibrate at low speed & the brakes would snatch. The general consensus was a sensor was damaged during the work. As the actual stopping and control of the car was still fine (and passed the MOT), it became something I could live with. It was just a low speed irritation.

Over the next 18 months my auxiliary drive belt (fan belt) started squealing. The Audi had 130,000 miles on the clock so this was put down to shiny & worn pulleys. Some anti squeak spray (yes, really) helped this. Once more it was just a slight irritation and occasional squeal.

The other day the front right wheel bearing… or maybe brake disk… started vibrating. I purchased a replacement bearing & set out to fit it… before finding out I needed a big press tool. I decided to book the car into Regency garage in Cove. A failing wheel bearing is more than an irritation….

As the technician drove it to the ramp he noticed the ABS problem & squeal. His initial though was the same as mine – dislodged sensor & worn pulley wheels. Only once he opened the bonnet did his Polish tech notice why the belt was squealing. If you looked closely you could see the belt tensioner was bent. That could fail & take out the cam belt housing & wreck the engine. Well spotted!

Thing is, to fix that the front of the car has to come off, so as the car now had 160,000 miles on the clock, and 40,000 since the last cam belt change, I opted to get the lot done whilst the front was removed. I also had the water pump done at the same time, as they are prone to fail & doing it now would save time & money later.

This was expense I didn’t need, but the tech was happy enough for me to source my own spares to save additional mark up.

Whilst the car was up on the ramps the Polish guy noticed a bit of a problem with my rear brakes. As he walked past the car his eye caught a mess of seized pads & a wrecked disc. As I hyper-mile & hardly use brakes I had not noticed a problem. Once the wheel was removed I was shocked at the mess…. The Audi was scrap if left like this. Unsafe, undrive-able.

A new calliper was needed on one side, new pads & luckily the bearing carrying discs were repairable. Less customer orientated places would gave fitted new parts, but these guys figured it was worth a try overhauling them (as new parts to fix this mess would be upward of £200 a side….).

Luckily they managed to skim & fix the discs. This it turns out was also the cause of that ABS vibration…. which one unscrupulous garage wanted to charge me £1500 for a new ABS pump & fitting!

So an £80 job to fix a wheel bearing turned into £700 (including parts) to fix the rear brakes, cam belt, aux belt tensioner, water pump and wheel bearing. Regency did all they could to help me and to keep the cost down and did a bloody good job.

They talked over the work with me, showed me the problems, gave me the options. Not once did they try to pull a fast one or milk the job out. I heartily recommend them.

The Audi now feels a lot better… and is a lot quieter…. and the ABS doesn’t vibrate any more!

If you thought reading this tedious blog was painful, I’m the one who had to pay for all of this….

The Joy of Old Land Rover Ownership

The older Land Rovers (leading up to the Defenders) are pretty much covered tractors with extra seating.

They were never intended as motorway cruising town cars. They were meant as work horses – and they do that well.

This leads to a few eye openers for those who do not know what to expect when they first get in an old Landy.

Take ours for example – a short wheel base (88″) Series III 2.25l petrol engined tank from 1977 – or ‘Frank‘ as Chris calls ‘him’….. or ‘The 88‘ as Alex calls ‘him’. (I use either…..). MEET FRANK

Some FRANK stats……

Driver comfort:

Square of foam for a cushion, with another one for a back rest…. some ‘posher’ models have the block of foam shaped slightly.

Air filled tyres.

Big letter box sized holes under the windscreen for cold air (and anything else that goes in them).

Engine for hot air (constant).

Passenger comfort:

Same as the driver – less a steering wheel to hold onto for reassurance.

Driving aids:

Steering wheel (big, as there is no power steering).  Clutch, a brake and a throttle.

There are indicators, but no hazard lights or reverse lights.

Mirrors. These give an idea of things around you… The vibration doesn’t really help with identifying what the things are though.

Gear stick. Ah, yes…. there are several of these. Where it lacks in other areas, it makes up for in the number of selector levers.

Stereo…. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!! Sure! Fit one, but you’re not going to hear the damned thing over the road noise and the engine and transmission howl!!!

Safety:

Frank has two normal (modern) belts for the driver and left hand passenger. The middle passenger gets a lap belt.

Rear passengers (4 people) get two shiny bench seats – No belts. Plenty of room to tuck and roll though…

That being said, the Landy is built on a massive girder chassis. If you do crash into someone, you probably won’t know it until you get home and spot their poxy Saxo boy racer embedded on the bumper…

I had a very early Range Rover that had the same type of chassis. A Ford Ka managed to write itself off on my Range Rover… whilst the Range Rover was parked and stationary…. The Ka hit my front bumper whilst reversing far too quickly out of a parking space. My Rangey didn’t suffer a scratch.

Performance:

0-60mph:  Ha ha ha…. really? 60mph? What’s a 60mph?

Braking: Eventual. Plan ahead.

Fuel Economy: 20mpg is possible….

From the Highway Code:

(Obviously not intended for drivers of old Land Rovers…)

1st gear – for speeds between 0 and 10mph
2nd gear – for speeds between 10 and 20mph
3rd gear – for speeds between 20 and 30mph
4th gear – for speeds between 30 and 40mph
5th gear – for speeds over 40mph

Reality:

1st gear – for speeds between 0 and 5mph
2nd gear – for speeds between 2 and 10mph
3rd gear – for speeds between 10 and 20mph
4th gear – for speeds between 20 and 45mph
Ear defenders & brave pills – for speeds over 45mph

Cost of running:

Spares are dirt cheap. I mean pocket money cheap for most of the stuff you require. It’s a giant Meccano kit and dead simple to work with (mostly).

Ignore the miles per gallon, as the smiles per gallon make up for it.

To improve of speed (and a little economy) there are various options you can go for, such as overdrives, bigger tyres, better engine, gearbox modifications – but it’s an old Land Rover, so I never expected 60mpg and precision handling! The overdrive or gearbox modifications can help with cruising speed though as you can safely sit at 60mph without over-stressing a good engine.

So…..

It doesn’t have whistles and bells (it does have a proper loud honking horn). Its all terrain capability comes from the driver knowing how to use the tools provided. It is geared for two wheel drive in high ratio (road use)  and has a high and low ratio four wheel drive – and if used correctly it’ll get you out of anything.

More modern 4×4’s (like the ones you see on school runs) rely more on computers than driving skills, which explains why you see more and more 4×4’s NOT GOING ANYWHERE in the snow, because people THINK the car can do it all itself. It can’t! You have to know what you are doing and how to use it! Most modern 4×4’s are just wasted on clueless numpty posers who think the car can go anywhere…. and up up getting stuck when their skill runs out.

The main question with any car is; “What do you need?” – A Land Rover makes a useless boy racer car, a Ferrari makes a useless family car, a Clio makes a useless utility car, and a Nissan LEAF makes a useless long range sports car…. You have to buy for what your needs are – and you have to weigh up what your needs are before you start to criticize what any particular vehicle can do…

The old Land Rovers were built to cross huge distances with really simple maintenance… If anything went wrong, the damned things could still limp home with engines rattling and gear boxes hanging off…..

For us though, Frank leaves a huge grin on our faces. It’s a simple, rugged vehicle that came up at a good price at the right time. Frank is perfect for Chris and her work with horses, where she needs a 24 hour a day, 7 days a week, rain, sun, snow and ice capable vehicle that can take the knocks without any concerns  about getting stuck somewhere, and that the dent you just put in the wing won’t write the car off due to the insurance expense of fixing it… (you can fit a new front wing to Frank for under £30…..).

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Snow kind of atmosphere

Finally!!! Snow that is PROPER snow!!! Not the few inches that people rant about! This is the best snow for close to 20 years! This is old fashioned snow! This is snow that eats unprepared drivers – and there were plenty of them today.

Read on for a few driving tips – and the mess that was my attempted drive to work!

What a day… a good 5 to 7 inches  fell over night. I made a comment on Twitter to Robert “Kryton” Llewelyn (@bobbyllew on Twitter) saying “It’s cold outside, there’s snow kind of atmosphere….”. He replied saying that he was now singing that all the time… Sorry Robert!! (Red Dwarf fans will understand…)

I’ve driven in harsh snow before, so I was confident of getting to work – my only worry was the other road users…

I cleared all of the snow from the car – unlike those idiots that just do a window. Getting hit by chunks of snow and ice off of the roof of the car in front is stupidly dangerous. In some places it is a legal requirement to clear all that snow off  – and I think it should be made a law in the UK all the time there are people lacking this common sense and common courtesy to other road users.

Rant over – I digress… I get into my car (the engine and heaters were already running) and notice a warning lamp on the dash… the ABS lamp! Great… I had no anti skid brakes. Never mind, I didn’t have them in previous cars and I am a pretty good driver (experienced in many conditions), so I wasn’t worried…. until I tested the road conditions and the brakes. I was going about 5mph with nothing around and I eased the brakes on…. hardly any pressure and the car slid. The roads were going to be bad.

I cautiously pulled away again in second gear. A rule of thumb for ice and snow driving is to use a gear higher then the one you would normally use and keep the revs low. This really helps reduce wheel spin when you pull away.

Within minutes I was stuck in traffic. Worst of the drivers were people in their fancy 4×4’s who automatically think they know how to drive in bad weather!!! I’m sorry, but just because you own one of these vehicles doesn’t mean you have a clue how to drive them properly… but more on that later!

It took an hour to get the first 2 miles… I would have stayed home but I had an important document to deliver (more on that in a later blog!). I carried on – amazed at some peoples pure lack of driving skills.

The snow kept coming down and the temperature dropped again. I noticed an icicle slowly growing on my wing mirror it was that cold! I actually watched it grow as I was stuck in traffic!

I drove onwards! I reached a roundabout where I saw a 4×4 driver wheel spinning and not going anywhere – this was on a flat road with a hill up ahead! If they couldn’t do level ground, then they didn’t have a chance….. SO I called out with some friendly advice “Try a higher gear and less gas“… to which they responded “I can’t…it’s an auto…“. Holy Cow! I know that type of car and they ALL have a manual mode you can use… A perfect example of an idiot behind the wheel…

I hit the bottom of the hill and just kept up the momentum. There are two schools of thought on keeping going on ice – Low revs and crawl, or high revs and just keep going. I used an bit of both and passed an Audi 4×4 estate as it slid back down the road…. Jeez! I was in a Fiat Multipla!!! What was going on with these people!!! I passed a tree blocking half a lane of the road – the weight of snow had caused it to collapse. That would be a pain for people going the other way!

I finally made it another mile…. I drove down a hill and came to a stop behind more traffic…. this was now 2 hours into my trip… I saw some people spinning in circles up ahead. The traffic was stopped solid so I put the car into neutral, hand brake on and heater running. No one was moving anywhere.

Whilst we were all stationary I noticed this Twitter message from Downing Street. What a bunch of idiots – It’s all very well that they can work from home, but a majority of people can’t work from home – so this message was pure stupidity. Well done Downing Street – Once more showing you are in touch with the people of the land. Numpties – isn’t it about time you let someone else run the country? My sons nappy content could probably do a less damaging job.

As one car came in the opposite direction they called out to the traffic row I was in…. “The Junction is a mess – cars just hitting cars…. It’s all blocked“. The junction was fed by a hill in all directions… it was an ice trap. Well, I wasn’t giving up, so I carried out a three point turn and headed back the way I had come. On the hill I saw a 4×4 off roader slow, shuffle on the spot and stop. They had come to a slippery stop and couldn’t move away again. I had to stop behind them… there goes my momentum!

They sat for a while and finally figured out how to use the gear box and pulled away. That left me (and a few cars behind me) stationary. I tried to pull away in second gear and all I got was wheel spin. Damn.

I tried again… but no luck. The key in situations like this is to not try too hard. If you can’t move, stop that method and try another, or else you’ll just get in even more trouble!

I tried to pull away again, this time spinning my steering wheel from left to right. This moved the front of my one way and the other…although not moving forward I was fighting for traction instead of just spinning in one place. Slowly I inched forwards…and stopped again. Hmmm… New idea needed.

I got out and let my tyres down to half the normal pressure. You shouldn’t do this and then drive at fast speeds – but for me, I wasn’t going to be going more than 20mph on these roads. Partially deflating the tyres is dangerous IF you don’t re-inflate them before going over 20mph, as you could end up losing all the air and some people have even had the tyre come off.

With my lower tyre pressure I went for an off-roading technique I had been shown. Lots of left and right steering and plenty of revs once the car started moving. Add to this some brakes….

I’ll explain:

Most road cars with 2 wheel drive are only one wheel drive on ice. Most 4×4 cars are only 2×4 cars on ice. This is due to the thing called the differential. This allows the wheels to turn at different speeds when cornering. You see as you drive in a curve, the wheel on the outside of the circle has to go further (and faster) than the one in the inside. If the both wheels were joined together by a solid bar this couldn’t happen and you end up scuffing and juddering around corners……

But WHY BRAKES? When a car wheel spins, it normally only spins one wheel and the other doesn’t move at all – all due to the differential. By applying the brakes very slightly as you also put on the throttle,  you slow down the spinning wheel and fool the differential into putting power into the wheel that wasn’t spinning. This means you have both wheels turning. This means you get all the powered wheels turning (more traction), and not one side turning and one side stopped. End of lesson!

This worked well! I slewed the wheels back and forth, changed up the gears and kept the wheels grabbing for grip all the way up to and over the peak of the hill. Once it was down hill all the way I stopped and put my hazard lights on.

I stepped out of the car and walked back down the hill to help the others that were stuck. Straight away I was told “No way – I’m stuck…” by a driver. I told him to slew his wheels and pull away in second gear – and to keep going once he was moving. It took several attempts before he got the knack (or listened), but finally he pulled away. There was no such like for the huge lorry further down the hill….. This road was now closed.

I carried on home, as by now I realised that there were worse roads ahead and more snow due. If I did get to work I wouldn’t get back. A phone call to the office showed only 2 people made it in (locals). Game over for most of them then!

I negotiated my way around the fallen tree and past the two 4×4’s I had passed coming the other way earlier (still stuck, still spinning to try and move…. muppets!). A few more snow broken trees and stuck cars later I slowly drove home. Knowing that the road behind be was impassable I powered my window down and let drives heading the other way know the troubles ahead. Luckily they all managed to turn back at the roundabout i had just past.

I got to Farnborough and slipped down a short cut slope by the Police Station. Big mistake.

The road was blocked at one end. I had to turn around and get back up the steep hill on a curve. I realised that the road was stupidly icy here – It was a safe assumption as the guy in front had got stuck on the level ground, slipped sideways and stopped. He got out, slammed his door and the car slipped sideways away from him. Not looking good for me then!

It was then I noticed a lady with a young boy at the bus stop. I knew no buses would get down here so I offered her a lift. Crazy of me to offer – and crazy for her to accept. I guess the child seat in the car and high Police presence made her feel safe. I called Chris on my hands free car phone for two reasons at this stage – To let her know I was almost home and to let the lady see I was a local person. I could have been lying, but the evidence that I was a family guy was enough for her.

Her son was just over 3 years old and autistic. She was trying to get him to Frimley for a specialist group that took ages for her to get an appointment for – she really didn’t want to miss it. I chatted about Alex as we struggled up the hill (more rapid left/right steering and high gears!) and finally got onto the Camberley road. I dropped the lady and her son off and carried on home. I hope she got home alright later – but hey, at least she made the appointment – the trip home wasn’t a race aganist time for her!

I got home and the snow was begging for some Alex action! We don’t have a sled, so I took an old filing cabinet shelf and formed a ramp on the front. I then added some carpet tiles so Alex wouldn’t get too cold a bum, and finished it off with a cord to pull it. He loved it!!

It was Hellish trying to keep his mittens on, but apart from that he thoroughly enjoyed his parent powered sleigh ride!

The lake looked wonderful in the snow – but then don’t you think that most things look so much better with a nice layer of snow?

The local main roads cleared up with the gritter lorries spreading their paint chipping loads all over the place. I figured that we may as well get the weekly shopping done as I had the safer car and Chris had no snow driving experience. The roads were pretty clear  – but tomorrow will be sheer Hell. It is already below freezing and that slush is going to be like sheet ice in the morning. I shall try to go to work again, but I think it will be worse on the roads tomorrow due to the ice. Today was just snow and pack snow – no real ice problems.

Once we got home it was dark out – but our neighbours were still building a snowman… and called me over to help! It took four of us to roll the middle section up onto the bottom section! It is way taller than me! (I’m 6ft 4in). You get the size idea from the crushed beer can buttons!!