Tag Archives: landrover

Bang, and the bolt is gone!

There are some who swear that the best and fastest way to remove seized nuts and bolts on a Land Rover, is to use an angle grinder, and then just replace the bolts afterwards.

I say nope. Use the right tools and most of the time the fasteners will free up.

Don’t use the angle grinder as your ‘go to‘ fix it all…

Especially if the bolts are holding on the fuel tank and are covered in fuel, and the metal they are bolted through is also saturated in fuel…

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Sure, the angle grinder *will* remove the bolt, but it will also, vigorously, remove the fuel tank, most of the rest of the vehicle (from itself), sections of garage and garden, limbs and most definitely any body hair.


Watch “FRANK LIVES!!!” on YouTube

It’s taken 18 months of an hour here, an hour there, but finally Frank the Tank has blown the dust out of his figurative lungs and grumbled into life.

Me and a few friends pulled him apart primarily to fix a broken ring gear, but then additional tweaks were carried out. Purely functional ones, like the new manifold and stainless exhaust system, and new hand brake.

A little bit still to do (obviously!), but this was a great day!


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.

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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…

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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!


WordPress Back in iPhone Action

It looks like WORDPRESS have finally fixed the iPhone app after a huge wait.

WordPress is great for blogging, and the iPhone app was just the icing on the cake… until it died.

It used to be great… then it stopped adding photo’s… then it died totally. It would crash faster than a blind drunk race car driver with no sense of direction.

This meant the best way to blog to WordPress was to use the email option – which works fine, but it didn’t make life easy when approving comments or editing blogs already posted.

But now, it’s back in action… and I’m testing it to make sure I trust it for SERIES TEAM to take on their charity “Help For Heroes” rally.

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Already I see that this latest version (2.7) is far improved! It hasn’t crashed, and when typing in a web address it automatically asks to create a link – nice touch!

Well, as long as there is a photo attached to this latest blog entry, then I’d say WordPress (2.7) for iPhone is good to go.

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