Jack D

Watling Engineering seem to have a towbar for anything. I rang them about a year ago after several pints and now I’ve got a towbar for a BMW 840 in the shed. Only one they’ve ever sold apparently. Arrived in about 4 days. How’s that for service!

Caution Dome. More incoming. I spent a good day polishing learning to polish on the old hector, it had the most dull paint I’ve ever come across - probably from all those hedges and country lanes. Went in full danger with the rotary. It came up rather nicely however was still naked without rear badging and coach line. Fleabay came up with something vaguely similar to the original coach line. I went with a twin line as fitted to 1989-91 instead of the single fitted to mine originally. What do you think? In progress Finito

Glitch in the matrix, surely this belongs on an Ovlov Spotted in London this week.

Stag that appears in use, Bath

The day had arrived. I could take the car home with a fresh clean MOT, stick a tank of juice in her and hit the road. Before this I applied the all important reproduction “Vogue SE” decal which had been decorating my piano for the last few months. First impressions were that these things drive awfully. Couldn’t keep it in a straight line. Bouncing all over the show. Pulled in for a pit stop alignment with the excellent chaps at Checkpoint in Devizes. That mostly sorted things out, still a few issues. On the ramp having its gusset tickled at checkpoint. And finally, after ten years of lusting after a good one it rolled into its new home ready for some cosmetic finishing touches. I can’t begin to express how fudging excited I was to have this thing home. Maybe I’m a weirdo but I would have walked straight past a McLaren P1 to fondle it’s saggy headlining and stroke the swoop on the top of the headrests.

I’ll give it a watch some day, thanks. Right, back on topic. The Range Rover now had a clean MOT but was cosmetically untidy. Aside from the lack of badging the faded pillar trims were really letting it down. They went from this nasty mess To this With the help of some satin black rattle can. It made a massive difference to the overall appearance of the car. In the same week it received new front and rear steel bumpers. When everything was coming together it made it glaringly obvious that it didn’t have any correct badging left on it. The previous owner had stuck a P38 autobiography one on it, I removed that along with the perished coach line. New correct vinyl badging and coach line were ordered. Still with no exhaust in this shot.

Thanks, bought that old thing when it was worthless. Held onto it by the skin of my teeth as a student ten years ago. Now it gets the love it deserves. She looks like this underneath now.

I have most of the equipment to reinstall it and all of the wiring is still present but honestly I’d need to have some massive miracle of motivation to pull apart the completely working new correct weight coils that it’s on. In terms of ride comfort there’s definitely improvement to be made . . I heard that the steel used in the soft dash faired poorly compared to the hard dash for corrosion. Might be bollocks. Sounds like bollocks now that I write it.

Yeah that’s right, the 3.5 discos with the Sherpa headlights! Can’t remember the last time I saw one.

You’re quite right gentlemen, LPG does have its merits and in a car that I’d actually use for transport I would definitely consider it but in this instance I’m still glad it’s absent. Anyway, things progressed. I’ve always been a fan of the twin side angled pipes that old Range Rovers had, they only came on the 3.5 though. The 3.9 just had some boring downturned thing that was shared with the TDi. None of that, thank you very much. On went the double bell end trumpet side master. The only modification from factory that I have made. Meanwhile I was getting filthy and sweaty underneath. The result was nice clean looking axles. I had a problem with my balls. They had gone a bit scabby. New seals and a shot of asshole ball grease sorted them out.

Amen

I wouldn’t say I avoided one that had an LPG conversion as such but I would say that I was slightly pleased that it didn’t have one. I viewed five, three of which had LPG. None had working LPG.

No nasty LPG conversion, sadly it has been converted from air suspension to coils though.

I believe they are called “boost”. From a late defender. It also had some nasty tint film on the windows. You can see here that the pillars are quite badly faded also. This was all to be rectumified later.

Next on the agenda was the welding. It was full of bran flakes and moths in the usual areas, rear door shuts, front inner wings and a tickle at the rear crossmember. Someone pointed the sparkly stick at it for long enough to vanquish the bran flakes. It was no longer liable to snap in half in the breeze. BL did a *wonderful job making sure there were no rust traps in the design. The jobs snowballed while we were in there as they always do. Ended up rebuilding the hubs with fresh bearings and seals. The goal was a truly non leaky Range Rover in every regard. Meanwhile the wheel man had done a blinder on the body coloured three spokes. Most people think these are a bit *nice but they chub me right up. These tyres are absolutely marvellous. They'll give you 90% of what a full off road knobbly noisy bastard will while retaining braking ability and acceptable noise levels. 11/10.