Schaefft's Bargain Barge Extravaganza - L322 Range Rover arrives, then leaves, Q45 is receiving TLC

[Schaefft]

55 minutes ago, JMotor said:

Kinda wish I brought one of these wheels with me. Just to try on the Q45.

Bother is. They are VERY JDM and are a weak spec of wheel too. 

 

Ha, I had the choice of a similar style wheel when I bought the car (that's what it was riding on here in the UK before I bought it), I declined naturally. I wouldn't be opposed to something a little closer to this though...

I'd want to stick to a factory wheel option though. The Q45 and President came with some decent alloys, including BBS ones. I'd be happy with either.

[JMotor]

To be honest.

I agree. It needs to be back to stock height and with a OEM wheel choice. 

I have to be going soft. As I'd been fully on board with the first picture of a lowered one on the chromies 😆.

[Gompo]

Always enjoy seeing what you bring to FotU, looking forward to checking out the Infiniti. Good luck with the MoT!

[Schaefft]

Rockauto once again delivered in record time, with me ordering parts on a Thursday evening and receiving the front caliper and rebuild kit needed to get the Infiniti going on Monday noon. Unfortunately only one of the two parcels arrived as FedEx for God knows what reason held one of them at their import facility for 2 days, so no new pistons for the driver side caliper that was NLA...

Luckily I was able to scavenge one decent piston from the caliper I did have a replacement for. I don't have compressed air yet so pushing them out using the brakes was my only option here...

No wonder the front brakes were seized nearly solid. I'm not sure how old the brake fluid was (still looked good in the reservoir) but that's the end result. The seals all looked good still. I've had to use the right and middle piston, both cleaned up well enough to be reusable for now.

The bore surfaces still looked spot on so no issues there. I've blasted it all with brake cleaner and wiped any remaining dirt out.

Here's where things got tricky. The damn dust covers wouldn't fully snap into the ridge around the bore no matter how hard I tried. Chances are I would have torn them to pieces long before they seat properly. It's a dust cover so it'll be alright for a while but should I ever find a rebuilt right front caliper those will be my reason to replace it. With replacements around 50 quid it's just not worth the hassle.

The other side naturally was easy, a fully refurb'd caliper for under £50, what more could you want.

I'll do the rear calipers another time (they seem to drag a little as well). They too are cheap so by the time I'm done it'll have new calipers and brake fluid all around. This will be the only maintenance item I needed to have done to the car so far, everything else is related to the dumb mods I'm planning to revert. Those crappy headlights LEDs that have already partially failed will be next.

For now the Q45 is ready for Fotu though. It'll be the first long trip since I picked it up in Birmingham a few years ago.

[MAF260]

5 hours ago, Schaefft said:

 

That front end is very reminiscent of a facelift Rover 800.

[Schaefft]

Fotu25 has come and gone and I've had a great time there talking to people about both their cars (Dutch guy with a Lancia Y, another person with a manual X300 like mine, the Senator B dude being so thankful about me referring him to Senatorman.de for diagnostics help (the issue was a junk-out-of-box Febi temp sensor he just installed in the end)). The Q45 did great, no issues whatsover on the 500+ mile round trip aside from the occasional lack of traction pulling out when the roads were wet😂

I thought it needed rear calipers as they were a bit sticky as well, that problem might have sorted itself now that its done a few miles again.

In other news, the Citroen C6 has finally returned! After a few session of diagnosing why the electronic parking brake had a mind of its own it all came down to it needing cables. 250 quid later and the parking brake works again, which meant that (after all the work I've done 2 months earlier) its good for another year on the road.

Oddly enough this is currently the most practical car I own thats actually on the road (ZTT waiting for front springs, 540i Touring and Alfa 156 waiting for MOT work). The fold-down back seat makes all the difference so it was immediately pressed into use hauling more car parts:

It still needs tyres (might buy a complete set of C6 or late model 18" C5 wheels if I can find one) and the coolant flange replacing. The latter arrived yesterday so I might be able to throw it in the car by the end of the week. This might be the last thing I will do on the Citroen before it goes up for sale. With the next liability purchase already on the horizon it and the XJR will likely be put up for sale once they are sorted.

[Schaefft]

The latter continues to be a bit of a pain. The MAF from @horriblemercedes helped me narrow down that it indeed is the cause for the running issues that I had with it. The XJR doesn't struggle with the throttle anymore now that maf #3 is doing its job, I'll continue to monitor things for a while to make sure things actually stay fixed.

However since sorting one thing apparently upset the balance of Jaguar reliability the passenger front window immediately decided to not close anymore. There's also an ABS light illuminated now (I haven't even touched anything remotely related to the abs) so that needs looking into as well.

Very much one step forward, two steps back then. Fingers crossed the abs light is something simple and I can return this thing to full functionality sooner rather than later.

[horriblemercedes]

This company in the Netherlands claims to be able to repair them:

https://www.ecu-rc.nl/Control/5370/jaguar-lna-1620-aa/?tid=1

 

Could be worth trying them? 

[Schaefft]

The window lifter on the XJR somehow fixed itself so I'll call that a win. Do you know what else is a win? Finally owning a Citroen C6 that doesn't leak coolant.

Unfortunately the path to get there wasn't the easiest, it might one of the harder jobs you'll eventually have to do on every C5/C6 with the 2.7 diesel. The next owner can count themselves lucky that I've just done it. Its coming from a plastic-welded coolant pipe right at the front of the engine bay, fairly far down the block. Lets see what accessibility looks like:

Shit. It was pretty clear to me from the beginning that the radiator would need to come out, even with the easier to remove covers gone things were still looking grim (you can't even catch a glimps of it there):

Moving everything attached to the radiator out of the way and unbolting the whole assembly from all its mounts to tilt it forward helped enormously. I don't know why but PSA/Citroen decided that you can't seemingly remove the radiator from the top, as far as I can tell it just drops out of the bottom, making it all unnecessarily complicated for anyone without a ramp.

You still can't see the coolant pipe there but the thick hose right in the bottom center attaches to it. This job basically needs to be done without direct line of sight, you need a camera phone with a torch to see where the bolts are located. The top one is fairly easy to reach with a few extensions, the bottom one however is hiding behind the damn exhaust manifold!

Fortunately there is just about enough space to get past it with plenty of extensions and a wiggly thing, its almost impossible from above but lying underneath the car using a torch you can just about see what you are doing. Once that second bolt is out the pipe just pulls out.

As is so often the case the leak was more or less the result of a total bodge and would have been entirely avoidable. Someone clearly had it out before and elected to silicon the thing (while breaking the seal to the block which then probably caused a worse leak). One of the coolant hoses is still attached to it there, its impossible to remove with the pipe still in place so it'll need to be transferred over to the replacement pipe before its getting installed.

That's where it needs to go. I carefully scraped the remaining silicon out of the port, you can see the clever* placement of the second bolt on the right as well.

New (genuine PSA!) pipe installed, it doesn't easily push back into place so I've used the bolts to carefully press it back in, naturally all without actually ever seeing any of it. The rest is the reversal of removal, getting the bonnet catch to work as intended was another 20 minutes of fun but it was good see the engine bay reassembled after probably 4 hours of hell.

I had the car running for 30mins to get it up to temperature and confirm there was no leak. Not a single drip anymore, thank god. This was the last job the car needed to be fully functional as a long distance cruiser again. That doesn't mean that its perfect (still no working A/C) but after the parking brake, suspension bushing, PDC and all the cosmetic improvements (still terrible) it'll be the last big job I wanted to get done on it.

I'll try to put a few miles on before it's being put up for sale (just so I can enjoy a somewhat sorted C6 for a little while). With a new low cost, high liability vehicle likely incoming soon I would need the space back relatively soon as well though.

[fatharris]

I've spent a few weeks reading your thread and totally blown away - you must only sleep for two hours a day with this lot going on!

[Schaefft]

11 hours ago, fatharris said:

I've spent a few weeks reading your thread and totally blown away - you must only sleep for two hours a day with this lot going on!

If you stretch it out across a few years it's not too bad but I'm certainly rarely bored. I often feel bad if I don't get at least one thing done on a car each day, no matter how small it is.

Case in point, I sorted the aftermarket headlight wiring on the Infiniti the other day. The LED units are still in there (the headlight lenses are goop'd up so there's little chance of removing them) but all bulbs are back in place and excess wiring removed:

Only the sidelight bulb holders were a bit of a problem, they are unique to the Q45 it seems (why Nissan...) and whoever installed the LEDs cut the wires right at the holder😬.

I've cut the plastic around the wires down so I got a bit of cable to solder to, which was successful enough to end up with this:

Bulbs installed, original factory lighting restored:

I've also replaced all the clips holding the covers in place, naturally most of them were missing and things just flapping around. All good now although these Chinese made clips will strip out in no time compared to the original ones I'm sure.

I think the Infiniti will be the car of choice for Radwood later this month and I might even go and get a ticket for Rustival a week later as well. It won't need much and fits the theme of both events so a polish might be all I'm doing on it next.

Which works well as the next liability will be arriving end of this week if things go according to plans...

[Schaefft]

With the ZTT needing an MOT it's time to tackle the snapped spring on the driverside front. As mentioned before, finding the right springs (comfort MG springs) seems near impossible, neither can I get complete struts. So I went to Autodoc and ordered the cheapest springs with the right (and only referenced) part number match I could get, which happened to be from a German spring specialist. You'd hope they know what they are doing. They arrived last week so I started having a look at them yesterday.

MG ZT/Rover 75 front struts come out fairly easily. Release the droplink from the antiroll bar and the pinch bolt holding the strut inside the hub carrier. At that moment I realized that I didn't have an 15mm impact socket for some reason, immediately grinding progress to a halt. No matter how hard I tried with heat and hammering the hell out of the bolt, it wouldn't come out.

I've taken the snapped spring out there already, no chance of getting the new spring in like this either. As you can see, the replacements are a completely different size...

Here's me hoping that the reference number mentioned on Autodoc wasn't a lie and this is an ZT comfort spring equivalent...

Thanks to Prime a new 15mm impact socket arrived today which made short work of the pinch bolt. I was already expecting it to snap and me therefore having to get a replacement hub carrier as well...

The shock came out fairly easily after bolting it back to the strut tower so the hub could drop down while hammering the crap out of it. This would be a good time to replace the entire strut assembly but its all still feeling fairly tight at 73k miles, and its not like comfort dampers are any easier to find than the springs were...

Well, that's as far as I can take with this unfortunately. I simply do not have the tools to compress this significantly taller spring enough to reassamble the strut (trust me, I tried everything after this photo was taken, probably risking my life...).

I'll try and see if I can find a garage with a proper spring compressor to handle this one. With the other strut needing the same work I won't even bother with it I think.

 

[Schaefft]

With one Rover still waiting to get its springs getting sorted yesterday was the time for another Rover to join the fleet. As everybody should have seen by now, I've decided to buy a 2007 Range Rover TDV8 from a dodgy driveway seller in Stockport, knowing that the gearbox would likely be screwed. Not necessarily a problem though as the price was right and the condition of the vehicle otherwise looked promising:

Well, the RR made it home in the end, however not without testing my survival skills when buying questionable motors. Arriving at DirtyDaily's place the car actually made a really good first impression:

While it was clearly well prepped for a sale, looking a bit closer confirmed that someone must have taken good care of it for at least a little while. There's no major damage or corrosion on any of the panels (rear sills still crispy though, but at least hidden), the interior is tidy and without any major wear, appropriate for the 108k miles its displaying. Things like the Venture Cam, tow ball and a 2nd original key are all present. Even the tyres look like they hardly have any miles on them. No visible leaks, sagging air suspension, flat battery etc after sitting for a week. We took it for a drive and all seemed well.

Knowing that this is still a Land Rover product I only filled it with 40l of diesel, just enough to get me home. I wouldn't want to risk breaking down with a full tank of diesel worth a considerable chunk of change. Well, while it did behave in city driving (probably the only journeys its done in the last few years...) joining the motorway didn't go so well...

Not only did it immediately trigger limp home mode locking me in 3rd gear (which is now pretty much confirmed to be caused by a worn rear stator bush, apparently not all too rare of a failure in Land Rovers for some reason), driving it at 3500rpm and then overtaking a Golf going 50 for god knows what reason was enough to immediately trigger a low coolant light. Which meant I had to pull over.

I could tell that it suddenly lost coolant and that it must have been somewhere in front of the engine. I only had a liter of water with me, I don't think it would have made much of a difference but I filled it in anyway. Fortunately the next petrol station was only 1.5 miles away so I limped the RR off the motorway in the hopes of finding some water there...

This is what Range Rover ownership really looks like. Still looking great there though! I had a closer look at where the coolant could be escaping from and luckily spotted the upper radiator hose having slid off the engine side flange for whatever reason. You can see it here out already but its normally sitting right underneath the driver side boost pipe:

Fair enough, its barely accessible (probably why the previous person working on it didn't manage to install it properly) but at least its something that could be fixed relatively easily! It wouldn't make much of a difference without tools though. I only brought a few screwdrivers... That's when I met the friendliest petrol station manager I must have ever encountered. She happened to have a tool kit (consisting of the most random assortment of hand tools I've ever seen, including 5 12mm spanners but no 10mm, a small incomplete socket set, a set of pliers, some vice grips (the life safer) and a few bits of what almost looked like scrap metal) that was just about enough to very slowly and painfully disassemble everything sitting above that coolant pipe, just enough for me to pull it out of there...

Its mangled but just about good enough to get me home... I stole a jubilee clip from the boost pipe and swapped it with the clamp that was holding on the coolant pipe before. I'd at least have a chance of tighting the jubiless clip with the tools I had there when I didnt have the tools to compress the clamp enough to reassamble it all securily. An hour of agony later and we were back on the road and the Range Rover now being cooled by Highland Spring still water (they didn't have a public toilet and the screen wash dispenser was more expensive than just buying bottles of drinking water...).

The trip back to Newcastle was rather uneventful after that. It naturally was stuck in 3rd most of the way and I now know that the driver rear caliper must be sticking. The tyres also make the noise of a failing wheel bearing on some road surfaces, fun when you are driving a new-to-you car. But with speeds capped at around 50mph and the rpms never going over 3200 the hose stayed on all the way (another failure would have meant a guaranteed ride in the tow truck, taking several more hours). I even managed some rather respectable fuel economy numbers despite only having half the gears I should have (an indicated 28.5mpg in the end)!

For whatever reason the GPS doesn't seem to be able to position the car correctly although it does realize that the vehicle is moving. Here it thinks I'm somewhere in the North Sea. Calibrating the position manual didn't help all that much, its very odd that you'd have to do this in the first place.

Arriving back in Newcastle the car was immediately pressed into use to haul some junk out of my old place:

Having seen some rather large cars in this driveway the L322 still looks massive:

Check out the purple exterior illumination though. I actually like that:

Anyway, that's where we are at now. I'll probably book transport to Birch 4x4 Motors for Thursday so they can put it on a ramp sometime next week. They are located in Liverpool so I probably could have saved myself a few quid by driving it directly to them but you are always wiser afterwards. A rebuilt gearbox won't be cheap but with the rest of the car in pretty decent shape it should be worth the effort. You won't be able to find an L322 TDV8 in this condition with a brand new gearbox/torque converter for the money it'll ultimately cost me, I'm crossing my fingers that it will be the last large bill for at least a little while though, the plan is to take it to Germany in October and a lap on the Nurburgring seems more and more likely...

[Schaefft]

With the Range Rover effectively replacing the Citroen C6 (now owned by @Talbot) there's a surprising amount of similarities between the two.

Both are 2007 diesel powered vehicles (crazy tax bracket yay), they are both black with black leather interiors, they both feature adjustable suspension, a Ford-developed Biturbo Lion-V engine (the 3.6 V8 is literally the 2.7 V6 with two extra cylinders) and both are generally seen as rather questionable in their reliability record. Considering that I didn't encounter all that many serious issues with the C6 (aside from the electronic parking brake which my facelift L322 also features) it can only mean that a laggy old C6 is actually more reliable than a well cared for Range Rover with 60k less miles...

[GeordieInExile]

That's more of a damnation of the RR than in any way praise for the C6!

Which has the more comfortable ride?

[red5]

3 hours ago, Schaefft said:

With one Rover still waiting to get its springs getting sorted yesterday was the time for another Rover to join the fleet. As everybody should have seen by now, I've decided to buy a 2007 Range Rover TDV8 from a dodgy driveway seller in Stockport, knowing that the gearbox would likely be screwed. Not necessarily a problem though as the price was right and the condition of the vehicle otherwise looked promising:

Well, the RR made it home in the end, however not without testing my survival skills when buying questionable motors. Arriving at DirtyDaily's place the car actually made a really good first impression:

While it was clearly well prepped for a sale, looking a bit closer confirmed that someone must have taken good care of it for at least a little while. There's no major damage or corrosion on any of the panels (rear sills still crispy though, but at least hidden), the interior is tidy and without any major wear, appropriate for the 108k miles its displaying. Things like the Venture Cam, tow ball and a 2nd original key are all present. Even the tyres look like they hardly have any miles on them. No visible leaks, sagging air suspension, flat battery etc after sitting for a week. We took it for a drive and all seemed well.

Knowing that this is still a Land Rover product I only filled it with 40l of diesel, just enough to get me home. I wouldn't want to risk breaking down with a full tank of diesel worth a considerable chunk of change. Well, while it did behave in city driving (probably the only journeys its done in the last few years...) joining the motorway didn't go so well...

Not only did it immediately trigger limp home mode locking me in 3rd gear (which is now pretty much confirmed to be caused by a worn rear stator bush, apparently not all too rare of a failure in Land Rovers for some reason), driving it at 3500rpm and then overtaking a Golf going 50 for god knows what reason was enough to immediately trigger a low coolant light. Which meant I had to pull over.

I could tell that it suddenly lost coolant and that it must have been somewhere in front of the engine. I only had a liter of water with me, I don't think it would have made much of a difference but I filled it in anyway. Fortunately the next petrol station was only 1.5 miles away so I limped the RR off the motorway in the hopes of finding some water there...

This is what Range Rover ownership really looks like. Still looking great there though! I had a closer look at where the coolant could be escaping from and luckily spotted the upper radiator hose having slid off the engine side flange for whatever reason. You can see it here out already but its normally sitting right underneath the driver side boost pipe:

Fair enough, its barely accessible (probably why the previous person working on it didn't manage to install it properly) but at least its something that could be fixed relatively easily! It wouldn't make much of a difference without tools though. I only brought a few screwdrivers... That's when I met the friendliest petrol station manager I must have ever encountered. She happened to have a tool kit (consisting of the most random assortment of hand tools I've ever seen, including 5 12mm spanners but no 10mm, a small incomplete socket set, a set of pliers, some vice grips (the life safer) and a few bits of what almost looked like scrap metal) that was just about enough to very slowly and painfully disassemble everything sitting above that coolant pipe, just enough for me to pull it out of there...

Its mangled but just about good enough to get me home... I stole a jubilee clip from the boost pipe and swapped it with the clamp that was holding on the coolant pipe before. I'd at least have a chance of tighting the jubiless clip with the tools I had there when I didnt have the tools to compress the clamp enough to reassamble it all securily. An hour of agony later and we were back on the road and the Range Rover now being cooled by Highland Spring still water (they didn't have a public toilet and the screen wash dispenser was more expensive than just buying bottles of drinking water...).

The trip back to Newcastle was rather uneventful after that. It naturally was stuck in 3rd most of the way and I now know that the driver rear caliper must be sticking. The tyres also make the noise of a failing wheel bearing on some road surfaces, fun when you are driving a new-to-you car. But with speeds capped at around 50mph and the rpms never going over 3200 the hose stayed on all the way (another failure would have meant a guaranteed ride in the tow truck, taking several more hours). I even managed some rather respectable fuel economy numbers despite only having half the gears I should have (an indicated 28.5mpg in the end)!

For whatever reason the GPS doesn't seem to be able to position the car correctly although it does realize that the vehicle is moving. Here it thinks I'm somewhere in the North Sea. Calibrating the position manual didn't help all that much, its very odd that you'd have to do this in the first place.

 

GPS aerial/unit has failed. Relatively easy fix. Drop rear of headlining, unless it's done it itself and have a peak. 

[Schaefft]

1 hour ago, GeordieInExile said:

That's more of a damnation of the RR than in any way praise for the C6!

Which has the more comfortable ride?

I already know that the Range Rover will be significantly more expensive to maintain than the C6, I hope it will level out somewhat over time, especially if it's jobs I can do myself. There's a million of them getting broken so parts are plentiful and cheap.

I'd say the C6 is slightly more floaty on the motorway, the L322 isn't far behind regarding comfort though. The Range Rover also is significantly more practical, can tow pretty much anything and actually feels more special/expensive (which it certainly was when new). In that regard I think it's the right choice.

5 minutes ago, red5 said:

GPS aerial/unit has failed. Relatively easy fix. Drop rear of headlining, unless it's done it itself and have a peak. 

Awesome, sounds easy enough then!

[DirtyDaily]

My experience working on the l322 was parts are very reasonable and its not too difficult. If i had the option between an l322 or a c6 id go for the l322 and i think the range rover may break more but itll be easier and cheaper to fix. Im not even sure the l322 will break more than a c6 ill be honest.

[red5]

6 minutes ago, Schaefft said:

I already know that the Range Rover will be significantly more expensive to maintain than the C6, I hope it will level out somewhat over time, especially if it's jobs I can do myself. There's a million of them getting broken so parts are plentiful and cheap.

I'd say the C6 is slightly more floaty on the motorway, the L322 isn't far behind regarding comfort though. The Range Rover also is significantly more practical, can tow pretty much anything and actually feels more special/expensive (which it certainly was when new). In that regard I think it's the right choice.

Awesome, sounds easy enough then!

Self test mode on head unit then enter 753.

Go to navigation menu where the Destination Entry, Stored location etc bit is then press and hold on the top of the screen where it says 'Navigation Menu' for 6 seconds, 

Win.

 

[Schaefft]

31 minutes ago, red5 said:

Self test mode on head unit then enter 753.

Go to navigation menu where the Destination Entry, Stored location etc bit is then press and hold on the top of the screen where it says 'Navigation Menu' for 6 seconds, 

Win.

 

I might have to approach you for any future questions I will have!

[St.Jude]

If it makes you feel any better, Land Cruiser ownership is roughly the same as Range Rover ownership.

It doesn't make me feel better but, y'never know!

[Dabooka]

On the gearbox front, it may be worth calling Austrin’s in Newcastle.  We used them years ago when we had some LR ambulances and recall they were decent.  Don’t have any more recent experiences but possibly worthy of a call prior to shipping it down to Liverpool?

[loserone]

There are LR specialists in Allendale and Tow Law which might be worth a call before shipping it halfway across the world?

[Schaefft]

35 minutes ago, Dabooka said:

On the gearbox front, it may be worth calling Austrin’s in Newcastle.  We used them years ago when we had some LR ambulances and recall they were decent.  Don’t have any more recent experiences but possibly worthy of a call prior to shipping it down to Liverpool?

 

30 minutes ago, loserone said:

There are LR specialists in Allendale and Tow Law which might be worth a call before shipping it halfway across the world?

I think the problem with them is that they'd be able to fit a gearbox but never actually open it up to do repairs to them, definitely not cheaper than a company specializing in doing just that. I can have a reconditioned gearbox fitted for around 1400 quid (new torque converter and solenoid pack would be extra), a "good" used gearbox plus fitting would probably only be a few hundred quid less. The transport to Liverpool is 230 quid (plus the train ticket to collect it again). In the end I'd save a few hundred quid without having a warranty and the knowledge that everything inside that could age and wear is new again and would hopefully last at least another 100k miles.

[Bear]

Any chance the coolant loss may also impact gearbox behaviour, given the tendency of these things to have the shittiest heat exchangers known to engineering?

[Schaefft]

5 minutes ago, Bear said:

Any chance the coolant loss may also impact gearbox behaviour, given the tendency of these things to have the shittiest heat exchangers known to engineering?

I don't think it'll be related, it's hard to tell whether that coolant loss was a problem before already. The behavior is consistent with a typical failure point in these gearboxes (wear on an important metal bush, at least on early versions used by Land Rover), it's just happening earlier on this one than I would have expected. Maybe it's done a lot of towing early on in its life?

[Schaefft]

You can look at my driveway and see things from two completely different perspectives:

It's either the dream everybody in 2005 would have aspired to, or it's a display of complete madness, created in total ignorance of the automotive liabilities that these two cars represent (not pictured is my BMW E65).

Anyway, the Range Rover gets collected tomorrow and shipped to Liverpool to have its gearbox sorted (hopefully without too much trouble). Not before giving it a good hoover and getting rid of the two error messages popping up on the dash though!

One is for the side light, which for whatever reason has its bulb missing. Step one, remove grille and headlight:

Fortunately either are only held in by 3 screws. It took me a little while to find two bulbs that had the same brightness so I faffed around for longer than needed.

The other error was low coolant, I intentionally kept the reservoir slightly low to avoid building up unnecessary pressure. I checked my hose clamp and things are still looking solid, I'm fairly confident it'll stay on going forward but just in case I'll keep a spare clamp in the car... I've also read the ECU fault codes again, one of the EGR solenoids is probably on its way out. The car also doesn't recognize that the key is removed from the ignition sometimes, an issue I've only gotten today but regular enough in the past that a previous owner installed an additional switch under the dash. I sprayed some contact cleaner into the barrel, hopefully that'll sort that, otherwise I'll order a replacement barrel and rip the hack switch right out.

I have to admit that I really like this thing. I don't know if it's the stately image that is still associated with the Range Rover or just the fact that this is a fairly nice example that could be a really good one with a bit of TLC. It's still very much looking like an expensive and desirable car.

[Schaefft]

The Range Rover got collected this morning, wish me luck that things go smoothly with the gearbox replacement next week.😬

Until then, I have the other cars to keep me busy. Since its the Summer of the Q45 (after Fotu now also going to Radwood and Rustival over the next 2 weekends) and the ZT-T still blocking my wrenching corner I gave the Infiniti a nice little polish this afternoon. Despite having only 32k miles it has picked up quite a few scuffs over the years, plus the key marks that I'd at least like to reduce somewhat in places. Here are the before and afters:

Obviously you can't polish out missing clear coat. I'll have to see whether this can be reduced somewhat by some smart repairs.

It works a lot better with smaller scratches and scuffs, the glue left behind by the door guards continues to be a pain though:

Overall the car looks so much better now, I didn't polish the front bumper or much of the lower doors but even then it already made a huge difference. It took about 3 hours with fairly decent paint (meaning no wet sanding step needed) but its definitely worth it:

I've adjusted the bonnet stops to get slightly more even gaps after these pictures were taken, not sure why the alignment looked a bit off considering everything looks untouched since it rolled off the assembly line. I should probably do an oil change before the journey to Radwood next week, I'm also planning to pick up some rare parts for the E38 that I got for a bargain price (always have to make the most out of these long drives) so the car will be pretty stuffed with stuff by the time I'm back.

That's next week though, more fleet news tomorrow.