DHappel

I must be spoiled ... the LR3 steering rod ends were easy. Of course, it's always been a CA car too.

Wow - I would have expected that to go pretty easy. But at least you're making progress!

ha....just caught the typo. I need to be re-spoiled!

That's something I've meant to do for years and just never get around to. I don't know why more people don't do it.

Last week at Casa de Happel.... It was invasion of the LR4s A couple pics of Antonio and Louis's LR4s getting sliders, and some old guy covetously looking on https://photos.app.goo.gl/Gm1YqwpJXpe3WdUN2 Speaking of which, said old guy should post up some pics of his little project. I have a few, but not many.

Right. Straight to Mr. Fuller!

It's pretty cool, no doubt, but certainly not for everybody. It's a LOT of work to install one and requires a fair bit of fabrication. It would go much faster now having done one already but it's no simple bolt-on to be sure.

On Friday I drilled out some broken slider bolts, tapped them for M10s, and installed new hardware on the LR3 On Saturday morning I replaced the rear driveshaft on the LR3 - while checking up on those broken bolts I saw the boot had torn and slung grease everywhere. Bummer as that wasn't very old at all. About 9:00 Saturday Antonio arrived and we installed sliders on his LR4. Around 11:00 (?) a friend of his arrived who had just installed sliders on his LR4 and I helped him sort out some of the trim bits. About lunch time (strange how that worked) Graeme arrived. About 2:30 we dove back into his truck and completed the shift and brake linkages for his underdrive as well as sheeted in the opened-up transmission tunnel. We stopped about 11:30 and started again this morning around 8:00, finishing up about 11:30. We learned that in low-low-1st, you can't even get the speedo to move at redline....

We did two LONG days and didn't finish. There were some set-backs that cost us some time but I'd say 2.5 is still tight. Mystery Guest didn't arrive as early on Saturday as we'd hoped but we still got going around 10AM when we'd hoped to start closer to 8. He forgot to bring the gear puller so we had to go into town on the first night and rent one of those - that's about 90 minutes lost. Then on Sunday we had to return the puller and go 3 places trying to find steel to build things up - that was about 2.5 hrs lost. And we lost about an hour trying to figure out what happened to his hand brake - the lever actually broke internally. That will have to be replaced but it was late and we didn't feel like diving into my parts rig at that point. Having done it once, we could do it now MUCH faster. I'm sure you'll understand since you're the only one of us who's actually done this before. We tried to sneak up on the cut-out, so mark, cut, test-fit, repeat - several times. Knowing now we would just dive in and start cutting. Neither of us realized how much tear down there would be on the TC either or we could have just torn straight into it instead of poking around and pulling up videos of how to rebuild one. He'll be back after Gold Lakes and we'll finish it off. That will give him a chance to sort out a few other questions, plus we'll have a better idea of what we need to do so we can be better prepared. Still, if I were telling somebody about it I'd probably tell them 3 days minimum and definitely you'll need 2 people. I think Mystery Guest got home around 3AM. He reported the drive home went fine but was extremely hot even with my welding blanket blocking some of the openings. He may need some asbestos pants for the drive back up here in 2 weeks But hey, we're freakin' experts now, so if anybody else wants to take this on we've got it DIALED baby!

Day two of working on the Mystery Guest Rover has not gone as smoothly as hoped. A few set-backs mean the mystery guest will have to return after Gold Lakes for a follow-up. It did leave under it's own power with shiny new parts installed but not completed. Pics have been taken, but you'll have to wait for the full report. Seriously - it was a big job. Swapping a motor would have been easier!

I didn't do much of anything to MY rover. Now, I might have spent all day doing something to somebody ELSE'S rover.... Not gonna tell just yet as the project is on-going...

Oh, that would be your friendly neighborhood Happel (me). Actually I'm afraid I'm not exactly in your neighborhood since I'm up in Walnut Grove (south of Sacramento) but I'm always willing to help out with work space for a club member. I have this nifty thing that magically makes the truck go up in the air so you can walk under it.... Just a matter of timing. I'm full-up this weekend on another project, next is the Gold Lakes trip, and I believe I'm going to be helping install some sliders on an LR4 the following, but I might be able to do some work with you that weekend as well. Of course somewhere in there I need to work on my own junk too.

Us Jeffersonians will be at hand should you need anything. Just shout!

Absolutely. I'm always willing to help a fellow Rover owner out when I can.

I feel your pain brother...

So productive! I ordered a 1/4 wave mag mount antenna to try out....

Has anybody ever NOT complained about HOAs?? If only you knew somebody who had a shop and was willing to let Rover people come play in it.

ha....yes. Snapper 0, Honda 1 Even broke out the weed eater and trimmed up the edges. How domestic of me.

Hmmm...it looks like both legs are in use in that pic.

Yes, that's why the GPS. Speedo was in/op when I got it. Sounds worse in the video than reality but you certainly hear the cable rotating around back there. tack tack tack tack...

Besides, if it WAS a Deere, I'd have to charge extra. After all, people are all worked up about wanting diesels in their Rovers on this side of the pond!

I assume you're talking about the noise of the broken speedo cable? Otherwise, you've got some pretty good ears to pick up something wrong with the motor in those videos!

First, I took a sledge and piece of 2x4 to the slider on the D1 ... now the passenger door doesn't rub when opening. Then I got the '88 RRC out, put some fresh gas in it, pumped a couple shots of grease into the u-joints, hosed it off, and took it for a little spin in prep for passing it along to a new owner. I really like this truck, and it drives pretty well. But with the D1 'roadster' I don't think I'll be building it into the crawler I had originally planned. Besides, I still have the Portland RRC to play with should I feel the need. https://goo.gl/photos/qBgisQ5puk6CFp616

I actually did do something in the present. Today I installed a radio in the D1. I went with a much more basic radio this time, a Kenwood 281A. Your basic 65w 2m radio without any fancy bells and whistles. Since this one doesn't have a removable faceplate I decided to mount it overhead. So I welded in a piece of 1/8" steel to the cage to support it. http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz85/zelatore/96%20Disco/IMG_20170525_125113957_HDR_zpspdhxe3uk.jpg http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz85/zelatore/96%20Disco/IMG_20170525_173415739_zps4vkrgqru.jpg I also conveniently ran out of shielding gas as I was doing this so a couple of the welds got a little funky but it's not like it's got to support a lot of weight. Once that was up, I put an NMO mount above the driver's tail light. I had ordered a mount with cable when I bought the radio but that wouldn't work for the spot I was putting it; it would only work on thin sheetmetal and this was 1/4" plate. So while I was in Oakland this week I stopped by HRO and picked up a thick-material NMO. This one didn't include a cable but I have a couple hundred feet of RG8x on hand so figured no big deal. But...turns out that mount won't accept RG8x so I had to take an hour out to run down to Stockton and pick up some RG58c/u. That in hand, I soldered up my connectors and mounted everything up. The antenna is a Larson 5/8 whip, 150B. I haven't actually tested it other than making sure I could talk to it with my hand held from 20' away. I should get a better change to try it out tomorrow as Greg and I are going up to Prairie City for a couple hours. http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz85/zelatore/96%20Disco/IMG_20170525_213012472_zpsnfvu3xvv.jpg http://i816.photobucket.com/albums/zz85/zelatore/96%20Disco/IMG_20170525_213033584_zpscenneoyo.jpg I'm not super-stoked about that mounting location but hopefully it'll work. There is no good ground plane on this truck since it doesn't have a roof.

Holy zombie-post batman! That was from over a year ago! I killed the traction jack at Shaver last year trying to escape a rather large hole. Snapped one section in half. I've since upgraded to MaxTrax. The roadshower got whacked by one too many trees and had torn off the cap which cracked the filler neck. It's since been repaired and seems to hold pressure again.