Another Rover February 3, 2008
Posted by tony in : Pointless, Hobbies, Recreation , add a commentSo, I picked up another Range Rover. I found a 1991 for pretty cheap. It’s nothing spectacular but most everything works and the things that don’t are pretty much only minor nits that I can work on. Or so I thought….
So I was driving it home (the night I bought it) in a raging snow storm. It took me about 90 minutes to go about 10 miles. So, I spent most of the drive idling in traffic. I immediately figured out that there was no heat. The temp gauge doesn’t work but I don’t know if that’s due to a bad thermostat or a bad sender. Because, after looking a little further, the entire heater core is bypassed. My guess is that it leaks and was never fixed. It was just cheaper/easier to bypass (nevermind the heat). But I get the knock for not catching it when I was looking at the Rover. Oh well, I need heat… so it will get fixed. It’s just a heater core and about 10 hours of work to replace it.
That wasn’t the least of it as I had made some progress towards home, the Rover was running fine and other than fogged up windows and no heat, I was doing ok in the snow. And just as suddenly, the oil light started to flicker on. WTF, was my first thought. I did notice that if you gave it a little gas, the oil light went off. Very strange. Fortunately, I was only a few blocks from home so I took it easy and pulled in the driveway and pulled the Rover in the garage. Fearing the worst, I thought I was lemon’d or that I’d overheated the engine or something like that. Fortunately, doing a little web searching gave me a lead on an issue where non-LR filters can cause air in the oil lines that can cause sporadic oil light flickering. So, I struggled with changing the oil (popeye evidently tightened the drain plug) and filled it with fresh 15W40 Rotella and a Cooper filter. I fired it up and the oil light went off and I was very happy. I took it out for a drive that night and it ran great (but still no heat).
Today’s fun was removing the joke of a brush guard. I was rusted and posed more of a risk for bending back and damaging the hood than protecting it. So, again, the struggle with rusted bolts and falling rust chunks into my eyes, I finally was able to remove the brackets. In the process I destroyed the valance holding the fog lights (it was already cracked and broken anyways. But, I felt better. I got to break something.
So, I’m Rovering once again. I have to register it tomorrow and order the heater core, but I’m going to start driving it because I don’t go that far every day and my diesel truck wouldn’t warm up during that time anyways. Pictures to follow when we get a nice day.