On Saturday my daughter Kat and I picked up the Land Rover and brought it home from the shop after Opere had it for over a month for the initial mechanical repairs.\u00c2\u00a0 Kat drove the Subaru home, I asked her to follow me to watch for smoke from the Land Rover….we even had a race out of a stoplight on Independence Ave…….Kat won.<\/p>\n
It feels great to be able to finally drive the Defender after owning it for more than three months and I am already using it for errands. \u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0And it drives very well.\u00c2\u00a0 The clutch works marvelously, the gears almost change themselves from second to third.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0I am particularly pleased with the smooth ride, in part thanks to the new poly bushings all around (rubberlike cushions that go between any metal parts \u00c2\u00a0between the, springs, shock absorbers and\u00c2\u00a0 chassis). \u00c2\u00a0The Bilstein heavy duty shock absorbers that I decided to invest in make for a good ride, a bit stiff but that is fine, the vehicle is lighter now than it ever will be. \u00c2\u00a0By the time we add the soundproofing, carpet, roofrack with roof tent and all the expedition gear the heavy duty shock absorbers will pay off in spades.\u00c2\u00a0 Best of all the motor does not smoke and it has a surprising amount of pickup, which indicates the compression is good.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0A good run on the highway, and some servicing should help clean up the bit of smoke that blows at take-off. \u00c2\u00a0Before I can do that though I have to get it legalized.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0Gomez the shady vendor has yet to produce the papers that I have to\u00c2\u00a0 present to the Department of Motor Vehicles to get it licensed. Why do I think this is going to cost me more money?<\/p>\n
Of course it is still not quite roadworthy.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0The signal lights do seem to work, but the brake lights do not, nor do the headlights.\u00c2\u00a0 \u00c2\u00a0It is also very noisy, the body is full of holes and everything rattles and clangs. \u00c2\u00a0But this week for the first time since we got it I realize that the whole project just might be feasible, and that is a satisfying feeling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Saturday my daughter Kat and I picked up the Land Rover and brought it home from the shop after Opere had it for over a month for the initial mechanical repairs.\u00c2\u00a0 Kat drove the Subaru home, I asked her to follow me to watch for smoke from the Land Rover….we even had a race […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16,25,13,24,14,15,22,23],"class_list":["post-128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-restoration-and-outfitting-technical-and-cultural-exploration-and-discovery","tag-4x4","tag-africa","tag-defender","tag-expedition","tag-land-rover","tag-overland","tag-overlanding","tag-wheatcroft","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.overlandrover-westafrica.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}