Behind the Steering Wheel [Courtesy of Rovers North, November, 2006]
By Jeffrey B. Aronson
Admit it; you’ve been here. In a painfully accurate cartoon, a woman wanders by “The Men Only Cemetery.” She reads the tombstones. Their epitaphs read:
“Yes, I Know What I’m Doing”
“Hey, Trust Me.”
“Don’t Worry, I’ve Done This a Million Times”
“That Doesn’t Look So Hard to Do”
“What’s the Worst That Can Happen?”
“It Can’t Get Any Worse, Right?”
“It’s The Black Wire to the Red Wire, Right?”
Take the last one, for example.
As of this year, I’m the owner of two Series II-A’s, the oft-described QE I and another 1966, 1700 MV, which translates loosely to “It’s five o’clock in Maragaritaville.” You’ll see why I’m turning to oceans of tequila, triple sec and lemon-lime in a moment.
The story of this latest acquisition will be featured in our next issue; suffice to say that it’s quite original [Solex carburetor and worn-out door seals]. At least that’s what I thought when I pulled it into the island’s local repair shop to give the mechanic a go at the missing frame member. The undercarriage of the car has sort of a madras treatment of patches, some in basic black, others in dull metallic. At a point between the rear axle and the rear crossmember, the box frame included a sort of air hole, a large section of emptiness, an existential frame member, if you will. I bought some steel sheets and the mechanic performed some expert welding along the sides and bottom.
While we were at it, we made lots of efforts to line up old wiring that ran through the frame rails with the appropriate terminals on the rear lamps and brake lights. This meant we had to leave the ignition on for an hour or so while we diddled with the wiring. Finally, we finished up and I went to start the car to back it out of the shop. It would crank but not fire up. As time was up, we pushed it out into the yard and I promised I would stop by on the weekend to figure out what went wrong.
On Saturday afternoon I stopped with a buddy to stare at the car. It had run superbly all fall and winter, never failing to start. I figured I’d better look inside the distributor, with its crown-shaped cap and vacuum advance. Funny, but there seemed to be two wires going into the distributor body. Didn’t the original Lucas unit have only one wire, a ground one that ran to the coil? Oh, well, I’d figure that out later. “Don’t worry, I’ve done this a million times.” I unlatched the cap and discovered, to my horror, an aftermarket electronic ignition module inside. “It can’t get any worse, right?”
Then I remembered – I had another distributor, an old one courtesy of Rovers North as part of my travels driving the Rover from Vermont to Maine. I quickly unhooked the wires, loosened the distributor clamp, and swapped out the distributors. Now, about those two wires, “it’s the black wire to the red wire, right?” I used my best electrical logic and…well, have you ever seen a distributor smoke and melt down? No? It’s quite a disheartening sight. When I peered inside the cap again, I found the plastic points and the nub that opens and closes them quite useless. “Hey, trust me!”
I did have a set of old points in the toolbox, and I did have the original distributor. All I really needed to do was construct a distributor plate and mount the points onto it. I took the old points and screwed them into place. Now, how do you ground this thing? In what order do you place the wires and plastic washers? I tried several different ways and eventually, was rewarded with a spark at the points. I buttoned up the car, looked heavenward, and listened to the car start right up. It’s been running great on those cobbled together points for several months. “It can’t get any worse, right?”
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More recently, I had loaned the 1700 MV to a chum who runs the island’s assisted living facility. This non-profit operates on a shoestring and the extra vehicle has been quite a help to him - or so it seemed to me, until he came up to me on our main street with the II-A’s gearshift in his hand. He looked panic-stricken. The lever had sheared off flush with the detent ball. The car was stuck in neutral. More problematically, it had occurred at the local boatyard; while the Rover wasn’t a major obstruction, the boatyard’s owner takes great merriment in any plight of my Land Rovers. I had only a short window of time to repair it before he returned from an off island trip. My humiliation would have been complete otherwise.
I recognized fully my friend’s distressed look for I shared it once. When I bought the QE I 16 years ago, I drove to Durham, NH, to show it off to colleagues at my former place of employment. The president had always been skeptical of my chosen form of transportation [then, a 1978 Triumph Spitfire]; when the gearshift lever came off in my hand as I tried to back out of a parking spot, my credibility suffered yet again. At 4:30 pm, I called the only Land Rover person I knew at the time. He assured me this was not as serious a problem as it appeared, as he’d experienced the same failure. He instructed me to begin unbolting everything I could find on the floorboards. That would keep my busy until he arrived.
So I got busy with the ratchet, sockets, wrenches and screwdrivers, and when my friend arrived with a gearshift and yoke from his parts collection, he showed me how relatively simple it was to replace the unit. Once you’ve removed the floorboards and transmission tunnel, you’re staring at the gearshift and yoke. Two nuts require only a ½” socket, but two bolts are Whitworth sized! We cheated and used a set of pliers to remove them, installed the Series III lever [only one bend, not two like the Series II-A], bolted everything back up, and I drove off. Two years later, Scott Preston, Trumbull, CT, had an extra II-A shift lever and sent it off to me. I installed it and decided the keep the Series III one just in case I came across a “that doesn’t look so hard to do” moment.
The broken shift lever on the 1700 MV provided me with that moment. I’ve ordered a spare one from Rovers North ‘just in case.”
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The incident also reminded me of “don’t worry, I’ve done this a million times.” As I’ve never purchased a car with an automatic transmission, I’ve shifted between gears often. In my early years, this was often accomplished with tiny shift levers - about the size of paper clips - that come on Morris Minors, Simcas, Triumph Spitfires and MG Midgets. When I bought my first Land Rover, I assumed shifting it required the same effort as turning it and used the same amount of energy on both tasks. That’s probably why I broke the shift lever on the QE I.
When Rovers North’s Mark Letorney first instructed me on off roading, he critiqued my speed-shifting techniques as ham-fisted, unhelpful and destructive of my Land Rover. Smoothness off road would mean that you’d not lose traction or balance, and that the car would return you home. Shifting into a synchromesh gear, like third, before going into a non-synchro gear like first or reverse, became a standard part of my driving. An Autocar road test from 1968 urged the driver to remember that “Land Rovers are best driven more like lorries, with upward and downward gear changes always made in good time.” So, too, then did slowing down my shifts. With luck, maybe I won’t have to replace the shift lever one more time.
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Slow running – that was the other lesson gleaned from Mark Letorney. When Rovers North staff members became Certified Land Rover Off Road instructors, they learned of the wonders of low range. On any Land Rover except for the Freelander, there’s a transfer case that offers the choice of high or lower gear ratios. If you have a Fairey overdrive, there’s yet another set of ratios.
This summer my daily work has tied me to my island town. The QE I, now in its summer soft top mode, has become a transport vehicle: painting supplies and ladders to tackle large residential jobs, 4-foot lengths of logs or smaller segments ready for wood stove use, piles of basement and demolition debris piled high on a dump run, a cubic yard of gravel and soil to assist on a lawn project, and meeting groups of visitors at the ferry and delivering them across fields and lanes to summer residences. It’s also pulled some cars out of ditches. The utility usage has assured the constant use of low range.
The low range in the transfer box moves the car forward with very little clutch slippage, very little throttle, very little strain on the drivetrain, and very little speed. Even in 4th gear low range, you’re barely trundling along at 20 mph on a country lane. Our spring and early summer featured a lot of rain, which meant that many fields and lawns would turn to mud if churned up too often. Low range and a light touch on the accelerator assured that the car would tread lightly while I treaded lightly on the car.
Every so often, a reader will let Rovers North know that they’re having trouble shifting down into low range. All too often, it’s because the car hasn’t been in low range for ages. The next time you’re off pavement, shift into low range and experience the power of slow that helped make the Land Rover such a versatile vehicle.
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Kevin Wilson, a columnist for Autoweek, pondered the difference between “not much interest” and “nothing can be done” in cars. He referred to the fact that as cars are becoming increasingly complex, the options for effecting even emergency repairs declines. Most of us like to think of ourselves as self-reliant motorists; we like to think that our toolbox “includes something more useful than a cellphone.” With the advent of hybrid cars, engines now sprout the same decals once seen on old television sets – “Danger. High Voltage. Do Not open!” In other words, who’s going to fix those cars?
“Not much interest” cars are those likely to wind up in junkyards because no one really cares about them, and repairing major components on them usually means putting money into a car that will not return your cash upon its eventual sale. In Land Rover circles, it’s hard to envision that owners of the first Freelander models will put significant repairs or restoration efforts into their cars unless their lease conditions require it. Range Rover Classics went through a stage when there were enough of them available to enthusiasts such that decrepit ones could be allowed to rot in a junkyard; now, enthusiasts are chasing down the best of them because they make great all-around vehicles and sensational off road transportation. Discovery Series I’s, which share the same drivetrains, are moving beyond “not much interest” as their low prices and simple construction appeal to enthusiasts.
What Wilson fears is that cars will move from “not much interest” to “nothing can be done.” Cars will become even more disposable as components become every more unrepairable. His counterpart, Road & Track’s Peter Egan, once asked who was going to purchase a replacement I-Drive for their BMW. Indeed, what Range Rover Classic owner is going to replace his/her early JAMES navigation system?
British sports cars, even Land Rovers, used to have unique tools available only to dealers. You used to see wallboards with silhouettes of unique tools painted on them so mechanics would know where to return the item. Once BMC/British Leyland/BL/MG-Rover went by the board, tool manufacturers made these items available to the public. Now, the computers that read diagnostic car codes are expensive and increasingly difficult to purchase unless you’re a dealer or a large shop. Even if you want to do all the work on your Rover yourself, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish.
In these days of mammoth litigation and “nanny state” regulations, how much longer, Wilson asks, will it be before the hood on our new car comes sealed at the factory with the admonition, “Danger! Do Not Open! No consumer-repairable parts inside, service only by trained technicians.
Last issue, I described how I conquered rough running and occasional hiccupping at speed in the QE I. I bragged about how I cured the running problem by cleaning out the jets in the Weber carb. Only I didn’t cure anything; within a day of sending off this column to Rovers North, the car ran poorly once again. So I removed the carb from the car and took out every jet, even the ones accessible only from the bottom of the carb. What I saw was a lot of wear marks. I showed the results to a former mechanic and he suggested they really looked pretty worn out. Jeez, after only 100,000 miles! Rovers North had just received a new shipment of Webers so I ordered one. Installing it was simple and, oh my, didn’t the car sound great. There did not seem to be any symptoms of poor running until I reached a long hill, which I attempted in 4th gear. That’s when, under load, it began to buck and cough again.
If the problem is not at the fuel end, then it must be in the ignition system somewhere. I installed a new cap and rotor. No difference – so much for the easy stuff. Next, I checked the points gap, which was fine. Then I decided to remove the points from the car to check their condition. That’s where I found a small mound on one side of the points, and pitting on the other side. So while the points were gapped correctly, the mess on the points meant that you couldn’t get a reliable gap at speed. I could have just filed them down, but replacing the points with new ones cured the problem - which has remained absent for a few months.
The worn out Weber now sits in a crate, ready to become a spare when needed. What this 6-week diagnostic exercise reminds me is that Series Land Rovers (and early Range Rover Classics) often require only the most basic repairs to keep them going, and that they will go on well after most cars and trucks have given out their last exhaust.
Copyright 2006, Jeffrey B. Aronson and Rovers North__________________________________________________
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