Behind the Steering Wheel [Courtesy Rovers North News, June 2008]
By Jeffrey Aronson
A fisherman friend came up to me in our island’s village parking lot, a wharf on the edge of the main harbor. “You know, Jeff,” he said, “You can actually buy cars made after 1980.” He then touched the door handle on his family minivan and watched the door slide open electronically.
So what if his door moved automatically? Does his car provide him with health benefits? I don’t think so! Performing even the simplest maintenance on a Land Rover gives you a fitness workout usually accomplished only with the aid of those strange devices extolled by Chuck Norris and introduced by lovely blondes on late night infomercials.
The Land Rover exhaust is a series of bolted together pipes. Replacing them gives you the chance to get eaten alive by bugs while lying on the ground, chew on rust flakes, spit out dirt and search for nuts, bolts and washers that fall onto the ground. And it’s free!
Lying on your back under the differential and frame works you work your legs and abs as you slide into position. Land Rover’s clever use of both ½” and 7/16” nuts and bolts on the same hanger assures you of adequate repetitions as you crawl back to get the correct sockets and wrenches. Pulling yourself rearward by lifting your body from the rear springs will work your triceps and biceps. Forgetting that you previously used yet a third size of bolt and nut in the past will only increase the workout. Reaching for the three bolts that connect the intermediate pipe to the header pipe result in long, slow crunches – perfect for those 6-pack abs. Dodging the falling rust and dirt – and the occasional slipping ratchet or wrench – improves your reflexes, too.
Lots of people talk about fitness but recently I walked the walk. While driving through out village one day the muffler on the QE I parted company with the intermediate pipe. Oddly the muffler split just before the flange connecting the two pieces; a close look at the intermediate pipe uncovered that it, too, had significant rust at the flanges connecting it to the header pipe and the muffler. Clearly the intermediate pipe and muffler required replacement; I ordered both from Rovers North. Their sales records indicated that I had purchased the exhaust pieces and hangers back in 2005, so I decided to replace the hangers and the connecting bolts at the same time.
Following the regimen outlined above I slid out from under the car brimming with good health and feeling the burn from the workout. Try it yourself – price out the components of good health on the Rovers North website. Operators are standing by!
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On a ferry trip from the mainland in May, my Land Rover demonstrated the importance of a short 88” wheelbase when it squeezed in as the last car to get aboard the ferry. The crew measuring vehicles actually moved me ahead of other cars precisely because, to their surprise, it would fit in the remaining small space.
A group of seriously-outfitted bicyclists and their touring bikes surrounded the Rover on the stern. One pointed out features to his friend in French; when we began chatting, he introduced himself as Marc Tremblay, a Quebec enthusiast whose rebuilding a ’68 Series II-A. He’s starting to put the car back together now that it sits on a new frame purchased from Rovers North. With his group of friends, they were touring the coast of Maine before heading back to Canada.
The Land Rover community is worldwide and you’re assured of meeting someone, somewhere, who is also an enthusiast. Of course, to attract them, you have to get your Land Rover out in front of people.
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Long suffering spouses or significant others of Land Rover enthusiasts know that conversation with them tend to be the same car stuff over and over. A simple question about your Rover unleashes a 15 minute exposition tracing the history of the marque from its appearance at the Amsterdam Motor Show in 1948 to all the quirks of your current Rover[s].
One Saturday morning I was enjoying such a conversation with a summer resident, an architect, who is considering purchasing a Land Rover for island use. I had just begun the part of my speech where I lie brazenly about low running costs and trumped up reliability claims when a local interrupted me to say “John is having problems with his Land Rover. He’s looking for you.”
Tell an animal lover that a furry thing is in distress and you will watch the most somnolent individual leap into action faster than speeding bullet. Let this Land Rover enthusiast know of a Rover in distress and I’m there.
John purchased a brilliantly engineered Series Rover conversion by East Coast Rover. Underneath the car is a Defender frame with its disk brakes and coil sprung suspension. A Land Rover diesel resides under the hood. While a bit noisy and throbbing under way, it rides superbly and feels like it could conquer any terrain.
At this moment, it seemed to puke large amounts of black fluid from the front to the engine. Just as I lifted the hood to check the oil level, our local boatyard owner, Kevin, who delights the woes of my Land Rovers, pulled up with a huge grin plastered on his face. “I should have known I’d find you under the hood of a Land Rover, “ he said with delight. At least he knows diesels, and he confirmed immediately that the black stuff on the ground was fuel, not oil.
After checking for oil and fuel I asked John to start the car. Fuel seemed to pulse out of a fitting on what Kevin identified as the injector pump. The fitting had a ¾” nut head surrounding it and a threaded center from which the fuel spurted out. I thought of trying to remove the fitting and then thought twice. I know next to nothing about Land Rover diesels and if I screwed it up, the car would never be able to leave the island.
So I called Rovers North and caught Mark Letorney at work. He gave me sage advice on what not to touch but agreed that if I could find a bolt that would fit the threaded hole in the fitting, I might staunch the flow of diesel fuel. So I drove to a fisherman’s supply shop and bought several different sized bolts. A thin bolt of 1 inch thread fit perfectly and John’s Rover stopped leaking fuel. He’ll be taking it to East Coast Rover for a proper repair, but once again, a field repair permitted a Rover to remain in service on the road.
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My Land Rovers, both 1966 88” II-A’s, help me earn a living on this island. For long stretches of time, the QE I [the green station wagon] and the QM I [the red hardtop] might never exceed 30 mph. Generally they’re loaded to the gills with lawn mowing equipment and/or house painting gear, tools, and occasionally, passengers.
Indeed, this very morning, the QE I took me two miles along a rocky, muddy trail into the woods to a work site. I left the car in high range, engaged 4-wheel drive and trundled along in first or second gear. As always, the surefootedness and nimbleness of the Land Rover amazed me. I’ve been sitting in the QE I for nearly 18 years now and it remains hugely entertaining. The capacity of the car to claw its way over any ground, seemingly without do any damage to itself or the terrain beneath its wheels.
Land Rover enthusiasts take a lot for granted; after all, our world tends to place our beloved vehicles near the center of our lives. It’s hard to remember that given the very small number of Land Rover produced each year [barely 200,000 worldwide], millions of drivers have never been inside a Land Rover.
I recently took 4 summer visitors on a tour of photogenic locales on this island. They gravitated immediately to the jump seats in the rear. We searched out the dirt lanes and trails that would provide them with spectacular vistas. What really entertained them was the features of the Land Rover: the folding jump seats, the scuttle vents, the individual windshield wipers, the sliding front windows and the alpine windows over the rear seats. Entering and exiting the car through the rear door proved equally fun, too.
Remember that while you might have accumulated many years of familiarity with your Land Rover – any model – millions of drivers around the world know nothing about the clever and functional engineering inside the car. Take them for a ride and demonstrate why you love your Land Rover.
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Living on a Maine island, national trends can be slow to make their mark. From all their sales reports, Land Rover has enjoyed a great year – especially in light of the public malaise regarding fuel prices. Range Rover Sport and Range Rover vehicles have led the charge; the LR3 and LR2 have stagnated recently.
From the microeconomic perspective I can report there are two known newer Range Rovers among the summer residents and one Range Rover Classic. There’s also an LR3, a Discovery II, a Discovery I, an East Coast Rover modified Series/coil spring chassis/diesel and a Defender 90 SW spotted during the summer months. Our year-round population features two II-A’s, a Series III 88”, a military 109” pickup with canvas tilt, and one NAS Defender 90. Not bad for a small island off the coast of Maine.
So where are all the Range Rovers? I found them in New York City.
This research expedition grew out of a leaky brake line suffered by a Volvo. The owners, Mark and Mary Lou, came with their children to the island from Cos Cob, CT, to plan the construction of their new vacation home. When their Volvo’s master cylinder seemed low on fluid, they bought a bottle and kept adding copious amounts. I had their son apply the brake pedal as I lay beneath the car. The amount that spurted onto my face revealed the source of the leak – a major brake line – and signaled this car would have no safe braking whatsoever. They rented a car on the mainland for their return home while I helped arrange for a field repair by the local mechanic.
The following weekend I drove their car to Connecticut. On the drive through southern Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts, I spotted several Discoverys and LR3’s as I approached suburban commuting routes or regions with Land Rover dealerships. The numbers rose dramatically as I drove onto the Merritt Parkway, an east-west route from Hartford to the New York line. The tree-lined limited access highway had so many Land Rovers traveling it that I assumed there must be a commercial being filmed somewhere nearby. If there are any scruffy vehicles (like mine) in Fairfield County, CT, they are well-hidden behind the pruned and clipped greenery.
The next morning Mark decided that I should accompany him to the nearby financial jungle of Wall Street. This would prove an interesting anthropological expedition for me – what a shame to undertake it without my Land Rover! At the train station Mark introduced me to his friends, significant people in the world of international finance. Their idea of an island – Manhattan with its several million residents – differed wildly from mine – with barely 1,200 residents. Still, I found a Land Rover connection through one commuter, a British ex-pat who owned a late 90’s Range Rover P-38A. It had been at a service department so often that he had taken to calling it “The English Patient.”
From the 50th floor of a Wall Street building I viewed the famous sites along the Hudson River, met people whose decisions have major impact on our economic lives, and then stared my 7:30 am walk up Broadway to Grand Central Station. New Yorkers reading this column will understand that I stood out like one of the aliens from Invasion of the Body Snatchers because I watched everyone and everything around me. I actually paid attention to the two guys threatening each at an intersection other with ever-increasing ferocity. Unlike the dozens of people around me I took their statements about masculinity, sexual preferences and “girliness” seriously. Drivers waiting for the lights to change found the entire incident entertaining. I found it enlightening; the pedestrians surrounding me found it boring.
That’s when I started counting Range Rovers – the numbers grew as I marched uptown and walked over to 5th Avenue. No wonder Londoners called Range Rovers “Chelsea Tractors.” The more affluent or prestigious neighborhood I entered, the more Range Rovers I saw. The ultimate New York sighting to me was the Range Rover Sport tripled parked – at 8:15 am – in front of a building. Perhaps it was tripled parked because the existing parking spaces were taken up by other Range Rovers.
Explorers stomped around Africa to find out how strange wildlife lives. My trek through the 50+ blocks of Manhattan proved to me where Range Rover reside and thrive. It was a thrilling adventure and fitting proof of the Range Rover’s most recent award, the J.D. Powers consumer satisfaction award in the “large premium multiactivity vehicle” category.
Copyright Jeffrey Aronson and Rovers North News
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