Wet sanded and buffed the hood and buffed the whole car in prep for a trip

 

Cleaned the throttle body. Clearly a bit overdue...

 

After a club telling a story of how his cooling system plastic T bleeder just crumbled in his finger and led to overheat situation while trying to get back home only a few blocks away.
My bleeder is a-ok, but I’m packing a spare.

 

Many of us have replaced ours with a brass version.

 

Yeah, looking at it will not tell you it will not bust open in 100 miles. Always replace them if plastic.

 

The weekend of the 6/7 of August was our annual winter camping weekend, i usually just take my swag but this year we took our caravan that we bought just before Easter.
Its only 17ft and fairly light at 1150kg and previous owner had fitted a drop axle so it has more ground clearance than stock with only 14" wheels and tyres, so much easier to setup and packup than our camper trailer was so this will get the wife out more often. I have a few things ready to ready like a diesel heater and 2 x 190w solar panels and 2 x 100ah AGM batteries so we should have plenty of power available.
The TDV6 barely felt the van on the back and happy to do 70mph up the long windy hills where my old 300TDI could barely crack 40 and still able to get 12.5L/100 klms (22mpg).

 

I just replaced all 8 control arms with new ones that had ball joints installed. I also replaced sway bar drop links and the rear ties rods, and put new bushings in the rear knuckles. Now off to the shop for an alignment. A few things to note were a leaking rear diff seal on the right side and the fact at 149,000 miles this is the first time that I have done control arm replacements where I did not have to use the sawzall to cut any bolts.

By the way, does anyone know how to get a torque wrench on the rear bolt for the rear upper control arm. It needs to be 129 ft/lb, but my standard sockets are too long to fit in the short space, so I had to use the old "double wrench" technique to get any leverage at all. If someone knows where to get a really short 21mm 1/2 drive socket it would help a lot.

I did note that the oil on the right axle looked somewhat "rusty" so I guess those trips to the beach got me into some backwater that was deeper than than I recall. I did do a fluid change on both the diffs and the transfer case about 2 weeks after the last trip, but I guess that was not enough. I have two trips this fall/winter. One to the Ozarks and one to Padre Island National Seashore (looks like I better plan a new fluid change for the new year if what I saw this week is any indication of what the beach does to my diffs.

Anyway, thanks for letting me share the last few days with you.

Jeff

 

For that rear upper arm, I just gave it tons of ugga duggas. It's not like it can go anywhere and that has worked fine for at least four LR3s that I and my friends have.

So what did I do today... well yesterday. Starter on the D3 with 4.4. So long story short, my factory starter was drowned by water crossings and shot. Bought an official Denso rebuild only to find that they did not put new contacts or plunger in, just cleaned em up. Since I had a kit, I replaced it all. Fast forward two years, only.... I learned that the copper disc on the plunger comes in difference diameters and that the plunger length is critical. The overall length of the rod determines how far the starting gear can come out. Too little and you wont have much overlap on the gear/flywheel which could cause damage. Well luckily the plunger I put in the rebuild was the right length, but the disc was too small. Result? Not enough contact area so the disc and contacts really got beat up. Second issues, I put some lubricant inside thinking it would be a good idea. It basically vaporized and was likely the true cause of my sudden starting issues. So yesterday I dropped the starter to fix it and found all my replacement parts were not correct to spec. So I used the plunger that came with the rebuild originally. Worn, but correct size. I also cleaned out the solenoid body really well and put new contacts, bolts in. So its fine for a while at least. I place to get another rebuild and try to find a proper source for starter solenoid rebuild kits - I have had ZERO luck doing so. I found one, but the shaft was 2mm short. And when taking a total overlap of less than 6mm for the gear to flywheel, loosing 2mm is a lot...

I also decided to replace my suspension compressor. Current install is cheap aftermarket installed in a pinch... then simply left in there. So decided to rebuild my Hitachi and put it back in. Well the new piston and cylinder were super tight. So upon first fire up, it overheated FAST. So removed it and pulled the piston and cleaned it. Noticed it was smoother/easier to operate by hand. Did that a few times actually and each time pull the piston to clean off less and less black material from the "break-in". I think it was just a crap/cheap made piston/cylinder pair that did not have good specs. Now that its broken in, seems to work fine with no overheating issues. Will probably open it up again after my weekend trip into the U.P. of Michigan.

 

Interested to know if you notice a difference in how it drives and handles. I'm about to tackle my steering/control arms and end links, hoping it'll help tighten it up on the road.

 

Today I got a door ding that my jackass buddy left....knocked out by the best PDR guy I know. In all fairness he is the only one I've worked with but he is AMAZING.

Last week I washed and polished it. Here is a closeup pic of the door....or the reflection in it!