Goodbye Svarta Damen

This was probably the last time I saw SvartaDamen. Here she is being loaded for transport to Holland. Goodbye, and thanx for all the good moments!

















The queen is gone! Long live the queen! I now really look forward to all good moments our new boot café hopefully will give us!

The Mothership has landed

The mothership has landed! Yesterday I picked up our latest Land Rover. It's a fully equipped Discovery2 with all extras, including a custom built center differential locker. For the moment the fleet consist of three Land Rovers, but only for a few days though. SvartaDamen has been sold to a buyer in the Netherlands. The new Landy got the name "Moderskeppet", which means the Mothership. It's a suitable name since we hope it'll be our travelling base, AND also because it's the first Land Rover that my wife really likes to drive. Yes, she has already been on two tours this morning, and I guess she will have an evening ride as well :)

SvartaDamen has served me well, so it's a little bit sad that she has to leave us. Especially now when she is working so nice. But as soon as I sit in Moderskeppet, all other cars are forgotten.

Braking News

Does anybody think it's strange that the brakes didn't bite when you see my front disc?

The axel had start leaking oil at the disc. A good cleansing, new pads and gaskets solved the problem. The right front caliper also got the pistons cleaned or renewed.

The rear calipers suffered from heavy wear. The gaps were filled with chemichal metal, and will hopfully do their job better from now on.

Tomorrow Svarta Damen will hopefully hit the road again!

Finally, a picture of the youngest Land Rover fanatic in the family.

I just have to do it!

A big stone attacked my car, again... This time it killed the brake pipe that runs under the sill to the back wheels. So finally, I had to do something about the brakes. Now, all brake pipes and hoses are new. I took a gentle test drive in the forest and it's possible to use the pedal for braking again.




The brakes still didn't bite enough, so one of the front calipers is going to have a service. The rear calipers are going to be replaced by either the disco1 calipers to the right in the picture, or a pair from a scrapped RRC of a friend. Either way those also have to get a service first.




At the same work bench as my growing pile of brake parts, I am sorting out parts for the series3 engine that is under restoration for 'Plutten'. I wanted to prioritate this, but since we are selling the car that-I-will-not-mention-the-brand-of-here, we need 'SvartaDamen' as our first car until a replacement i found. Well, I think it's found already actually, it's the money I havn't found yet.





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2,25

Time to start an engine.

I have two 2,25liter petrol engines to choose from. One is a series 2 engine, probably the original power to Plutten. It has had a quick check and then been conserved for the future (filled with oil and valves shut).

The engine we (I and my uncle Ole-Johnny) chose to try to wake up and put into Plutten is a series 3 engine (well, I can't tell the difference, but my uncle pointed out a few modifications).

After having removed the cylinder head we could see that the engine was in good shape. It had not been turned for a long time though, so some rust had started to show inside. Ole-Johnny guessed that it had been through a service after having an earlier stand-still before the perhaps ten years it had been standing before I bought the engine... So, the history is probably that it has been standing for a while, then have had a service with new gaskets etc, driven for a time, then been standing still again for a long time. All together, he dint think it had run very much... Finally something good about this car!

As you might have noticed, the engine is red. Shouldn't be... But since I have a correct coloured series 2 engine saved for the future, I don't mind really.

Here my father Ingvar (also a SLRK member) and my son Måns (G4) are giving a helping hand at the dismantling.

Finally some inside photos.

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"SvartaDamen"

So, with Plutten in parts and still in the need of a second car, I had to start looking again for a cheap car that could serve as this. And, again, I ended up with a Rover that had some 'just have to fix before the MOT'. The plan was to keep the Rangie for a year until Plutten was working. But since the Plutten-project grew into a major restauration, SvartaDamen have stayed in the family.

The first year it was all about passing MOT, which she did after a few weeks, and then keeping her running. The more I drover her, the more I started liking the car and the special feeling of driving a Range Rover. So, now she is staying, and also she is now slowly becoming more and more tuned.

I'm not afraid of bringing her out in the forest, so she has suffered a lot too. I have no plans though of building an extreme off roader of her. I like the idea of driveing a standard vehicle through really bad terrain, and get through. (Well, at least most of the time...)

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"Plutten"

When we were selling Primadonnan I knew that I had to have another LR, regardless if it was working or not. I had now become a LR addict and wanted a series, no interest what so ever in the anonymous SUV that started my car interest.

So, I ended up paying a little too much for a wreck that I couldn't even bring home without help. I had learnt a lot from fixing with Primadonnan, but this project would be needing much more experience and knowledge than I could gather by my self. So before buying I had asked my uncle if he could assist me in bringing the car alive again.

My uncle came all the way from Norway with a friend (650km) to bring "Plutten", as I named her, to his garage. We had some problems with the custom, but eventually Plutten ended up among a bunch of other LR-projects where the car was resting for a year until we had time to start working at her.

It's a slow project since I can't spend so much time in the garage, but the project is slowly progressing. Here are some movieclips from our work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygO5I984cpI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTI8rdEAmvk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXm_wmSwXng

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