Diary of a first time Range Rover owner

Datatek said:

Second one sounds like MAF to me assuming it's a petrol.

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Or the throttle position sensor is on the way out. As long as the MAF gives the rave readings at indicated RPMs I'd be more inclined to blame the TPS.

Cool, will check out the MAF & TPS readings tonight. I should have taken some time off work to coincide with the RR arrival, so many things I want to do and so little time.

When running the car at high rpms in neutral or park to do the MAF test - remember to ensure you start the engine from afresh after a 20 seconds switch-off period. Yes I know the historic faults in this particular area have been sorted, but with any auto if you're going to rev it in park, it's nice to know the clutch packs have been drained of any pressure first. Better safe than sorry.

speedyyellow said:

Barsman, you're a hero. I made some tools out of a wire coat hanger and got the sat nav unit out. With it unplugged the stereo all works! Huge result that as the DSP amp is working, although I guess the chances of my CD cleaner punt fixing the sat nav are reduced now.

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Glad it worked for you, same happened with mine! No, don't think lens cleaner will do the job sadly and anyway when it was working the maps were well out of date and very slow to recalculate routes when driving. Tom Tom far better!

The CD changer in my Range Rover didn't work. Rather than spend £40 to get it working again I thought I'd take advantage of the situation and add an auxiliary input. (Sorry for lack of pictures, I forgot until I was done)

I picked up one of these interfaces that plugs into the Alpine HiFi and splits out the CD input to a little box with RCA sockets on it. I originally planned to run the line in wire to the glovebox, but in the end changed my mind and decided to install it all into the cubby between the seats.

I also wanted to have power available to keep things charged while playing music so grabbed one of these as well. My plan was to chop the plug off the end and connect it up to the socket in front of the dash.

When it came time to install it all I took the two side panels off, removed the window switch pack & gearbox surround, removed the stereo & the HEVAC unit. With that all done I drilled a hole in the cubby and ran the power wire through it and spliced it into the cable for the cigarette lighter socket. A quick check with a multimeter showed that I now had switched power in the cubby.

Next was to route the aux input down behind the HEVAC and out through the same hole the cigarette lighter power does. This was slightly tricky as the aux interface kit has a fairly large box of tricks that converts the head unit connection to the RCA jacks. With the HEVAC unscrewed but not disconnected I was able to make room for the box and also route the 3.5mm jack through the hole into the cabin. With the HEVAC panel back in it was simply a case of running the 3.5mm lead past the gear leaver and into the cubby through my existing hole. A quick check that everything worked and then it was just a case of refitting all the trim.

Here's the results:


In this picture you can see the 3 socket 12v with two USB power blocks in them. The bottom one has a cheap bluetooth module connected which allows me to play music from my phone in the car. The other one has a charger for my phone in it.

I'm really happy with the results, it sounds brilliant with the Harman Kardon HiFi and I don't have to mess around with CD's ever again!

That is the shiznit!

The wife was away this weekend so I had a good chance to tackle some of my to do list. First job was getting the tracking done, I dropped it into the local place at about 0930 and didn't get it back until 1500! This was not part of the plan so I spent the morning preparing for the other jobs I wanted to do.

As I had plenty of time I wanted to do something meaty, so decided to refurb the front end of my Rangy, which like many others was looking rather tired & faded.


First job, strip the front end down, removing the grille, indicators & headlights:


This left me with all the bits I wanted to spray, I washed them, masked up the colour coded parts and rubbed down the bits I wanted to paint with some 600 wet n dry paper. Finally I gave the parts a thorough wipe down with some paint prep wipes and they were ready for painting:


A few coats of plastic primer to start with:


Then it was onto the main event, I chose a standard satin black paint and put about 3 coats on in total:


Once dry I removed the masking and cleaned the bits that had had tape on them with more of the paint prep wipes:




I was well happy with the results, now it was just a case of putting it all back together!




All in all I think it looks fabulous. For a afternoon & £15 in materials I've made the car look so much fresher. It looks great and to me at least the bumpers don't look as bad anymore. I was thinking of taking them off to paint them black but I'm not sure I'll bother now.

Do you live in Australia?

Apparently so!

Confused though, the pictures are the right way up on my computer, the right way up when viewed on dropbox & the right way up in this thread when I view it on my phone. When I look at it with the laptop though they're upside down.

Turn your phone around. It is upside down.

Fixed!

Just been out for a blast and managed to christen it with about 50 bugs.

Was fed up with my faded door handles and the unrealistic claims of "Forever Black" so I decided to bling things up a bit:

Love the handles - very retro!

Today has been one of those good day/bad day kind of days...

First the good, my leather dye finally arrived meaning I could fix up my steering wheel.

Before:


After:


The bad? As I was getting out of the vehicle after finishing the wheel I noticed some discolouration of the carpet in the drivers footwell. Stuck my hand up beside the footwell vent and got wet fingers so it looks like its my turn to replace the o rings

Doing o rings is a total pain. Going to do chrome dials whilst you've got the cluster out? Would match your new door handles...

Has anyone tried these instructions for removing the dash? I'm wondering if that would be easier than trying to do it the shortcut way.

Hi what leather dye did u bye and use needing to do my steering wheel and gear leaver?

It was this stuff. They do it in a range of other sizes too.

Cheers going to order it now one of the main bits that let's mine down inside other than the pillar plastics.

How was it to do? Quick drying or a pain in the proverbial?