Today we took a trip to Eastbourne to watch the airshow. Loved watching it in great comfort from Beachy Head. Apart from embarassing me and refusing to start once, it was great. Treated it to tank of fuel as Tesco had the 10p off a litre deal and saved over £8. Tomorrow it will get treated to a clean. But got a few jobs to do ahead of a car show I am attending with the V8.

Although I have a mobile mechanic I have used before coming out late afternoon tomorrow to assess what I did to the handbrake and get the job priced up as I need to have it working for the MOT. I think I may have to take this one off the road for a month after the MOT expires just to gather some extra funds together ready as I have a feeling it may need a little more work than I had budgeted for. We shall see, got lots of old car bits for sale, so fingers crossed I get them all sold in time.

I feel so lucky today. I now have a dedicated savings account for car maintenance and had built some money up, so I messaged my mechanic last week and booked him to sort my handbrake out. Was expecting to have to replace shoes, discs and associated parts as my handbrake stopped workin after I like a knob, drove with it on. Turns out that brake dust had heavily built up from the shoes being on, which stopped all friction and had slightly moved. Popped them back on, everything was cleaned up, no new parts fitted as they weren't needed, and now my handbrake works. And only cost £60 in labour
My mechanic thinks my car should pass its mot now with one more job done, the brake pad wear sensor is saying I need new pads, but they are only 50% worn.

And upon typing this update to my diary, I just realised that I don't remember seeing a wire on either back brakes. I will double check this with my mechanic tomorrow as I know my memory has a bad habit of playing tricks on me

I hope Pagid brake sensors are ok, As I have bought 1 for the front and 1 for the rear as this Friday the brake pad wear fault is going to be sorted. Although after discoving that the rear pads weren't replaced when they were said to have been done with invoice backing this job up just before I bought the car, then I am now starting to wonder if the front pads are in fact going to turn out to be low. So going to reserve some brake pads today while Euro's have 50% off pads. I will be getting pagid though, I won't touch Eicher lol.

And this weekend will see the wheels being swapped over between the 2 Range Rovers.

I took it laning again though. and loved every minute of it.

Just been sent a buy one get one free offer from Euro car parts for oil. Whilst I was on there I priced up the rest of the service items I need.... £40 for a fuel filter... £23 for an air filter and £10 for the oil filter. I stopped there as even with the 50% discount on oil it would still work out nearly twice the price that the 4x4 specialist I use on eBay would charge. No idea where they get their prices from sometimes!

I am weary of Ebay and Euro's, Weary of Ebay as you never know if you are getting a fake or not, and Euro's I can at least return the stuff I buy easily. I used to use Island, but the muppets shut the shop.

Discovered the reason for the check brake pad warning message and for the red brake system fault message, this wasn't obvious when the handbrake was being repaired as it was still attached to the caliper ok as far as could be seen. Well, a garage in Crowborough invoiced the previous owner around 3500 miles ago for new pads, discs and sensors which I can catagorically state for a fact have not been touched in at least a year lol.

I now have a new Pagid sensor on the rear which has solved the problems.

The wheels from the Vogue have now been fitted to this one. I do have pictures, but something is stopping them uploading at the moment. This is a permanent swap. The car I think looks much better now. Sadly the 18" wheels have gone onto the Vogue. The Vogue looks really odd now But the wheels on the Vogue are only a short time solution, possibly until next spring, depending on finances.

The lower arm bushes on this one are worse than we thought, borderline advisory or fail. Going to chuck it in for the MOT in October as it is and see what happens.

Oddly, the gearbox is even smoother than before, the car is totally different to drive just from the wheels being swapped over.

The Autobiography with its new shoes on

Decided to take my other half to the Cinema Sunday, tood Tank this time as I didn't want to deal with an overheating gearbox.
Was really pleased with its performance. But noticed the car is pulling to the left, I am guessing this is either tracking, or lower arm at fault. On the run up I was getting 27-28mpg, but silly me decided to teach an Audi driver a lesson, (Just pulled away from lights very quickly) and left the Audi standing for a bit before letting it shoot past me as he was starting to drive very dangerously. This pushed my MPG down to just under 22 lol.

After the LRO show, both my Range Rovers will be taking a break from being used, as my operation is due to go ahead later this month, so will be unable to drive for a bit.

1 fault has gotten worse on this beast, the temperature gauge takes forever to get up to full running temperature, like today, I was able to drive 40 miles and the gauge stayed at around the quarter mark. Coolant level etc... all been checked, and fine.
So not sure if the water pump is dying or if the sensor is fubar. I also discovered through a battery monitor, that my battery is not in great shape, so after the MOT, I will be getting a new good quality battery for it.

Still totally love my Range Rovers though. Despite the fact I am already starting to get to do lists together for next summer lol in addition to the more urgent stuff lol.

Went out for lunch, did the typical bloke thing, I know where I am going rubbish, got lost, then ended up at the wrong restaurant and thought it, so parked up and went in It was the same chain we were meant to go to, just in a different location

At least I got lost in comfort.

Decided to tackle the tatty damaged rear bumper today. The bodge repair by the previous owner was bugging me as it was too obvious, so I took a craft paint brush and a touch up kit and painted over the damage by hand. Looks fine from a distance
But it will do until next year.

Went out to visit a friend of mine back where I used to live, went for lunch at the beach and went down the lanes on the Marshes again. It performed effortlessly. Only thing I am finding though is it needs a little more oomph at the bottom end lol.
We had my friends dog with us who I just had to include in the pictures as she is such a sweety.

The very slow getting up to temperature is a classic symptom of a bad egr thermostat, a very easy DIY from the front, top of the engine 2007 TDV8 VSE
2003 TD6 gone.
2002 P38a gone
1999 P38a gone
1997 p38a gone
1993 VSE gone
1992 VSE gone
1966 Series 2a with V8 conversion gone

Cheers, funnily enough I bought one as one of my parts spares as it came up on Ebay. Is it dead odvious to see and easy to get to without removing any other components or not too many other components? Cheers.