Let’s face it. Nothing lasts forever. We don’t. And vehicles don’t. Even if the average vehicle can often be the equivalent of Granddad’s Axe.
I have been party to the demise of two off road vehicles in my time. One was essentially killed in action and the other has suffered a long slow decline in a number of my driveways over the last decade and a half.
The former was The Pig. It was a 2003 Land Rover Defender 130 dual cab chassis that I bombed around in as part of my work in the Western Division of NSW. Basically I got to do the Darling River Run in it every month. Life was good. I killed it by not driving to suit the road conditions just north of Tips on the West Darling Road. We spun into the table drain, it fell over and rolled twice. The cabin broke, the chassis bent and it was over. The 130 was less than two years old.
The latter is a 1981 Range Rover 2 door.
This car has a long and chequered history with me. It arrived in my life in early 2001 when it blew into town with its paramedic owner. He’d bought it with the idea of traveling out of town on his free time. And I made the classic mistake of saying I’d buy it from him when it came time for him to move on. So he proceeded to drive the thing like he stole it.
We paired up with a couple of mates on a trip. I drove the 200tdi Defender 110 2 door I had at time and he had the Rangie. We spent a long weekend driving from Bourke to Cameron’s Corner via Wanaaring & Tiboburra then Innamincka, The Dig Tree, Omicron, Cameron’s Corner, Tiboburra (via Olive Downs in Sturt NP) then south to Montague, White Cliffs, Tilpa and back to Bourke.
The Defender nailed it no worries. The Rangie had a host of issues. The fuel tank failed on the first run to Tiboburra (patched) then we tried disconnecting the air con to save fuel, only to realise that we’d disconnected the power steering instead and that there was no air con compresser...so we reconnected the PAS!
After that the rough roads start to impact on the 20 year old suspension bushes and the handling became ‘shaky’. Hugh fat tyres didn’t help either. Then the fuel pump stopped on our way back into Tib. Turned out the earth connection had failed - easy fix. Fuel pump was also labeled for diesel use only!
Final incident was when the dodgy handling contributed to near catastrophe. Approaching a cattle grid between White Cliffs and Tilpa, the Rangie driver had too much speed. Tapping the brakes made the vehicle squirm and drift on the dirt road and the ropey handling did the rest. The back right wheel caught the grid fence...and decapitated it. The tyre was destroyed and the steel wheel buckled. Fitting a spare, we finally got the thing home.
Not long after it came into my hands. It was in rough shape and a poor state of tune. It stopped suddenly and decisively more than once. The handling was dreadful. And yet it had potential and I had time for a project.
First trick was to get the tuning sorted. The fuelling tune was easy enough but there were electrical gremlins in the distributor and ignition system that meant it ran well when it ran. I’d get back to that but for now it could move. I replaced the suspension bushes and the A frame to rear diff pivot, fixed the rear upper tailgate, the diff lock and the seats. Then I stripped the interior and spent a small fortune having the thing resprayed.
After moving house and getting a garage to play in, I set to putting the thing back together. Remade the door cards, sourced new rear windows and other trim parts, redid the headlining. Then I fiddled with timing to try and sort out the tune and found the internal distributor sensor wiring was toast and the coil was too small. Too much money to fix at the time...
Another house move, another garage and the interior went back together. I decided that I’d return the thing to broadly original. Which meant losing the lifted springs and fat wheels. Sourced some replacements and went back to the mechanic for the heavy lifting.
Remember the grid impact incident? Well that came back to bite me. When we replaced the springs and fitted the new wheels, it was time for a wheel alignment. And that’s when we found the rear axle casing was bent. So I had to get another one. When that was fitted...we had another go at the wheel alignment. But then realised that the Rangie had a lean to it. Hunting around along the chassis, we found that the front right spring mount had come adrift at some point in the past and had been reattached...at the wrong height. Fixing it meant a massive dismantling and repair job. All that plus a new distributor and a new steering box too. It all came to a grinding halt. After two years of this and that I was over it.
Another house move and a different shed for the Rangie to gather dust in.
Eighteen months later, we left town. The Rangie sat in the shed for another six months before I was able to get my parents to bring it, by car trailer, the six hundred kilometres from its old resting place to yet another shed. Their own two and a half thousand kilometre round trip to do this for me is now part of the family legend.
Then another house move and no shed this time. It moved about a bit on the block, rarely under its own steam. Finally a tree fell on it which smashed the rear upper tailgate and squashed the roof. I could still make a ute out of it?
Still hasn’t happened. Life has moved on and after more than a decade the Rangie has been left behind as just mere yard art. Still with its wonky chassis, its dead distributor and its leaky steering box. Now with galvanic corrosion in the doors, a squashed roof, sunburnt paint and trim, broken rear glass and mouse poo infested interior. I’ve given up on it but despite all that I still can’t seem to let it go. My lazy sentimentality just won’t let me...