Hi, my name is James and people question my sanity.
This is my first real post, although I have interacted with a few of you via PM. I picked up my RRC a month ago after nearly a month of searching for a clean one. It was an 'interesting' ordeal, but feel free to skip down to the pictures if you don't want to read about it.
It seems that every one I could find was in really bad shape except for the Discoverys and few cherry RRCs that were sitting in the dealer lots with CLUNKER painted in the window. I have always wanted a Discovery or Range Rover, but things had never lined up right for me to get one.
Beginning last August my wife (then fiancee) Lisa and I began making preparations for our wedding by cutting monthly payments. Part of that was selling my car, which left me her Jeep to drive (she has another car). Fast forward to August 9th of this year and after driving the Jeep nearly a year I absolutely loved it. The only real drawback was the lack of cargo space. It was a Sunday two weeks before our wedding, we had slept in and were debating whether to make coffee or just run out and get some. We decided to pick some up. On the way we had a discussion about wedding logistics, having an out of town wedding, we needed both vehicles to get everything there. 5 minutes later and we had a green light to cross a busy intersection with the Siren patiently waiting with delicious cups of sugar coated goodness on the opposite corner when *WHAM* a white Toyota Highlander had ran the red light and t-boned us on the passenger side at 35mph. We were lucky and neither of us were hurt badly, the other guy admitted he was at fault with witnesses, and was written up for it. The Jeep was able to limp home, but was totaled.
With a rental car provided by the other guy's insurance company, the wedding went off without a hitch, Lisa got a purple Beetle to replace her ailing Taurus, and I got whatever I wanted as long as we could pay cash for it. Once back from our honeymoon we searched long and hard, test driving many Discoverys and not even finding any RRCs worth driving except for the previously mentioned clunkers. Finally I found a Craigslist ad for a '93 SWB that wouldn't pass emissions and decided to take a look at it. When I got there I found it was very clean, seemed to run well, had full documentation on services and most of the new parts that seem to go wrong, along with 3 thick service manuals. The owner came from out of state and the previous owner had removed the cats at some point. He then moved to this area a couple years ago, where it actually passed the sniffer (barely) with no cats, and he had the documentation of it barely failing this year. He had spent hundreds trying to get it to pass and an exhaust shop told him he would only install the $$ factory cats, so he gave up. I took a gamble, plunked down $1500, and drove it home where I replaced a very clogged air filter and a few other tune up parts, and was able to get it licensed.
So far, other than the tune up parts, I have installed a HD OME kit from Cerrone's (fantastic service!), and some new 235/85/16 Cooper STT tires, and removed the running boards and air dam. I need to do a little more work to seal up the driver's side exhaust manifold and a couple seeping oil leaks, but it's no more work than I had to put into the Jeep regularly. I do all of my own work (although a helping hand is almost always appreciated), and am looking forward to the challenge of getting any kinks worked out of this vehicle.
Photo Time
First the Jeep after limping home that fateful day.
Here is the RR on a camping trip this past weekend. It performed flawless other than a jammed shifter that was the result of the long lost transfer case shifter badge getting unlost in the linkage (woo hoo! Treasure!
).
Thanks for reading. I'm not much of a high volume poster, but this seems like a great community!
James
New RRC Owner Introduction
Linear Mode
