33rd international motorbike rally of Faro's moto club

This year I returned to Faro for the 33rd anual rally and like before the rally was very good, really fun atmosphere, friendly people , lots and lots of bikes and things to buy, good concerts ( Steve Harris's Bristish Lion and Moonspell ) . Below I leave a slideshow of the rally, to give you all an idea of how it was.

Fitting Superwinch EP9.0 - Part 2

So now with the chassis part taken care off it was just a case of making a tray to accept the winch. Many thanks goes to Mr.Henrique Rebelo for bending the 6mm steel plates necessary to make the tray.

Below is a set of pictures, that hopefully will give you an idea of the work. The tray was sandblasted and then rustproofed with the aplication of hot zinc.

Fitting Superwinch EP9.0 - Part 1

Since we're traveling without another car, is important to have the means for self recovery and for that a winch make a really good tool.I tried to find the under bumper trays that used to be fitted to the RRC when new, but the ones I found where designed for winches that are long gone out of the marked ( Superwinch X6 and X9 )

So the plan was to make my own winch tray, and to keep costs down I borrowed the winch from the Series 3. Now something we must be carefull with, is with the size, the EP9.0 measures 610mm in lenght and there's only 630mm between the chassis rails. It fits, but just !

I've seen people using just the 2 front bumper bolts, but don't like that, so I created a 3rd mounting point, using 18*2mm thick hidraulic steel pipe and some DIN 9021 washers. This allows the fitting of M14 bolts, much stronger than the M10 used on the front bumper.

After it was just a question of welding and painting them black

Range rover back on the road and with new suspension

In these last few mounths have been very busy, with work and family, but now, in preparation for my 2014 expedition, work has restarted on the RR. First step is new suspension springs and dampers. I've choose Terrafirma, mostly because of price.

I went with the TF014 front springs and TF015 rears.Dampers are the sport version with 2" extra lenght

After the instalation

So far first impressions are good, the suspension is a litle hard, but that's to be expect with the increase in spring rate, but not uncomfortable or bumpy. In terms of lift, at the front it gained 3cm, at the back 5cm. I was expecting a higher lift at the front ( after all they advertise 2" ( 5cm ) lift ) and since I'm planing to fit a winch and a 2nd battery, I will probably need to look into other springs.


I finish todays post, with a note for all of you that lift their coil sprung Land Rovers, be carefull with the rear anti-roll bar ( if you decide to keep it ) because in cross axle situation the mounts can become inverted ! Let me tell you, it took me a while to figure out why the car was tilting to the left !!!

Gearbox destroyed !

The reason the work is so delayed on the Range Rover is because the original gearbox was destroyed when the propshaft broke off from the U-joint. The result was what you can see on the photos below

To make matters worse, I bought a reconditioned gearbox, which proved to be faulty ( gear crunch when shifting from 1st to 2nd) , I complained to the supplier and they send another one, which is better in terms of shifting but still far from the original gearbox.

Range Rover boot

A lot of things have happened since my last post, some good, one very bad, which I will write about on the next post.

I the meantime, I post a few pictures of the boot.

With the removal of the spare wheel and with that space being taken by the subwoofer, plus the fact that the original parcel shelf is broken and with speakers holes, has motivated me to rearrange the boot.

For the upholstery I recruited the help of 2 good friends of mine

This is the final result