Adventioneering

The good news is that the axle and bearing rebuilds we did totally held. The vehicle was even a bit smoother and quieter as it cruised along the back Nevada highways. We had brought quite a bit of fuel with us (The un-refueled bumps can be made by regular vehicles during the day, but NOT at night, and we wanted to avoid refueling in Gerlach).

The bad news was the cooling system totally gave out in what now had become a Land Rover Burning Man tradition. The weak link in the Disco cooling system is inevitably the plastic coolant expansion tank, and it blew out at the weld. This was the second one in a year, I believe.

With the coolant system totally disabled a few miles out of the event, we rigged up a dead-tow using a tow strap extension and the Jeep, and Betty towed the LR into the event. We got quite a few funny looks! One guy asked how far we had made it like this, and we had him believing we had come in from Seattle like this.

Evaluating the cooling system it was obvious that I was going to need another expansion tank. I knew that I either had to a) find another, b) find something similar, or c) delete it. Bryan had intended to go out to Reno anyways so he headed out on Thursday and stopped off at the Land Rover dealer to get another tank. They told him they could overnight one (available Friday), and he tried to email me for confirmation, but of course I was busy.

Figuring I wanted things to be hard rather than easy, he decided NOT to order the tank and just came back! So Friday Victoria and I headed out back to Reno in Betty to figure out a solution. At this point the best the LR dealer could do was Tuesday (holiday weekend), and I called around every parts breaker and parts shop I could find. There was nothing anywhere. On to plan B.

I headed for the biggest Ford dealer I could find, and walked into the parts counter and set down the tank. “I need anything like this”. The guy hemmed and hawed for a bit, laughed at me, and rummaged around in the back. About ten minutes later he came back with a Motorcraft coolant tank and a matching cap. It wasn’t until after I had paid that it occurred to me to ask what it was for – a late-model Taurus, it turns out.

Then we headed to Home Depot to buy enough hose clamps and brass adapters to adapt the Taurus hose sizes to the Land Rover. We hit up an auto parts store for some lengths of different size hoses, and headed back in time to drive through a no-visibility dust storm (glad I wasn’t at BM for that).

With enough jiggering and duct tape – and a ratchet extension to seal up an extra hose – I got the Ford expansion tank in, and we drove all the way home on it. It was significantly better made, come to think of it.