Elkhart, Indiana

It was bound to happen. A mechanical issue. Indeed, there is something going on with the clutch or the blah blah blah... I am not the one to be talking about the details. But we were pluggin along down the highway and all of a sudden we noticed the truck having a hard time. We limped her along to the next exit, which turned out to be Sturgis, Michigan. (Not the bike rally- that is in North Dakota.) There was only a Ford dealership in town and we booked an appointment with them, just in case. At the same time Al, back at D.A.P was contacting a long time Land Rover customer of his 20 minutes down the road from us!

It worked out that this guy is a genius under the hood and has rebuilt several of his own vehicles. Luckily, he had the time to help us with the truck. So we back tracked West to his house in Elkhart, Indiana- the RV capital of the world.

Flint, the man in question - the genius under the hood - left work after Al from DAP gave him a call and met us at his house. In the driveway was a beautifull 1994 D-90, which of course, made me upset with my former "friend" who destroyed mine and offered no willingness to help repair it... yea, ten years without a Land Rover has built up a lot of resentment towards him. Flint came home shortly and began a process of diagnostics on Nellie. We determined that the clutch itself seems ok, but that the salve cylinder needed to be bled. We did so, and while under the hood Flint decided that some work needed to be done on the carb as well. He puled the carb apart and replaced the seals on everything, scraped all the gunk he could find off, and then got into the distributer. Determined that out timing was off and that was causing our rough idle. He adjusted the timing, which resulted in a great improvement in power.

Of course, the whole time there is a thought in the back of both of our minds which is that it could still be the clutch, and it would be a shame if we found the problem to be more severe three hundred miles from such a friendly member of the astonishing Rover community.

Let me take a moment to talk about the Rover community. There is Tim, in Havre Montana, who had never seen a Series Land Rover in person before - he's seen them, "on T.V., but didn't think they existed outside of Africa,"; and Bryan in Libby, Montana who came in to fix our tyre on a Sunday - his day off - and he is not even a Rover guy, more of a hot rod type, but he "gets" is; there is Tim in Havre, Montana, who helped us deal with the fact that we brought the wrong oil filter with us, once again, not a Rover guy, but a sypathetic soul; there is Tracy Cartwright in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who along with his wife Tia, welcomed us into there home, gave Allison martinis with Tia's friends and made us feel like a million bucks as we worked on general tune up; Greg and Brian at Howard Orloff Land Rover in Chicago, who welcomed us in to use their bathroom, stretch our legs, and get a drink of water - heck they offered us coffee, juice, anything we wanted... Greg just said, "what can we do for you?" and I got the impression that if I had asked them to haul Nellie into the shop right there and take care of her they would have... great dealership and shop!; and most recently Flint... ahhh Flint. This guy did it all... and called us this morning to make sure we were ok. We said the problem had not really gone away, and after a consultation with Al at DAP, Flint and Al decided that the problem is not the clutch, but rather the rear main seal. This makes sense as under pressure the seal would leak oil onto the clutch causing it to slip. This also makes sense because the clutch only has 35,000 miles on it - yea, did I mention that? The truck had 32,000 miles when we bought her! It is much more likely that a seal would go, after having sat in a garage for 25 years then for a hardly used clutch to go.

So... what are we going to do?

Limp home and pray things work out. We could take the time now to fix the main seal, and the clutch, but would have to wait for the part and we need to be home this weekend. The best move, we think, is to head east into New York, where we have a number of friends, and pray the old girl makes it. We think she will.

And if she dosn't, and you live in New York, give us a call, we might need your help. Even if you don't call, to be honest, the Land Rover community is always out there, and hell, that's reason enough to own a Rover. You're never alone.