A short trip to Pismo

Well, LuisMi, from the Land Rover club of Spain, was here visiting, so we decided to hit Pismo for some fun.

There was some event with Toyotas all over the place, but it was fun as always to hit the dunes.

The water was very high, I've never seen this kind of tide around this area.

Some pictures now, this is what we found to start the day:



It was kind of windy, but still a beautiful day in Pismo:


LuisMi was here, :)


A little dune down:





After all that activity the Land Rover was like this:

So I cleaned very well to get rid of the sand/mud/whatever like algae and other things that stuck to the axles, and thanks to LuisMi and Saltamontes (big thanks to you 2), we were able to put some stickers from the Spanish club in our truck:





Although this is what happens when you let your little girls help you with stickers in the truck:


Until next time, cheers.

Kickdown and another trip to Teruel

I went again to Teruel, family meet over there, fun, good food... I miss it already.

This time I had the chance to offroad the truck a little (very short path but kind of technical) , tires were good despite being the Synchrones.

I also decided to adjust the kickdown cable as something was funny with the way it shifts. No wonder..., it was a lot off, so I followed the RAVE instructions to set it up and now it feels like it shifts smoother and it doesn't drop that much when hitting 4th (before it could go into 4th at 1600 rpm or so , now it's closer to 2000 rpm which feels much better) .

Anyway, it was fun, the Tdi still works great, I just love this truck, it's a pity I can't take it with me to L.A. with its 25 MPG and all (23 MPG on the city with AC on all the time... that halves the V8 consumption)

David

Some work on the Tdi

I got some time to work on the Disco this weekend, this time I fixed a problem with the A/C blowing warm on the passenger side. Took apart the whole center console to find out a plastic was broken, that was holding the cable to change from hot to cold air. Easy fix, but hard to access.Also did a couple more things, including the front valance removal.

Now it looks a little more like "my" Disco ;)

In the second picture you can see Zar after "helping" me remove it :)

First 300Tdi trip

Well,
it's been around a month since I started driving the Disco Tdi. It's been great so far.
The Land Rover seems to be in pretty decent health, no big leaks, just a tiny one out of the transmission radiator, I took care of it. Did some minor things too like new stereo, speakers, some bulbs, grease up doors and so on. Overall, everything looks fine.

I need to get some decent tires and a lift, but it can wait.

So our first trip was in this scorching heat to Teruel to run the bulls (vaquillas del Angel) and then some turism to visit Dinopolis and Albarracin. Also, we went to pick up some fruit to our family's land in Torrealta.

It has been very disappointing to see some of my favorite trails closed, but it's fire season and I kind of understand... It's sad that for the most of us who love 4x4 and exploring, but respect the environment, the country side is closed, but it seems to be the way things go this days, we offroaders are the bad guys, when there is no serious attempt to provide solutions just ban us.

Anyway, as you can imagine little to no offroad this time, but the truck behave great, fully loaded, uphill downhill, A/C on, etc. I am very happy with it.

Let me share some pictures:

This is in the first few minutes of the Vaquillas, family pictures with some great background, Teruel, my home town is just so beautiful:






Note to shelf: Next time, try to focus the camera when a bull is coming to you and there is no barrier between you and the animal:



This one, after all the parties and stuff, in Dinopolis, I couldn't resist to show what looks like a Santana Series IV, for the NCLR guys, check my shirt:


Another day, in Albarracin:


Opposite view from the top:


One of my favorite spots:

Some of the little offroading I was able to do:


Nice views:


It was a very nice trip, despite the lack of offroading, but it's more important to have fun and share it with your loved ones.

Hope you like my hometown, drive properly and respect nature.

Doctor, my adiction got worse, another Land Rover...

Well,
it's been an interesting process, that couldn't have been done without the help of Fernando (SuricataBCN in the Land Rover Club of Spain) and my brother Javier, who drove the truck from its original place to ours, but now I got another Land Rover in Spain, a 300 Tdi, automatic with all the stuff we need to haul the family around when we are there.

Here are a couple of pictures of it:



It has a certain familiar look :) :

II Shaver Lake Snow Run

Well,
We did it again!
We went again to Shaver Lake, to do the second Snow Run, with a bunch of crazy Land Rover owners, like myself, from Southern and Northern California.

What a blast, as last time.

I started the previous weekend with some needed work on the Disco, just under 112,000 miles, Radiator fixed (it was leaking), thermostat, serpentine belt, oil & filter change (this time 10W40 seems better for this engine), dust caps replaced on front axle, brake pads greased and rotated around to easy squeal and a few more little things.

Then the actual fun, we decided to caravan in our way up, like you can see here, starting north of L.A.:

Nice and sunny
Nice and sunny??!!

It's the 3rd time we've been here, so it kind of feels like home, we hanged with everybody at camp for a little bit, but we had a room in the village, more comfortable than camping at under 30F...

This year the whole route was much smoother, almost all of us got stuck at one point or the other, most of them very short, but I manage to get the worse stuck award.

Here putting my new RUD 4x4 chains on all tires:



Anybody said stuck?

At lunch we regrouped a little bit:


Although we had to get creative and lend a hand to allow others to pass, this is the beginning of the actual Bald Mountain trail, so all that snow is actually in a road (!!)



At the end, all was good and clean, ready to go back and eat something. At least this time we didn't return well past midnight, like last year.

We had to miss the dinner & nocturnal activities, due to one of my daughters allergy to something, but still, we had a great time again and we won't miss the next one.

I'll try to add some video when time permits and here are some links to more pictures:

http://picasaweb.google.com/RovrFlo/ShaverLake09#

http://etischer.com/rover/2009-03-09/

http://cid-96ed6c75634cb425.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/.res/96ed6c75634cb425!3146?ct=photos

And of course, check this thread in LRRF:
http://www.lrrforums.com/showthread.php?t=9627&page=61

Pretty eh?

I am now a certified Tread Lighly trainer

I did attend a Treat Lightly Trainer event, with Tom Severin of Badlands offroad adventures

It sure was fun, I learned a couple of things and meet a few interesting people there.

So now I can show others what Tread Lightly is about and try to help to keep trails open for our nature trips using our Land Rovers.

Tread Lightly Site