Alcaraz with some friends from CLRTTE

Well,

We had a blast! what a great day, great weather, great people... such a pleasure to meet fellow Land Rover enthusiasts in Alcaraz.

We arrived at Alcaraz at 9am, a little while after the introductions and greetings, we took off to the mountains.

Funny enough, for being a Land Rover gathering only 3 Land Rovers showed up, my 300Tdi disco, a Td5 Disco and a Td5 Defender 130 (very cool by the way...), the rest were some of those "other" 4x4s :P

All the way to the snack break was smooth with all sorts of terrain to entertain us:

This is the place where La Mancha ends and the Sierra de Alcaraz begins...

My photographer for this trip, working hard (and having quite some fun)

The 130 going up the hill, very nice setup:

Is that snow? we had such a gorgeous day, I didn't expect to see any snow... wait! are we heading that way?

Making new friends, is what Land Rovers is about...

Group picture

Briefing about the trip, by Elpana, our local guy. Many, many thanks to him for organizing this and sharing his knowledge of the area with us!

Group picture, a bunch of people with a love for nature and exploring our world.

What is this? foam? NO, it's *SNOW*, cool... it's not Shaver Lake Snow Run but it was a lot of fun!!!!

Volcano (the name my daughters gave the 300Tdi) behave great, despite the road tires and no lift (yet)

The white stuff

Static mud concept #1

White stuff...

Here some pictures "borrowed" from dcortesv from the LR club:

What's this? *stuck*? and the best prepared Land Rover non the less with those 36 and a half? mmmmm and that is not a Toyota, is a heavily modified Land Rover pulling the 130 :)

Some serious hole full of snow over there... nothing a little pull can't fix.

Pretty rocks worth checking out

We have just passed some interesting mud puddles on the far end of the trail...

Water falls in Los Batanes...

Then we went for lunch to some local restaurant, good food, great company, some tourism around Alcaraz with visit to the castle ruins and everything.

Overall, a great day, thanks every one and especially to elpana for making this happen.

Well, I am back

After some months of less than optimum health, I am feeling much better and I am starting to enjoy little outings with the family and the Land Rover.

Yesterday we went to a little public area not far from where we live now and enjoy a day of playing around.

The dog seems to be doing better too and he had a blast running around.

Good news is that some offroad events Land Rover club related are coming soon and I expect to be on them, but so far, I haven't been able to get the tires and lift I want, very soon I hope.

Let's see some pictures, taken with the phone so quality might be not that great:

Funny story: So I saw some coolant leak down the engine, and I thought, "Damn, it! the 'P' gasket" as it very often happens with 300Tdi, but tracing it up the engine I realized that the coolant was coming from higher up... I tried to loosen the coolant filler plug on the thermostat housing and I got half of it, it was all rotten and leaking coolant through a crack.
Good thing I had a spare, got the rest of the plug out and replaced and all is good since then. Fingers crossed, I don't feel like doing the 'P' gasket dance just yet... specially if I have to work again surrounded by snow...

Water time! after all that playing around

I swear it was just 2 mud puddles.

This was a lot of fun!!

Until next time, very soon I hope!

Power steering pump replaced and some maintenance while at it...

Well,
after the stockist recover from the holidays and got the parts, everything was ready for me to work on the Land Rover, so I did all the pending work but the fan + viscous as I didn't get the wrench yet, but it's on its way...

So this is what Christmas morning looks like:


And this is how the engine looks with the EGR removed.



See you next time.

Tdi power steering failure and maintenance

Well,
after we returned from a short trip to Teruel, the power steering stopped working, no assistance whatsoever.

I suspect the pump, so a new one will go in, but for now, I am taking apart belts, radiator/intercooler, ... to do some maintenance, as the fan has a broken blade, the belts are a little worn, I want to remove the EGR, coolant was due for a flush/change, etc

So I am in the middle of this, while the parts arrive.

Some pictures for now and next post, I hope to say all is good and fixed.

Farewell to offroading in the US (for now)

Well,
we are moving to Europe in a month, so before selling this Land Rover (Reddo) I thought I had to expend some quality time with it doing some offroading.

What can be better than offroading with some Land Rover friends of SoCal and NorCal, this time we expend the weekend in Pismo and we also did Garcia Ridge. Just a great weekend.

This was my camping spot, unfortunately, it was cold and windy, but still fun.



Saturday morning we headed up the mountains to do the Garcia Ridge Trail, very nice with some challenging parts at the end.

take a look:

This is one of the parts of the trail, to give an idea of what it was:



Me finishing some steep area:

Here Reddo decided to go sideways without asking me, kind of slipery, nothing that the ARB rear locker couldn't handle:


Pretty picture going across the creek:



One of the guys broke a driveshaft (one of the HD ones) and while we were there a young guy had a little accident, when his bike started rolling downhill and he couldn't gain control over it, this is where it happened:



After returning to the beach, I was tired so I left some dunes driving for the next morning.

Just before leaving Ron and I, did some dune driving and took some pictures as farewell, here are some pictures of that:

Reddo and Ron's DII in the beach:



Saying bye for now to a good friend, next time we'll offroad in Spain !!



Here me saying bye to everyone:



A little dune


Hanging around in the dunes:


So well, this is all for now, now it's time to clean Reddo and try to find a good family for it, I hope the next owner appreciates it as much as I do.

Check out Ron's Spot trip report, very nice:
Ron's Spot Trip

And if you have an account in LRRForum, go there for tons of pictures.

From now on, I'll keep on blogging from Spain.

Have a good one!

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.