Alcaraz, working out the "extreme" or rather very dificult trail for the National event

Lots of fun!
That sums it up, this is the more advanced route we are proposing for the Land Rover Nacional, in a few days.
Mud is what makes it extra fun to drive, it's very easy to get stuck somewhere as there are very deep ruts.

Also I finally replaced the Terrafirma kit, completely useless, shocks and springs are toast, here you can see comparison between driver side, passenger side and new same lift:

Shocks are soft as butter too. In a word useless, don´t waste your money.

I installed the snorkel from mm4x4, overall OK, but had a couple details I didn't quite like, the head is fixed and the lid to cover the old hole was too small, also a  little mistake in the pattern supplied made me drill twice the same spot, but overall works OK and the Tdi seems to breath with ease now. Install was OK, but took me much more than anticipated, also it's cool that it hides the scratch some ass did in a parking lot some time ago.

In action:

And as mentioned before, here are the pictures of the route, yesterday:

This is just after leaving the road, to start:

 Got stuck already, 100 m. down the path:

 Not only me, of course :)

Helping with a smile

 All this area is completely drench in water, very slippery:

 Took a while to take the Patrol out, the front diff dragged like 4 or 5 meters:

Vado de la Nava:

Even more mud, big rock in the way stopped the Patrol:

The Jeep going through with ease:

One of the panoramic spots:

 This is how it looked half way through the route, probably 100 Kg of mud on it :)

These are the ruins of an old Bull Fighting ring, nice place to explore.

I am sure, a lot of Land Rover aficionados are going to enjoy this route.

See you soon, the national is 10-11-12 of May

Confirmed Terrafirma lift lost 2"

I had the old tires on for a couple of days and I measured the total "lift" or lack of in this case, as it reverted back to normal, that means the springs settle a full 2 inches. Of course, my new lift is *not* Terrafirma.

We had 79 and 80, front and back, before installing the Terrafirma lift, guess what did it measure this time?

Exactly the same, look:

LR Series III officially on the road

It just passed the ITV, which is the inspection for vehicles (similar to MOT or SMOG), so it is road worthy too.

Now to use it all over the place.

III Encuentro Sierra de Alcaraz

I don't need a lot of excuses to go out to Alcaraz and do some trails, as every year, we did a little excursion over the mountains.

Lots of water and beautiful outdoors as always. I can't wait for the CLRTTE National meeting in May.

Some pictures:

Some other pictures, courtesy of elosomecanico from CLRTTE

Hey Ron, on this one you can see the sticker from NCLR V anniversary :)

Hand Painting and P gasket

Well,
I realized the P gasket was leaking a little bit again, so I torqued the screws back up and I found one of them pretty loose, no wonder it was leaking, it seems dry after last run around Alcaraz.

It was the turn of the old Land Rover and I finally got around to paint it... I was not sure if leaving it the same color or painting it green (John Deere kind) or blue, but, after asking my wife, I "realized" I really wanted to paint it yellow :)

So anyway, these are some pictures of the process, not sure about the results but it does look better than it used to look:

 Here after epoxy primer, much more smoother than before...

We got yellow

Painting is fun!

Black is in

Final touches and end result, too glossy for my taste, but it will have to do until I do a full restoration one day.

And now one picture outside with the phone though...