I have an appointment
later today with Jim Pendleton, an independent mechanic who works a lot on Land
Rovers and some Defenders. We will meet at the Land Rover facility where my
Defender is parked and he will evaluate it there. If i decide to go ahead with
his doing the work, he will haul it over to his yard and start the work tomorrow.
If i decide to not proceed with his doing the work, or he declines to do it, i
will have no choice but to ship the Defender back home. It could turn out that
i end up having Jim do the work and then shipping it back home, depending upon
how long it takes to do the job.
The Land Rover team
thinks it is the transfer case that is the problem. If it indeed is that,
transfer cases just don’t fail with a loud POP, so something else happened to
cause it to fail? I will soon find out. Did i break any axle maybe?
I only have one bid
from an auto transport company, the same one who hauled the Defender back in
2016 from Salina, Utah, for the same price. The problem is that with the roof
rack the Defender is 84.5 inches high and that requires two berths in the
truck.
If i have to ship it
back, sometime after Monday i will rent an SUV and drive home and then have
someone turn over the keys to the Defender when the truck comes.
I am sitting here in
this hotel thinking about how lucky i was that this thing happened where and
when it did. Had it happened just a few hundred miles back, that is, the night
before, or on any number of other risky places just in recent days, things would
be turning out differently. Again, I lucked out, if there is such a
thing as simultaneous good and bad luck.
In the meantime, the
pace here is rather slow, not what i am used to on these trips, or anytime. The
hotel is somewhat distant from everything so without a vehicle we are limited.
But i will admit that this unexpected layover is a bit more comfortable than
the five others i went through in the past on these trips, but that does not
exactly make me a happy camper. Donner is using the time to catch up on rest,
as if he did not have enough on the trip. I just may do the same.
Ed and Donner, from
the road, i mean, off the road.
Ed -- good luck with the Defender. Just a thought -- can the roof rack be removed and shipped separately, or alongside.
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