On a Whim

Now, with my wife's interest piqued and, more importantly, with her blessing, I set off to find every Series Land Rover for sale at that time in the United States. We had quickly realized that the olive drab 88 in Oregon would not work for us. With two kids, we needed rear seats and living in the rainy pacific northwest, we really needed a roof!

I searched Land Rover Exchange, Craigslist and Ebay and, within a couple of weeks, found a tan 109 for sale in New Mexico. My wife took one look at it and knew that the only Series Land Rover she wanted was a 5 door 109.

The starting bid was reasonable and I added it to my watch list. A couple of days later, I sent off a list of questions to the seller along with my phone number. He called soon afterward and for the next hour I learned that none of the questions I had asked were relevant to Series Land Rovers. He walked me through his ownership of the 109 and taught me about breakfasts, footwells, outriggers, crossmembers, frame horns, T posts, Fairey Overdrives, Lucas Wiring and Scotty's Adaptors. I finished that call with about three pages of notes and immediately jumped back on the internet to look up and learn more about all he had told me. Over the next few days, I told my wife what I had learned and called the seller a few more times to wring every little detail there was to know about his 109 out of him. All the while, the 109 sat on Ebay with no bidders.

On the last day of the auction, with only a few hours to go, I placed the first bid on the 109. Then I told my wife what I had done. Her eyes turned into saucers and, instead of the response one might expect (You did WHAT!?!), she ran to the computer to watch the auction tick down. For a while, we were the only bidder and, I'll be honest, my feelings ran from elation to trepidation and back. Then another bidder joined the action and we were out of the running. Just before that second bidder showed up, I was deep in the trepidation swing of my emotional cycle while my wife was riding high on her elation cycle. Those roles reversed the moment we were outbid. But there were still several minutes to go before the auction was over.

My wife said it was better that we would lose, but her eyes said the opposite. With twenty seconds to go before the auction ended, I raised our bid by $100 and the 109 was ours. My wife couldn't believe it! She was jumping up and down with excitement--she finally had her dream car.

Caught the Bug

This blog is about my wife's Land Rover Series III 109 RHD 5 door truck and the work we have put into it in the two years we have owned it. I have spent countless hours searching the web and reading similar postings from other Land Rover fans around the world and I have learned quite a bit. My hope is that this blog will contain some information, hints or tips that other Land Rover Series fans will find useful or maybe just amusing.

My wife and I have both had, and still have, a fascination with old Series Land Rovers. "Born Free," "Daktari" and "The God's Must be Crazy." We first encountered these iconic vehicles the same way most people did.

For a couple of years in the early 1990's, I lived in Costa Rica and I was amazed to see how many Series Land Rovers were in use throughout that country. My sister and her family were also living in Costa Rica at that time and they had a pastel green Series IIa 109 5 door with the 4 cylinder diesel. I drove that truck all over San Jose and the surrounding cities and, even though it was slow, loud and smelly, I loved it. It never failed to start and it never failed to bring me home. Not far from the house in which I lived, there was an old green 88 sitting on the side of the road, on its axles, with a tree growing through the engine compartment. Every time I passed that 88, I dreamed of bringing at least one back to the U.S. and dropping it onto a modern truck frame. (I suppose a warning is needed at this point: neither my wife nor I are Land Rover purists--after market and non-standard parts and accessories are just fine with us.)

Fast forward about ten years. During that time, about the only attention we paid to Land Rovers was when we would (rarely) see a Defender drive by. My wife called them "Destroyers." I thought that was a fitting name for them. We had moved to Dallas, Phoenix and, finally, Redmond, Washington where we met some friends who had just bought an eight year old shiny black Range Rover. Seeing that car reminded me of Series Land Rovers and of the old green 88 with the tree growing through it back in Costa Rica. I began to troll on Craigslist and quickly found an olive drab 88 in Oregon with no roof, a V-8, and a huge custom fuel tank filling the rear tub for $4000 OBO. That seemed so inexpensive and so obtainable! When I told my wife about it, her eyes lit up--she caught the bug too. This was late November 2007.