Shake down

In between passing the safety test, there had been little time for a decent run in LGL. I took advantage of a day off last Friday, to take the Landy is on a bit of a shakedown run.

I’ve never been one for just driving around for the sake of it. I needed a reason… Packing a tent in my rucksack I programmed the GPS to avoid motorways and headed into the mountains…. destination, the Oberalppass and a hike up to Tomersee and camp there over-night.

At approx 70 miles this would make a good test run. A mix of open roads, in town driving, bendy roads and long hilly roads would get me bedded into driving an old Landy Rover again. It would also flag any issues with LGL. But most of all I was hoping the work of the last 3 years would be proven sound.

First stop was Brunnen (+436m) for coffee. Nothing untoward  occurred. The engine ran smoothly. Temp and oil pressure read as they should be and steering was a little less vague after putting some more air in the tyres. The book pressure for the larger 7.5 x R16 tyre is 26psi. I increased it to 30psi for each tyre. This improved things greatly.

I even had to use the drivers side windscreen wiper during a brief downpour.

A pleasant side effect of driving an old car is people come and talk to you. Whilst in Brunnen I had a nice chat with a retired couple on vacation for Los Angeles who took some pictures of LGL and had a look at the interior. They in turn showed me a video of a brown bear swimming in their outdoor pool in LA! The husband said Land Rovers of LGLs age and provanance fetch in the region of $90k in the US!

The next part of the journey involved “motorway conditions” as the road snakes along the side of Vierwaldstättersee (Lake Luzern). This was the part that was making me the most nervous but we kept up with everything, in and out of the tunnels, matching the speed limit.

Next stop was Andermatt (+1432m). I bimbled from the valley floor in Amsteg all the way up to Goschenen. There was the usual long queue for the Gotthard Tunnel on the motorway and was happy to be on the quieter roads. Even with the engine working hard up the climbs, the temperature gauge sat at a resolute 85 degrees. All good.

The  final climb to Andermatt is steep, perpetually busy and at the moment with a lot of roadworks. A lot of time was spent sat at traffic lights but the engine temp didn’t creep up at all. 2nd gear with overdrive and 3rd gear worked best and provided a steady forward motion of between 25 – 30 mph… a lot of lever shifting took place.

After a quick coffee in Andermatt (where it was quite a lot cooler) I set off to the top of the Oberalppasspass. Aside from an overlay aggressive Tesla driver the journey was uneventful. I stopped a few times to take some photographs  and arrived at the top of pass (+2044m) at about 3pm. Boots and rucksack were donned and after checking the doors were locked I headed into the mountains.

After a very peaceful nights sleep in the tent it was time to head back down and home.

I’d noticed a funny “pinking / popping” sound when going down hill on overrun (foot off the accelerator). As it only does it when the engine is up to temperature,  I’ve concluded the fuel / air mixture is too lean or there’s an air leak on the exhaust manifold. Both easy enough to check / resolve.

I will also check the throttle adjustment as I seem to run hit the throttle stop quite early. Not an issue but I’d like to be able to use what’s there.

Other than that, things went as planned. The engine had loosened up noticeably during the trip but i still have to put 600 km on the clock before I exchange the running in oil… where next then?