A Tale of Two Steves and Two Geologists

Today was a make or break day in many ways for our relationship with Katy

We had her being looked at by Steve "Wolfie" who is a 1st class mechanic and who allows my father-in-law to rebuild his vintage tractors and old cars at his farm

He's going to service Katy and it was important that he had an early look to say what he thought of her and the results were actually pretty positive

He find a few points that need urgent attention (the wheels and exhaust) and was generally pretty positive about much of the rest which was a really great increase in our peace of mind.

In a good look underneath no horrible holes or weak spots were spotted, but the rear section of the exhaust was confirmed to be at the end of it's useful life so we're going to have to find the right parts for the replacement as it's not something that appears in all the standard catalogues

He did comment on the tyres which was to become something of a theme today

Steve spotted a loose water hose and I spotted the loose fuel pipe that was hampering performance

Next spot was a trip to Rhian's work to show off Katy to her work team who hadn't seen her yet.

As it was a gloriously sunny day we stopped in the car park and called Adrian out to see her. He's a Land Rover Owner himself and regularly has to perform some form of maintenance either in the engine or bodywork. The grin on his face as he approached told us everything we wanted to know about his first impressions and he continued to be complimentary when he got to look at things more closely. He did note that the tyres were looking a bit worse for wear!

Soon Elaine arrived back from her lunchtime trip and we had a real fun 10 minutes showing off Katy to her as well. She so enjoyed looking around she started saying she wanted to get a new "old" car of her own

So off to Foundry 4x4 Limited in Tredegar as we'd found some new seats that we were fancying, but we were not keen on the colour showing on the Internet and decided that we wanted to see what they had for ourselves

After a brief chat in the office we were really luck to meet the owner Steve Edwards himself. Steve is clearly a real Land Rover fan and the 130 double axle cherry picker on the parking area was the visible evidence of the project he was planning. That project was a camper conversion that he planned to spend a lot of money on, more than our budget would allow





Steve's project vehicle - too much work for us

Steve asked if he could have a good look at our Katy and we were happy to show her off

We then spent a wonderful hour with Steve pointing out all the things he would improve and offering us a lot of excellent advice on some options we had been considering. Key amongst his advice was "change those tyres as soon as possible" OK that was the third time this was said today and as he said it about 15 times we've decided we really need to take this advice

We had a wonderful discussion about options for improving cruising speed and performance without sacrificing fuel efficiency and the idea of larger tyres and a better intercooler seem to be fairly straightforward and relatively cheap 1st options we are really considering

Steve has offered to send us a complete parts list for the work he suggests and given what we had in free advice we're very happy to be planning to do business with him in the future, however with so much rattling around in our minds we decided to hold fire on the seats and so we headed home

He was in the main very complimentary about Katy as a project and it was interesting to hear that he's seen her in the internet and had noted the statement that had said that the pictures were old ones and had wondered what the real state of her was. He's given us an approximate price for the work we are considering and it's not too far from our initial estimate. How much we decide to do now and how much will be spread across a year or two remains to be seen, but we'll plan to work through the urgent stuff and then on to the rest as we can and want to

So back home safely tonight, but no new seats yet, and loads to think about.