Rover Thoughts: First Planned (and Unplanned) Repairs

Well prior to the Range Rover Sport’s check-engine light coming on due to me battling with not being permitted to use cruise control, I had already confirmed that there were things wrong with it (prior to buying it) that I was prepared to fix relative to the price I was paying. I had had it tech inspected, and some things were unnecessary annoyances, and others were critical to operation. I wrote “others,” but technically, there was only one repair necessary that was critical to operation: the rear door latches.

For some strange reason, the locking mechanisms had failed on both rear doors! Odd right? I guess the previous owner had a spouse or children who manhandled those doors in a certain way that, while they still opened and shut perfectly normally, they wouldn’t lock.

So of course anyone could walk up to the locked vehicle, open a rear door, and walk off with my power inverter or dehumidifier (as the only things of value inside).

The shop I found in Orange County California to be my point of service was/is Euro West Rovers. They really seemed to know their stuff and as the only independent Land Rover tech in the area, the major Land Rover dealers sent a ton of non-warranty work their way. There was no shortage of Land Rovers lined up for work, scheduled maintenance, and also repairs. I draw a distinction between the three that I’ll go into in a later post.

So I dropped off Bertram and came back a few days later.

The cruise control glitch seemed to solve itself after they reset the check-engine light and they were unable to replicate the problem (as is often the case with any sort of issue with a complex piece of machinery…as soon as you take it to a technician, it starts working again).

With these repairs done, I was able to park it confidently on the street. In a couple weeks, I can take it back for a recheck at the smog station. They say you need to put a fair number of miles on to reset the ECU and oxygen sensor, otherwise you might go back and fail right away.

I’ll be building a page and spreadsheet chronicling maintenance and repairs on the vehicle. You can look forward to that soon.

TO BE CONTINUED…