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ROVER-HAULIN
One of the first people I met in the Land
Rover community was a gentleman and Land Rover buff named Jeff Aronson.
At a time when ECR was comprised of only myself and a gravel driveway,
Jeff would stop by and offer words of encouragement about Rovers. He was
one of the few that encouraged me during those start up years. Most everyone
else wrote us off and said we'd never make it. Even ECR's first mention
in a Rover publication came because Jeff worked it into the publication
he works for, the Rovers North
Newsletter. I've traveled in convoy with him to many a Land Rover event
and he stops by the shop to shoot the breeze periodically and drop off
donuts for the crew. ECR has done some work on his Series IIA 88"
Land Rover, that he calls the QE I (Queen Elizabeth I), over the years.
Some routine maintenance and some not so routine. On more than one occasion
I have pulled into ECR to find a badly battered Series IIA left by some
24 hour tow truck driver the previous night. Those mornings all of us at
the shop chat about what we think happened and play a round of "Guess
what Jeff did now." in anticipation of the phone call that always
comes shortly after the 88 arrives on our doorstep. The stories are usually
worth the wait, as they are not your typical, "It just died."
or "I have a dead battery." problem. It is never that mundane
with Jeff's escapades. The stories usually sound like an adventurer's diary
with elements like: "Then suddenly out of the snow storm appeared
a looming dark figure. It was a horse and the next thing I knew I was on
the roof." or "I later found the 88 and the vandals damaged my
dashboard while hot wiring it." We know the stories will be interesting
because Jeff does most of the work on his Rover himself, so we know if
we see it sitting at the shop, the story of why he can't fix it himself
must be a good one. Often times Jeff will "rent" space outside
the shop to do his repairs. This rental agreement consists of my letting
Jeff work on his Rover outside the shop and in exchange we get to help
him when need be. Our end of the bargain is that we have Jeff on a pretty
strict diet of sarcasm regarding the condition of his Rover. My mechanic,
Ian has his own name for the stately QE I, he calls it the "Exxon
Valdez". As you can imagine the oil slick both under and attached
to the underside of this 88 is legendary here at ECR. Jeff also takes our
ribbing over his love and ownership over the years of some of the "finer"
British automotive masterpieces, namely the MGB (rubber bumper), the Spitfire
and the TR7, but not normal cars, all must be from the Leyland years and
seasoned with lots of New England rust. Why, with a shop as busy as ECR,
do we enjoy Jeff's visits and tales of the road? There are a number of
reasons. In more than a decade of knowing Jeff I have watched a lot of
things come and go. Big time Rover collectors who come on the scene with
a big splash only to shortly thereafter slowly sink under water without
a trace have graced our door, numerous "We are going to take over
the Rover industry and put ECR out of business." companies have come
and gone, and customers of all types have gotten "into" and "out
of" the Land Rover lifestyle, but Jeff has been one of the constants.
Jeff also lives the Land Rover lifestyle, and that doesn't mean he has
a Discovery, a new Range Rover and keeps his Series IIA on hand for shows
or sunny weekends. It means that out of all the Series IIA 88s I have ever
seen, the Rover he calls QE I easily has the most miles put on it of any
other Series Rover I know of, or have heard about. A conservative estimate
is about 400,000 miles in the years I have known him. No one really knows
the real miles for sure as the odometer has been replaced a few times.
Jeff's 88 is driven everywhere, in any weather, to any location, be it
a meeting in New York, an off road event in Vermont or a teaching job in
Northern Maine, the Rover takes him there, and back. Jeff has told me in
the past that his Land Rover enabled him to gain a reputation with New
England's humanities councils as the discussion leader who would go to
any rural location in any season, now that is what a Rover is all about.
He is currently a school principal and is, and has been, involved with
1,000s of reading and discussion programs in libraries throughout New England.
He works with literacy programs for all types of people including inmates
and men and women on probation. He volunteers time to help kids in need
and the list goes on. Jeff is a good soul. There is no other real way to
describe it, if you have met him you know, if you haven't met him, you
probably know someone like him. In my opinion he is one of those people
that gives back more than he gets.
Over the years Jeff's Rover has been used as it should be, both on road
and off, but of late the 88 has started to have seen better days. The Rover
spends a lot of time on an island in Maine, so the salt air has really
taken its toll on the steel parts over time. Many years ago we gave the
88 a paint job, and Jeff has treated it to mechanical parts as required,
but decades and decades of faithful service have been catching up with
this Series IIA and it was in dire need of a refit, but it was still in
active duty. All of that changed one of those mornings
when I pulled into ECR and saw the 88 in the driveway. This had to be a
good story, coolant was dripping out from underneath. The right fender
was pushed in and the radiator support was broken in half. After a quick
look over and a quick game of "Guess what Jeff did now." the
crew of ECR and I knew that it had once again been large mammal vs. Land
Rover. In this case, they both lost. In Jeff's previous encounters the
animals had won the day. The typical battle of vintage Land Rover against
the insurance company was lost, and the QE I has been dry docked at ECR
ever since. The accident damage, extensive rust and a looming state safety
inspection, now long overdue, keeping it from road use. The latter being
the real difficulty. The new accident damage combined with the ever growing
concern of rust in the bulkhead and badly aging mechanical systems meant
that there was no quick or easy way to get the QE I sailing again. Jeff
had patched the Rover one too many times, and at this point it was becoming
a major safety issue. Jeff likes to consider that needing to pump the brakes
a few times is "quirky", but I call it scary, and the brakes
were really only the tip of the iceberg. Jeff and I had a number of conversations
about what to do and it was left at, "See if you can patch it."
However, for what Jeff got from the insurance company, there was no way
the 88 was going to be on the road again in anywhere near a safe condition.
The Series IIA 88 had appeared to have come to the end of the road, as
there was no way it could be patched.
As the QE I sat on ECR's lot over the last year or so with no real hope of getting back on the road a lot of new TV shows caught my interest. MTV's "Pimp my Ride", TLC's"Overhaulin" and even ABC's "Extreme Make Over: Home Edition" were showing what can be done when a skilled team is put together to help out a hopefully deserving person(s). At some point the light bulb went off and in a combination of that genera of TV show, mixed in with hopefully a little "instant karma", to quote Mr. Lennon, I figured we could repair the QE I, if we could get some help. So the calls went out in hopes that, for once, the good guy would finish first. Luckily, Mark Letorney of Rovers North pulled out all the stops and sent us a long laundry list of parts that we had asked for, including a new galvanized frame, a full parabolic suspension, Mansfield heater kit and much more. Those parts, combined with what ECR and a few other suppliers would be donating could make this Series IIA 88 ready for a few more decades of faithful service.
The parts then arrived it was time for Jeff Aronson to get his Series IIA 88 "Rover-Hauled".
Oh yeah, and did I mention that the fact that we are giving ourselves 6 days to completely refurbish this vehicle from the frame up. Why you ask? Well, first to see if we could pull it off, and second because we are so busy with customer vehicles that we can't take anymore than a week to complete this project.
On "Overhaulin" they have a team
of about 30 people, on "Extreme Make Over: Home Edition" they
have hundreds. We have four.
1 battered Series IIA 88, 4 ECR staff members, 6 days...
Go!
Enjoy,
Mike Smith
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