Thursday, June 28, 2007

RoverTracks Land Rover Discovery off road winch bumper

I have been looking for a new bumper for my '03 Disco II for some time now. I wanted one that was high clearance, light weight, had a winch plate, and had a light bar on it. I've come across a few others, but I really didn't like the style, and for the price of these bumpers, I wasn't going to settle.

It just so happened that search for "Land Rover bumpers" on Ebay turned up a nice looking bumper by a fabricator named Sam. The bumper looked to be what I was looking for, but was mounted on a Disco I. I imediately shot Sam an email and he got back to me with in a hour saying the bumper would indeed fit on my Disco and that all I would have to do is relocate my washer fluid bottle. I emailed him back asking how hard this would be and he sent me a link:

Discoweb.org (I haven't done this yet, but expect a tutorial/account of how this went)

After a few days of pondering I bought the bumper. I paid for the bumper and it was in Denver (from Vegas), only a few days later. The bumper was packaged well (sorry didn't get any pictures of that part), but there were a few scratches on the A-bar from the screws in the box. I don't care about these for two reasons: 1. I touched it up with black paint and you can't even tell. 2. It's going to have a lot more scratches on it than that when I'm done with it... =). Some may take issue to that however.

When I got the bumper, it was exactly as described on ebay. Not only did it look great it was light and felt strong.

All and all, I found that the transaction with Sam went perfect and he was extremely helpful when ever I had a question. Not only that, but when I got the bumper mounted (see below), it was very stout and after using it to tow my buddies Jeep and having me and all my buddies climb on the bumeper, I felt I got my money's worth. And if there is one thing I could wine about, I would say I wish the bumper was powder coated. I will be buying rocker guards from Sam real soon (which look a lot better than any other I've come across).

To sum up the experience, I put together a little tutorial on putting the bumper on. It is just a quick over view of what I had to do and I basically just want to show how the bumper looks on my truck.

Enjoy:

Step one. Look at the truck with the stock bumper on it:



Step two. Take the stock bumper off:

There are four main bolts and a handful of screws that need to be taken out. Take your time doing this, and make sure you don't rip anything out. If you want to sale your stock bumper, you'll want to keep all the stock hardware and make sure not to strip any of the screws or scratch the bumper while taking it off. It took me about half an hour to get the stock bumper off.



Step three. Time to do some grinding:

You're going to need to grind off half of the tab that is shown in the picture. After that you'll want to put the bumper in place and mark the metal just above the tab you just trimmed, because you're going to have to grind out a little notch for the winch plate (you can see in the final picture, esp. if you click here and see the high res picture).

This is what you grind:



And this is how you grind it:



Step four. A little more grinding:

There is a low hanging bracket that you can optionally (although I recommend it) trim. I trimmed them so that they would be higher than the bar on the bumper. I trimmed them instead of removing them completely because they hold the fender to the grill and I didn't want this to be come a weak point in the fender area.



Step five. Attach bumper and enjoy:

Putting the bumper on wasn't totally painless. We had to wiggle and push and pull to get the bolts to go through and I ended up using a little bit smaller bolt than was supplied, because the holes were off ever so slightly. Here are a few pictures of the finished product:





Tuesday, June 26, 2007

A few YouTube videos that I like

Ferrari Commercial

This is a sweet Ferrari commercial that I came across today. Why can't every car commercial be this cool? I really like the part were the Porsche alarm starts going off...ha ha



Another is a video a singer named Cas Haley. This is from NBC's America's got Talent:

Note: I've made an mp3 out of this, so if anyone wants it let me know. Also, I don't believe in illegal file sharing and if he comes out with a CD I will buy it. I just liked what he did on TV the other day and would like to hear it again, and since I can't buy it, I had to rip it.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

123flickr.com

Here is a new site that allows you to embed a flickr gallery on your website. All you have to do is go to 123flickr.com and put in your flickr user name and the number of pictures you'd like to display. The site kicks out some code that you paste into your site. That's it!

Below is an example of what you get (using my flickr feed):



Note: I found this page via Lifehacker.com

Monday, June 18, 2007

More street view action

I know I've been talking about Google Street View a lot, but that's because more and more interesting pictures have been popping up everyday. Instead of blogging about all of them, I'll just point you to this site that is collecting all the interesting/funny/odd pictures.

Streetviewr.com

Thanks to harley who also pointed out this link: Mapmole, which is similar to streetviewr.com

Rob

A go kart with a jet engine...enough said

I don't really know how to put this, but there is a shift cart with a military grade jet engine attached to it for sale on ebay: Jet Cart

I first saw this on Makezine

Also, check out a few of the videos he has on YouTube:



And one more where he's actually driving it...

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Webcam

Some of you may have already noticed, but I've added a live webcam to my page. I'll have this on at work, and from time to time at home. I'm using a cool new service called Ustream.tv, so check it out if you're interested in doing something similar. It's free and takes like 5 minutes to set up if you already have a cam.

Rob

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

I love parody

Remember that dove evolution commercial? Check it out below:



Now check out this awesome parody of the commercial:



I love it!

4Wheeling in Central City, CO

I went 4Wheeling with my buddy Dan and his brother Damien this weekend in Central City.

Check out all the cool pictures we took:

4Wheeling in CC

We've got a some pretty cool video that'll I'll be adding pretty soon.

Later

Monday, June 11, 2007

Bud Light commercials

I came across this commercial today (a guy at work sent it to me). It's probably the funniest commercial I've ever seen:

Swear Jar

After that I wanted to see more, so I found a bunch more here:

Real men of genius

Enjoy!

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Man in wheel chair goes for a ride...

Here is a pretty crazy story I came across today. It's about a guy who...well read the story: Man goes for ride of a life time

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Fun with Google Maps Street view

Since I showed you guys Google Maps street view, I've been looking around San Franciso (because the pictures there are really high res compared to other places) for funny stuff. I didn't find this myself, but I did come across it today. Anyway, it's a guy peeing on the side of the road.

**Note: Google has taken the picture down...Sorry.
Here it is, bask in all it's glory: Yes!!


One can only ask yourself, how much time to you have to spend on the interweb to find something like this?