Edd China Had To Get Creative and Invasive To Clean This Swampy Range Rover
What comes out of the transmission is nightmare fuel.
This one is for all you fellow freaks who get all the joy in the world out of washing a very, very dirty car. There’s no better experience than blasting away pounds and pounds of debris with a pressure washer, as Edd China demonstrates in the latest installment of his Range Rover project.
Ever since Edd parted ways with ‘Wheeler Dealers‘ a few years back, he’s been doing his own thing over at his own YouTube channel, making lengthy, detail-intensive wrenching videos on all kinds of enthusiast favorites.
Quite recently, he’s been slowly restoring a Range Rover Classic that had been sitting for something like twelve years. Last time it ran, it was apparently driven off-road and put away wet… literally. There’s more moss-looking material stuck on it than you’d find in an old graveyard.
Edd’s series is a great primer for anyone making something run that’s sat for a long time. Of course, it’s especially interesting for my fellow Land/Range Rover fans.
What’s more: he finds out that a transmission service ought to be done before he takes to the Rover to get inspected. By inspected, I mean what’s referred to in the UK as “MOT’d” or, reviewed by the Ministry of Transport. It’s a yearly safety and emissions check that ensures people are rolling around on decently sound wheels. I kind of wish we had that here in California.
What was supposed to be an easy, straightforward service, turns into a several-hours-long saga. The ATF is in a state of Hershey chocolate, rather than dark pink. Then, the filter turns out to be a bear to remove. All it took was two rounded-out Torx bolts to rain on his parade.
Luckily, he comes up with a solid method of removing these bolts. He makes certain not to do anything that would get fine-grain particles up into the complex web of tubes that is the automatic transmission, and everything goes smoothly.
It’s a great example that proves: nothing always goes to plan, and the simplest jobs can become much lengthier with old, poorly-looked-after project cars. I’ve certainly experienced this so far with my own Land Rover Discovery.
