In anticipation of 5,000 miles in the next 3 weeks and the respray (which isn't going to happen until after the 5,000 miles now), I've been doing the odd little job on the car this weekend. As well as the obvious service things, I've been doing something I normally never do, cosmetics. I've painted the front grille so it's no longer a milky grey from the UV exposure. In fact, I've painted it twice as the first time I bought dark grey bumper paint but it looked more like a shitty brown to me so I've done it black. Did the strips under the headlights too and I must admit it looks damn good.

As those that were at the summer camp will have noticed, one of my front foglights was doing a passable impersonation of a goldfish bowl. So I took it out. Now one piece of advice. If you have a front foglight full of water, do not open the back of it while laying under the car. It makes your Tee shirt very wet and your head hurts from hitting it on the front anti roll bar as you try to leap out of the way. Found out why it was filling with water as it had a big crack on the top so any water thrown up from the front wheel would lay on top of it and drip into the lamp. Anyway, after emptying the water out, I had a bit of a problem. There were multiple tide marks showing the different levels the water had got to at various times on the inside of the lens. It appears that they install the bulb holder and reflector before fitting the glass and that is bonded in place so didn't look like it was going to come off. Or not in one piece anyway.

Dina had gone shopping and a quick check in the kitchen revealed that the dishwasher was half full. So the foglight went in there positioned so the jets of water and cleaning stuff would go into the opening on the back. Switched it on and went back outside to continue my tinkering. Dina came home from shopping and thanked me for putting the dishwasher on even though it wasn't full.

After about an hour a voice from the from door was heard to say, "Richard, what was this doing in the dish washer?" The dishwasher had beeped to say it had finished so she'd opened it to empty it...... I told her that Orangebean, Mark, the guy in the dodgy shorts with no seats in his car at the Summer Camp, had suggested a dishwasher was ideal for washing engine parts and I figured it should be pretty good for foglights too. It was, it did a damn good job too. Sealed the crack with a dollop of silicon and the jobs a good un as they say.

Bugger, I can edit a post but not the typo in the title, Doh!

That bloody Ornagebean gets the blame for everything...

I had to do mine a few days after summer camp... I couldn't stand it much longer. Did the mirrors too.

I must admit, Leanne has been saying for ages that she wants to get a dishwasher for home and I've been putting it off as I'm never here and like most men, when left at home alone don't exactly cook a lot and when I do I use as few dishes/utensils as possible to make the washing up less to do..

However, it has been on my mind to get one, and I also must admit that a large part of that is because I'd be horribly tempted to then put parts in it to clean...

I wonder how many door latches worth of parts would fit in at once.....

EDIT: I'm feeling left out of the 'fancy grille club' now... as mine are still faded...

Might have to get some gunmetal grey paint and do them this week... as well as clean it...

Do it :)

Dishwashers work well for keyboards too... they take a few days to dry out mind, but they normally survive.

Thats a great tip, I'm always repairing our dishwasher anyway so I wont be to blame should it fail after putting the cylinder head in it.

You do realise , Richard that you now have to match the bumper etc .

I originally tried those L322 grille upgrades but it still looked like it was from a different car so I just colour matched my grille with the car.Have also just renewed the chrome Range Rover logo with the newer 3d style and replaced the badges and wheel caps with the black style.

Now's probably a good time for me to be selling franchises for my dishwasher repair business :-)

I also discovered something to clean the black strips along the tops of the doors. The ones that go grey and grotty. Before doing anything I took the car to my local Polish car wash as it hadn't been cleaned since Summer Camp and still had Marty's mud on it. The pressure washer started to lift the reflective strips on the A pillars, a relic from it's previous life. I decided they were beginning to look a little tatty so could come off. But that left the glue so, having found that brake cleaner wouldn't shift it, had a ferret around in the garage and found a bottle of meths (there are times when we all need a drink after all). That took the glue off but also cleaned up the black so I had a go at the strips on the top of the doors. It works, a bit of meths on a cloth and they are black again. In the past I've tried WD40, looks good for a day or so, back to black lasts slightly longer but this looks like it should last.

Yes, I considered doing the bumper too but couldn't be arsed to mask off the rest of the car and take the number plate off. Not sure if there's enough left in the aerosol can to do the whole bumper though and it would look pretty stupid with only half of it done. If I do it though, I'll do the bumper and the spoiler extension at the bottom but leave the bit in the middle. Also noticed that Nick (Sloth) has the bottom of the grille in body colour which looks good to me. Might be worth getting the painter to paint the bottom strip when he does the rest of the car.

Marty, get a dishwasher with a big cutlery tray. Leanne will be well chuffed and you'll get loads of bits of door latches in there (but don't try putting the motors in, I suspect they wouldn't take kindly to it).

All the electronics get pulled out before the plastic parts get cleaned, so nothing like that going anywhere near hot water! But a big cutlery tray sounds good...

Any problems with the grease buildup in the dishwasher, or from if you're doing things cylinder heads aswell?

Richard, I wonder if your grille has been swapped at some point... maybe if the plod had lights cut into there, they replaced it when they sold it? As far as I know all of the grilles were colour matched at the bottom to vehicle paintwork, the same as under the headlamps...

But then if you are getting the rest of it resprayed, then will be a good opportunity to get them to do the bottom of the grille aswell!

I must admit the grilles do look good in black, but since everything else on mine is black, I think that on mine the contrast will look better!

Never had a problem with grease buildup. Dishwashers are designed to deal with greasy pans etc. Over the years I've cleaned heads, engine cases- in fact anything that would physically fit in! <br>
I run one of those dishwasher cleaner things through afterwards as there's sometimes a bit of an oily smell, but that's it! <br>
Probably comes under the "bleeding obvious" heading, but don't use the drying cycle- just the rinse and wash part. The heat will discolour aluminium stuff.

Martyuk wrote:

Richard, I wonder if your grille has been swapped at some point... maybe if the plod had lights cut into there, they replaced it when they sold it? As far as I know all of the grilles were colour matched at the bottom to vehicle paintwork, the same as under the headlamps...

Errm, yup, grille has most definitely been replaced.......

You wouldn't lose that in a car park...