Your Independent Land Rover Specialist

Did you know that your engine can be overheating with you even knowing it! Yes, that's potentially true – and can have dire consequences. Here's why, for a coolant sensor to be accurate, it must have coolant flowing past it. If you have a coolant leak or complete loss of coolant, your coolant temperature sensor and therefore gauge will not react properly. In the winter there are often some simple signs that your coolant is low, particularly you often will notice that your heater is not blowing hot air. But come summer, that little warning of no heat from your vents goes unnoticed, pair that with running the A/C which pumps even more heat into the engine, and you can have catastrophic engine failure come up faster than you realize. Yes, some vehicle have coolant level sensors to warn you of low coolant level, but they don't always work reliably. And with the abundance of plastic engine (and cooling system) components in use today, some age and time cou ... read more

I thought I’d share my beliefs regarding undercarriage vehicle protection. – Body protection and “rock sliders” will be covered in another post. Basically the way I see it undercarriage protection falls into 3 general categories: Skid Plates/Guards – which generally cover an area & multiple components Individual component guards – as the name implies, this guard covers just the “one” component that is vulnerable Component Upgrades – for strength & durability Overall, I prefer to avoid skid plates and guards where I feel they are either excessive or have limited benefit. Therefor I tend to prefer component upgrades and individual component guards whenever possible. Below is a bullet point list of some of my thoughts. Pro’s to skid plates & guards: Relatively easy install Designed for “bolt in” installatio ... read more

This week, we had the rare opportunity to see and work on an imported Australian Military Defender often know as a Land Rover Perentie. It was in for a fuel tank replacement as the original had sprung a leak, luckily for us the owner had already sourced the replacement as we are not familiar with this Rover variant and what parts are the same as NAS (North American Stock) vehicles or other ROW (Rest Of World) vehicles. Our customer is working to import more of these vehicles, so hopefully we will continue to see more of them as the options seem very well planned in my opinion. Here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia on the model: The Land Rover Perentie is a nickname for the Land Rover 110 produced by JRA Limited for the Australian Army, and part manufactured and assembled in Moorebank, New South Wales, during the 1980s and 1990s. There were two build contracts. The first was in 1988 and the second ... read more

We here at JC’s British & 4×4 have started to see a trend regarding heating issues on LR3s and Range Rover Sports. This trend has been an issue with heater core blockage and uneven heat coming from the vents. Oddly as the blockage increases it does not evenly reduce the heater core temps from all vents, but lowers the Driver’s side temps dramatically while the passenger side appears to be unaffected. This problem leads many shops and technicians toward replacing the control servos, which in most cases solves nothing. To replace the heater core is a very large and time consuming job, the entire dash assembly has to be removed. We have had some success power flushing the heater core with our Gates Power Flush cooling tool. This is a process we would highly recommend before a noticeable clog/heating issue is present, perhaps ... read more

News Our new website has only been up a month or so now, we hope you find it useful and well laid out. The magazine issue for Perterson’s 4 Wheel & Off-Road’s, Ultimate Adventure 2015 has come out on the newsstands. And I’m very happy with the coverage our Rover has gotten. Jeff is one of 6 magazine readers invited to this event, and the 1st Land Rover invited since the adventures inception in 1999.JC’s is continuing to expand, in September we have added two new employees. Trish Brown is our new front desk Service Advisor; she comes to us from Las Vegas where she was a service advisor and manager for Kensington Motor Cars, a Rover and British specialty shop. Nathan McGraw has joined our team of technicians; he is an ASE certified technician hailing from Colorado Springs with many years of general auto repair ... read more

News JC’s has just launched our new website, we hope you find it useful and well laid out. Owner Jeff Corwin has recently returned from Peterson’s 4 Wheel & Off-Road’s, Ultimate Adventure 2015. Jeff is one of 6 magazine readers invited to this event, and the 1st Land Rover invited since the adventures inception in 1999. Look for an in depth article chronicling Jeff, and co-driver Chris’s adventures. Tech Tips To quote John Snow from Game of Thrones “Winter is coming” Yup, I’m writing this now in the middle of Summer, because as we all know Winter can come quick and hard to Colorado. Here in Colorado winter is much different than other areas of the country, the high altitude and dry air make everything more extreme. Daily temperature swings are often 30-40 degrees, humi ... read more

News An India based company called Tata has acquired Land Rover & Jaguar from Ford Motors, announced in March, the sale price was about $2.3billion. Only time will tell how this will affect the marquee, but they did get backing from both Rover & Jaguar workers unions, and have said they will hold true to tradition. In Feb 08, I’ve brought back my apprentice (Drew Wheeler) from my 1st year of running the shop, I had been trying to get him back on occasion over the last year or so, and finally he agreed to leave Corvettes Only to rejoin us here. Tech Tips With most vehicles, running the recommended octane gas will maximize performance and gas mileage. This is due to multiple engine sensors and programming that can make use of that octane rating. But, many customers ask us if their vehicles require that higher octane rating, and the answer is really no. Those same sensors & programming allow yo ... read more