"My Favorite White New Land Grover" max

It's been a long, eventful life for this Land Grover (that's what Max calls them) since we first bought it about a year ago. I was itching for a new ride after the windows on the Saturn wagon quit working--naturally the AC was also broken and too old to be inexpensively fixed. I was driving to and from school, becoming drenched in sweat each time I got in it.
One fine day, I was out riding my bike when I spotted a white Land Rover for sale. It appeared to be in good condition and the asking price was low enough that I could actually afford it. Secretly, since the days of snapping the sway bars and ripping the skid plates off my dad's pickup, I had always wished for a true 4x4 to call my own. When I noticed the sticker in the window of the Rover stating "4x4 of the year", I knew we needed it. Sure enough, Ginna agreed and although we had to let a lot of air pressure out the tires to fit it in the garage it was ours.
We hadn't owned the thing more than a day when things started to go downhill. We took it to our "trusty" local mechanic to have it fully tuned and update all maintenance before we started to drive it. For about $1500 he changed the brakes, spark plugs and belts, then cracked the windshield (which they denied, but I took it whole and got it back cracked!), worsened the power steering leak and didn't put the wheels back on tight, so they almost fell off on the freeway!
Next came two wrecks in two months--both not our fault, and yes, the Favorite White New Land Grover kept Ginna safe in both instances.
We decided that since the cumulative insurance payouts were more than the value of the car and slightly less than the cost of fixing it in the body shop, we'd try to find something else. But, after having a Land Grover, it's really hard to shop for another type of car.

We looked at just about everything, including some mini-vans, but in the end, we knew what we wanted: another Land Grover. So, we bought the Red New Land Grover and we really like it. I kept the white grover in the garage since I couldn't really sell it and I honestly, I didn't want to.

If you read our posts then you'll know that our subaru recently died. Suddenly, we were at a crossroads. New car or fix the white grover? The choice was clear. We needed the grover back. I also needed to do it on a budget. So, I undertook the whole project myself. I have no knowledge of auto mechanics, bodywork or anything like that. Still, I needed to fix my grover. I took off all the broken panels and used a sledge hammer to straighten the big dents, I bought a true Australian safari bumper and put off-road tires on it.
I bought replacement lights from the junk yard and somehow managed to salvage the stock grill. The fenders are still not totally fixed and I couldn't get the hood straight, but oh well.

I also got ambitious and fixed the powersteering leak. I bought the tech manual for the car and took off a whole bunch of stuff, so I could get to the powersteering pump and fix the leak. I can't believe it worked. Now Max's favorite white new land grover is back in action and I'm using it to drive to school. There were some choice moments during the rehabilitation of the white grover and I still want to have the body work done by a shop someday, but until I'm rolling in the benjamins, we'll be rolling in the Favorite White New Land Grover.