FridgeFreezer

Per the title really - almost everything people DIY fabricate uses mild steel and that's mostly fine, but from time to time I have the feeling that I could/should be using something a little better for some parts that will see a bit of actual stress. However, there's a ton of different grades out there all with varying properties and tradeoffs - and of course price & availability varies too. I'm aware of tool steels and the like but a lot of that stuff is somewhat specific to one particular application. I guess I'm fishing for what's the next step up from mild - something commonly used / easily available & still general purpose but a bit tougher all round, possibly something easily DIY heat-treatable as that seems to be a common factor with the stronger stuff.

I've got a USB endoscope you could borrow. FOR ENGINE STUFF ONLY

Have you ever driven long distance at speed on dirt / corrugated roads?

When I rebuilt the 109 the intention was to take it all apart again when I had a little free time and get the chassis & bulkhead galvanised... that was 15 years ago

This is ebay's cheapest single-DIN unit but I reckon a double-DIn would go in there without too much hassle:

There's a lot to be said for just spending the money to move along with actually enjoying it - and hopefully a galv one will last forever so the job is done and gone.

It can be done but the rear prop can end up incredibly short, so it's worth waving a tape measure around. There's more than a few LT77/R380 + LT230 conversions around this forum, it's easy in a LWB, a bit harder in a SWB.

Honestly IMHO less is more - less wiring to go wrong, less space taken up with gizmos, more dash space for storage. A voltmeter per battery will tell you as much useful info as anything more fancy pretends to. You can get the double-DIN head units with no CD mechanism which makes them all of about 2 inches deep, no bulging-out MUD console needed you can mount them flush with the standard dash.

I'd have thought a wheely trolley would do to rotate an engine on the floor, all the photogrammetry I've seen won't mind about slight wobbles in distance or rotation as long as it can pick up on details.

Same here, best advice I've seen is that alloy tanks are mounted in a cradle with a little rubber or similar to allow movement/flex rather than cracking mounts off etc. Although for harsh / overland conditions I'd just use steel, it's more robust and more easily repaired.

Would be good to know / see pics of the place it's failing - tank sealant is not going to help a fractured part as cracks will creep with vibration. I'd also check the mountings, are there missing or worn rubber mountings or stress being put on the tank at all?

There's some jumbled-up stuff going on in there, not sure how much of it is accurate or applicable to other controllers... I'm fairly sure (most) solar controllers do not short anything out, there's no reason that I'm aware of for doing so - when you're not drawing power from a panel you just disconnect it and it will sit there making volts that no nowhere just like a battery with nothing connected to it. A zener diode will not handle a load-dump from a solar panel or car battery - a chunky one might be able to dissipate a few watts but that's about it. Reverse protection / shorting diodes are used in multi-panel installations (panels in series) to prevent one panel acting as a blockage, or the weak link in a chain, or having too much voltage across its terminals from other panels in the chain - but I don't think that's applicable here. I'm slightly curious about your overall setup - it sounds like you've got other controllers (IBS?) in the system as well as a fair few extras wired in, more complexity equals more chances for weird interactions to happen. Most likely IMHO is either a controller that's forgotten what battery type is fitted as Hurbie says, a fault in the solar controller so it's not actually shutting off the panel, or some weirdness in the wiring / interaction with another device in the system.

@De Ranged I've watched a few YT videos on these things and there are quite a few cheap household products like hairspray / dry shampoo etc. that do the job of the "proper" spray and either wipe away easily or evaporate. It's all about making the surface matte and with a little texture to it so the scanner can pick up surface details, there's no great socket science behind it. Cheap grey or white primer in a rattle can would probably be fine for a lot of car parts especially if you can live with a bit of extra paint on them,

I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you!

Show us a pic of your solar controller and ideally the wiring - otherwise we're just guessing. Any even vaguely decent solar controller should be protecting against reverse voltages and cutting off the charge at a set voltage.

Is this a quality volts gauge or an ebay one? If the multimeter says it's OK it's probably OK.

I'm not down with the kids on current values but can you buy a crusty D2 for cheap, strip the drivetrain out and still sell the remains for 1k??? And if you're time poor is that actually less time / space / effort than an on-the-bench engine rebuild over a few weeks of evenings?

Then again, a properly rebuilt 200 dropped in to the Ibex should last another 20 years or so, given that all the shagged ones you've got are from the previous millennium and somehow still running. And after that dies it'll be an easy EV conversion

Looks like they're about to flood a lot of cheap EV's into the market too - will be interesting to see how long any of their stuff lasts, if nothing else I'm looking forward to a lot of cheap parts donors for EV conversions.

The real question is would buying a TD5 plus the necessary bits plus doing the conversion be cheaper or less hassle than just fixing one of the assorted 200TDi's? If the "spare" engine just needs cam bearings it feels like that's the path of least pain. That or buying a £500 1.0 litre sh*tbox with a year's MOT to commute in and put the fuel savings towards an engine rebuild

I wasn't accusing you of anything - just pointing out your success was based on doing exactly that: stepping back, looking at the basics and applying a bit of logic.

I think sitting, especially sitting dry, does injectors no favours - the ones on the 109 did the same when we first built it. These days if I take injectors off to store them I'll squirt something down them like a light oil or similar that won't evaporate. As ever - MS can't solve mechanical issues, and always go back to the basics rather than deeper down the rabbit hole! Glad you're up and running.

The results look pretty good - the real test for me would be to compare a few measurements from the software on the real car to see if you're getting accurate results, not just pictures that look like the thing you scanned? Not doubting it - just want to know how it comes out because the obvious use-case is scanning things so you can make other things fit them, so if the dims are wonky it's a non-starter.

Where they're going they don't need rhoads... Sorry, I'll see myself out.

Years ago I made someone's day by giving them a few bags of fibre optic cable sleeves that had pre-printed numbers on them (0-100), he was colour blind and all the wires in his truck were red because, well, what's the point if you can't see the colours? I agree that making a loom to your own spec form scratch is about the same amount of work as buying one & then modifying it anyway, I tried it once and vowed to never bother again.