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geoffbeaumont
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Posts posted by geoffbeaumont
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12 hours ago, Nonimouse said:
Is there any engine that is perfect? But the M51 is still probably the easiest no genuine conversion. It's actually only a bit more powerful than standard. So much smoother.
I'm quite sure there isn't!
Ignoring smoothness (the M51 wins that by a country mile), I'd say most of the difference is in where in their rev range the two engines perform best. The M51 has more at the top end - it feels quicker at higher road speeds, whereas the 300TDi is far more flexible at low revs.
How much objective difference there actually is is another matter...
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7 hours ago, Nonimouse said:
The M51 would probably be the easiest
Epic turbo lag though - a 300TDi is much more drivable at low speeds, even if the M51 is smoother and more powerful once it gets spooled up.
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13 hours ago, Daan said:
This looks pretty close to what you want:
Daan
Assuming the OP means a facelifted Discovery 1 rather than a Discovery 2 (which I assume he does - I'm not aware of the Discovery 2 ever being fitted with the 300Tdi - unless it was a ROW spec?).
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On 8/31/2022 at 4:31 AM, landy_andy said:
Campers here can have either a wet or dry bathroom, basically in a wet one the shower is over the toilet, in a dry the shower is a separate area that is screened off from the toilet space. In some this is a separate room, others will have a screen door. Generally means you have somewhere to hang wet coats without being dripped on whilst having a #2 🙄
Ah, that's what it means! Same options in the UK. My parents camper has a wet shower, our caravan a dry one. Pro of the wet is it's much more compact (their entire bathroom area is about a third the size of ours). We've never actually used our shower, but it's a very useful wet storage area!
20 hours ago, L19MUD said:I'm so jealous of the trucks you have in the US. Just way too big to use over here
Yep, I like the idea of a demountable camper, but anything that's a decent size needs a base vehicle that's just unusably big in the UK. The usual solution here is towing a small car behind a camper (or, of course, using a tow car and caravan). But neither of those leaves you capacity for trailering the D100.
Plus I doubt many caravans would survive long on gravel roads 😆
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Just back from a few days in Bavaria. Saw quite a few campers based on 4x4 Iveco vans (and one 4x4 Sprinter). Pretty much exactly what several people have advocated on this thread. All matt grey for some reason?!
They looked pretty appealing to me - quite at home on metalled road where I saw them, but perfectly capable of rough tracks. Decent but not excessive size and I guess with a decent load capacity too.
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Doesn't look like it has any side windows, which would make it only for the brave as a commuter in this country.
Which is a shame, because it looks fantastic. It's not really what beach buggies are about though. Maybe they'll follow up with a more practical everyday car that still sticks to a no frills approach?
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23 hours ago, Mo Murphy said:
Looks more appropriate than the originally posted camper 👍
Mo
I suppose it depends on your criteria. If your primary aim is to shout "look at me" as loud as possible then the one in the OP is kind of hard to miss!
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Seems rather better value ready made anyway. Assuming they assemble it properly square.
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17 hours ago, Simon_CSK said:
How often does one actually use the spare wheel? Put the tank in the spare wheel well and carry repair foam for the tyre. Range will be about 200 to 250 miles which works for me.
A few months ago I'd have agreed with this, after not needing a spare for probably 20 years. But so far this year we've had three terminally damaged tyres between our two cars (neither, admittedly, 4x4s). Neither has a spare tyre, which has meant twice continuing to drive on a dangerous tyre to get the vehicle to a suitable place to get it sorted, and having it unavailable until the tyre fitting could happen. The other occasion I had the choice between waiting for a low priority AA recovery or putting in some tyre sealant and trying to limp home very carefully - went for the latter and just made it, then again had the car off the road for days. Spare tyres are currently looking like a very good idea...
13 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:Alternative: put the money you'd spend on an LPG kit towards fuel, if you don't do many miles it is not really worth the hassle / compromise... if you do do a lot of miles and need the MPG, a V8 is probably a poor choice regardless.
Realistically this is probably the correct answer.
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If you can live without much range on petrol you can replace the original fuel tank with the LPG one.
You'll need to find somewhere for a small petrol tank (assuming you're running a normal dual fuel setup, which also gives you the fall back of running on petrol if you can't get LPG). My classic had a 5 gallon tank in the rear wing, but not sure if that's possible on a P38.
Mine had 2x35l LPG cylinders in place of the petrol tank - so about 56l of actual capacity and about half the range it would have had, but these days you can probably fit in quite a bit more capacity with a single toroid tank.
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16 hours ago, Nonimouse said:
Anyone who's ever driven a 110/90/Disco/RRC for a long distance in two wheel drive, would agree, it carp. No better on economy (unless maybe fitted with freewheel hubs)
Although any fuel savings may be offset by how much fun you can have. Especially if there's a V8 involved...
See also @FridgeFreezer's post...
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17 minutes ago, ThreePointFive said:
The foam filled tyres section of the above website appears to be in latin, something along the lines of "love is pain". Not sure I see the link myself.
Lorem ipsum is traditional typesetters "holding" copy, still used in the digital world. Basically they've never actually put any final copy in the page and put their site live regardless...
The copy is Latin based junk, it doesn't actually make sense (which was the original idea - it couldn't be mistaken for finished work). These days it's instantly recognised as a placeholder by anyone who works in a trade that uses it.
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16 hours ago, Ed Poore said:
Where traction control comes into its own is more likely in loss of traction on steep descents.
I've been in situations where engine braking isn't enough as it runs away a little so careful application of the brakes is required. The more modern traction control stuff can control the braking on individual wheels so there are times where it can be beneficial. Not many I grant you but some none the less.
Doesn't have to be terribly modern for that - the ABS system on late Range Rover Classics was independent on each wheel and very effective in situations like that (which was useful, because auto RRCs pretty much always need some brakes on descents).
If you had the traction control option, that only operated on the back axle, but it was independent on each wheel and surprisingly effective.
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There will always be people who carry on driving on the reserve...
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10 hours ago, deep said:
Factor in the "show-off" electronics (your Rivian can now be left at a suitable temperature for your pets while you go shopping...)
No argument about modern cars having unnecessary complexity, but that's actually something I've thought would be a really good idea and included in imaginary vapour trucks (yeah, I lead a sad existence...). As long as it's tied into an alert (maybe a text message) if the temperature rises above a certain level so if it fails you can get back before Fido is in danger. I reckon it'd also need an externally visible temperate display to hopefully dissuade the RSPCA from breaking in to rescue Fido from his nice air conditioned kennel!
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12 hours ago, Snagger said:
Yep. Any car built in the last 15 years or so will have many ECUs, and most built in the last five or more have a lot of functions controlled by touchscreen.
And this is combined in some cases with no real information to allow you to work on the vehicle. Case in point, our 2015 Zafira C - no workshop manual available as far as I've been able to find out (even online, since Vauxhall and Opel were sold to PSA). Only thing I could find was Haynes online manual - that was a complete waste of money. It's got wiring diagrams, which may be correct - but given at least some of the extremely patchy location diagrams are completely wrong I wouldn't want to bet on it. There's so much information missing it's impossible to fault trace using it. Need to check the pins on the deadlock relay? Where's that then? And nothing on procedures (it's got a section for that - but it turns out to just have generic and very high level descriptions for any car. Basically useless and effectively a scam.
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On 7/3/2022 at 7:37 AM, Bowie69 said:
If you've watched Top Gear in Argentina you'll know the Espirit V8 is great off road...
But not fast enough to escape a crowd of angry Argentinians...
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Maybe I will be able to afford another classic someday after all...
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2 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:
I assure you no-one running a V8 can be seriously worried about fuel costs
When I had a V8 it was more about range - then again, I had an LPG conversion with only 70l of tanks. I guess it was good practice for running an electric car... 😕
Price per mile it actually worked out cheaper than running a petrol escort.
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9 minutes ago, Bowie69 said:
And a whole 80BHP less than a not-even-breathed-on 3.9 V8
Ah, but the V8 owners obsess over every last mpg instead...
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Definitely not central - but there's a case for moving around the country so everyone gets a turn at it being (relatively) down the road from them. Obviously, that only works if these meets become regular, maybe every year or so.
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On 6/21/2022 at 11:26 AM, geoffbeaumont said:
I wonder what our geographical spread is? Ideally weighted by density
Being a nerd I had to look for answers to that...
The answer, of course, is that it's complicated - but the Ordnance Survey put the geographical centre of the UK not far from me in the Forest of Bowland (leaving NI out doesn't move it far - just to the east near Clitheroe):
https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/newsroom/blog/where-is-the-centre-of-great-britain-2
The centre by population looks to be somewhere in Leicestershire. It was calculated as Appleby Parva at the turn of the century, but will be a bit further south east now:
https://web.archive.org/web/20071123015253/http://www.applebymagna.org.uk/population_centre.htm
That's an archived page of a local website that's no longer available and is quoting the Daily Mail - but it's reporting serious study. From page 33 of the PDF linked on this page, if you fancy some weightier reading:
https://www.dannydorling.org/?page_id=1449
So both Gaydon and Bakewell look pretty good as "fair" locations based on the idea of not to far from the centre with the right facilities. At least for our UK members - I'm assuming not many others will be tempted unless they happen to be in the UK already at the time. Maybe just one or two from mainland Europe?
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2 hours ago, FridgeFreezer said:
If the arrangements can be as minimal as "a group of us are going to camping at this site on this date, come and join us" that is great as it removes a huge amount of hassle, no need to book, etc. and folks can do what they want from there.
Also avoids all the legal and insurance issues that come with formally organising a gathering.
As far as I'm aware all previous forum meets have been informal like this.
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I wonder what our geographical spread is? Ideally weighted by density* - we've definitely got members in most areas of the UK, but definitely more in some parts than others. It probably roughly follows population density, so I wonder if someone else has worked out the practical centre of the UK by travel time weighted for population density? From here in Lancashire it's roughly the same driving time to Aberdeen or Devon (neither of which are at the extremes) - I'd guess the centre without taking account of density (and including NI) would probably be somewhere like the Lake District or maybe North Yorks - but density will move it South a fair way.
* I meant number of members in each area, not IQ. Shut up at the back
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EV conversions
in International Forum
Posted
Except that lighting is owned by Apple and no-one else can use it, whereas USB are standardised connectors explicitly intended to ensure interoperability. Apple's switch to lightning was a deliberate move away from standardisation (albeit the variety of older mini/micro USB standards made a bit of a mess) to a proprietary connector.