lo-fi

I do love the Welsh railways, though Talyllyn is one I've not been to yet. Do you volunteer in the workshops? Funny how Land Rovers and steam railways seem to go hand in hand! There used to be an 88 often parked up at the SDR that had been painted up in "blood and custard" livery, it looked absolutely gorgeous. The Tirfor was the other option... Trust me not to take the easy route! Not sure I've ever seen a capstan on an 80; would look lovely. Shame it wouldn't fit yours. Anyway, back to the updates! I had a bit of re-working to do on the support bush. Couldn't get the key through with it all assembled! Was bound to mess something up. Larger bush ordered and supports machined to take. Luckily I'd not got all gung-ho and welded it all together! The support is it two parts so when I weld the outer to the plate, the inner holding the bush won't be affected by heat distortion. I decided I need a ring on the top of the plate to stop water running under the bollard and pooling in the dip. It'll add extra strength too, and fits nicely under the hollow in the bollard. So I rolled one up, making it the perfect diameter to do this with a piece of round scrap from the 12hp hoover project: Makes a nice little cap for the bollard, also to stop water pooling. I'll maybe fettle the top down a bit with a sand bag, but I'm quite happy with how it turned out. Letters may have to be 3D printed, casts made and popped on the top to complete the look.... Should confuse a few rivet counters!

I could easily be wrong about the tool holder... If its like my little myford, the foot part sits straight over the tool with the adjustment screw the other side of the post to the tool. I'll grab a pic later. A good trick to check tool height is to place a straight edge between the tool tip and a pice of bar in the chuck. If the straight edge is perfectly vertical, you've got it bang on center. If not, you'll soon see whether it's high or low by the angle.

Great, the 10mm will be man enough for that! Lovely solid old machine you've got there. Has a face plate lurking on the end too There's a good TOT video on chucks. Only thing you'll suffer with if your chuck is worn is repeatability - if you need to take a part out, then put back in after another operation. With a three jaw, this is sketchy anyhow. As long as it clamps well and isn't running out grossly, don't worry about it and crack on learning. Many parts can be produced in one op; so as long as the chuck holds the work, you can produce perfectly accurate parts. I'll try and find the Keith Fenner video where he shows how to check lathe level without machining a huge length of bar. I think you've got the lathe tool clamp 90 degrees out - the foot part should rest over the length of the tool, which will give better clamping and rigidity.

There's just more metal to rust... Decay under anywhere coal dust can get, then soak up some moisture is terrifying. Coal bunker plate work is literally a consumable item! Brake vans do come up now and then, a couple of mates of mine have one they use as a caravan. Brilliant to ride on the balcony too.

Fantastic! Nice to have made a mark on projects like that and keep the rich heritage alive, isn't it.

C rated (light industrial) trips are a godsend for that sort of thing. What gauge cable do you have running down to the workshop?

Not met him, but I've heard the name. I know Met 1 very well, though! She's a Quainton loco, and I've crewed her (as a trainee fireman) a few times on the Mid Norfolk. Cracking loco.

I guess it's rude not to elaborate on that I volunteer as part of the team that look after this old girl: We've been at the South Devon Railway having a jolly good time: After a winter spent replacing cylinder cover studs, along with the thousand other little jobs needed to keep a steam engine running like a Swiss watch: I'm also about to lead a group to overhaul another loco: If anyone wants to get involved, volunteers are very welcome - PM me if interested! We're based at Buckinghamshire Railway Center in Quainton nr Aylesbury. Literally living a boyhood dream

Not as much progress as I'd like due to work and steam engines getting in the way, but I did manage to get out into the workshop last night. Adding some re-enforcement around the bolts holes, so rolled another two part ring and made some spacers to hold the segments in position while welding: Heated the thrust collar to go onto the shaft: On it goes, and I got my first peek at what it looks like assembled: That's it for now; I'm hoping to get back to it this evening.

Best place on this forum for sure. Post some pics of what kit you've got an we'll be able to help point you in the right direction

The breather connection may not produce enough vacuum to read, but it's worth a go. I often do a quick check by cupping my hands over both intakes, leaving gaps I can vary with my thumbs. You'll soon get a feel for which is sucking more air in; I've found it's proven to be fairly accurate against the Gunson flow meter. Another quick cheat I use is to simply look at the gap under the pistons. If one is higher than the other, I know its way out of whack.

The stepper idle valves are not usually "self aware" - they don't have any idea what position they're in. They don't spring closed, so when the engine is switched off they will stay wherever they rest. When powered up (or sometimes powering down) , the ECU will spin the stepper motor enough to ensure the valve is fully closed (or open) , then back up a certain amount of steps, and ensures the ecu then knows where the valve is as it keeps a count of the steps. This is quite different to the spring loaded solenoid valve idle control that's driven with a pwm signal and commonly set up with MS. https://www.diyautotune.com/support/tech/other/stepper-iac/ MS does support idle stepper control, and I have done so on one of my installs, though I forget which. It's really not hard to configure, and more repeatable the PWM method IMHO.

Not my cup of tea, but it's quite something unique. Can't help but feel sorry for the guy that built it and never got to enjoy it.

Not as much progress as I'd have liked because the other half decided she wanted to collect a greenhouse. Which needed disassembling and took the whole of Saturday. Such is life. I did manage to get some bits done today, though. A mount for the top bearing and stiffener ribs for the mounting plate. Quick CAD drawing helps figure out what metal to cut: First I needed to roll a ring. Much easier done in two sections: Piece of metal from the scrap bin was almost perfect size to fit inside as a support: Clamp and weld: And on it goes along with some edge plates: Stiffener plates cut and going in: Round plate opened up to take the support bush: The sleeve that fits in that bush is a press fit on the shaft. It needs heating, pressing on and maybe a set screw or two to hold it. Once that's all fitted up, I can bolt the gearbox in and set everything up and make sure it's all concentric before tacking it in. The bent stiffener plates that will act as crush tubes around the bolt holes are still to come. I may yet roll another larger ring and cut sections... Depends how I feel at the time! After that, it's time to man up and tackle a few of the jobs there's no going back from. Welding the plate up, cross drilling the input, welding the motor support tube to its end plate. Scary stuff as it's hours of work to recreate if I mess something up! Stuff to sleep on before you fire up the tools. Then it all needs paint. The end is in sight; wish me luck! TTFN

Love a capstan, looks so good on a series.

Quite impressive. The capstan will be a wee bit more sedate than that! That all depends on what the clutch/belt end up being able to handle. I'll find my notes and calcs to post later - I suspect 100 bar would probably be more than adequate for my needs. Spot on with the motor, that's its continuous rating. Thanks, that's great info. I'm not winch challenging, so looking like what I've fabricobbled should be OK for my pottering about. Looking forward to making some solid progress over the weekend

That's interesting to know, Elbekko - thank you. Is there a thread for Escape's setup? Or any pics of the chain in Mouse, Fridge? The belt I'm pretty sure will be fine. If that little 20cc/rev pump can demand more torque than the PAS, water pump, aircon and viscous fan that size of belt normally copes with, I'll be the proverbial Monkeys Uncle. The clutch might be the weak link, but the calcs I've done suggest not, assuming they're correct. A bigger pump, I'd not be so confident. Wouldn't be a DIY project unless there was a decent chance of comical failure, would it... I'll be back into it getting the mounting plate done over the weekend so I can hook it all up and test without having to lash stuff up or tear it apart again and cover myself in hydraulic fluid. I've been daydreaming all week about seeing that capstan bollard spinning away when I flick the switch for the first time

I've worked extensively with MS in various forms, a little with Link and a little with Speeduino. Link is lovely; I wish I'd had the chance to play more. No plug and play kit I can see for the RV8, but in all honesty, wiring is the easy bit with any system. Configuring and tuning it well is far more work. Speeduino seems like the new MS: Genuinely affordable DIY. I've helped a mate with a setup on his Cologne V6 and found it fine. For the price, it's hard to argue. And the good old MS, which I've used a lot, but the new versions are quite pricey. If I was going to pay that kind of money these days, I'd spend a little more and go Link or Haltech as mentioned. I always hated the MS connector. Has no place in a car IMHO. Link has a lovely automotive-grade, sealed, multi-way connector with removable pins. I suspect Haltech (or anything commercial) the same. There's also Emerald which are popular in that price range. No direct experience, I'm afraid. I'll look forward to seeing the setup whichever way you go!

Hello These may not be available separately, but I figure it's worth an ask. Under the AC clutch plate there are a set of precision ground washers of varying thickness. As the friction material wears, you can remove to compensate and stop the clutch slipping as it has quite a limited range of travel. The only way I can see to buy them is as a whole clutch kit, which isn't ideal. Any pointers - or indeed washers from scrap compressors - greatly appreciated. Many thanks

Cheers Arjan, really enjoying the project! So close to seeing it all working now. You can have a good look over it at Leafers I've worked out a plan for the mounting plate now, which should include some interesting fabrication work. Just moved my mini slip roller / folder so I can fettle the bits I need and get it done over the weekend.

Interesting! I can't see that helping; liners moving being a symptom rather than the cause. Always interested to learn more, though. Agreed with Bowie, if it's not failed yet it'll probably be fine.

Small update: Pump is in! My spare water pump turned out to be a complete failure; seals totally failed. Fettling the original got it going, but I need to fit a new one really. I had a little redesign of the support bracket as I wasn't happy with clearance: I want to mount the oil reservoir where the washer normally sits, so that needed relocating. Only space available is on the heater box, so I made a bracket up and broke out the rivnuts. I did paint it before final fitting, honest! TTFN!

On the V8's that do suffer with liner slip, it's usually a consequence of deeper issues than just movement of the liners itself. Porosity, super thin bore casting due to core movement during casting or corrosion of the bores behind the liners let's coolant in behind them. Couple that with the seam line between liner and block being directly under the sealing ring in the gasket (that top hat liners neatly fix) and it can all add up to a bad combo if you're unlucky and have a duff one. A well executed top hat conversion will have had the bores thickness tested and checked for porosity before having the stepped liners fitted. The MG guys are probably talking K series? If so, they have quite different issues. The K series uses an open deck and wet liners. Where the V8 has the bores cast into the block, machined oversize and machined cast iron liners shrunk into place, the K series has a gaping hole with 4 machined grooves at the bottom of the coolant jacket which locate and seal the liners. The head and gasket keep the liners in place and pressure on the liner seals, but the whole assembly has about as much rigidity as a politicians spine, so it's all free to weeble-wobble about enough to eat head gaskets for breakfast. The K series is a bad terrible design and needs all the help it can get to stop the bores moving; the V8 occasionally poorly cast with Rovers ageing tooling in later iterations. TL;DR: a nice idea, but its probably not going to help the V8 much.

FFR and to expand on Western's comment: A bit of Google foo is very helpful; it indexes far better than the forum search. I was looking for Tanuki's thread on Britpart oil filters this evening. I tried "Britpart oil filter, "Britpart Filter", "Blue box filter" in the forum search, none of which turned up what I wanted. Putting "blue box oil filter site:LR4x4.com" into Google turned up the thread I was looking for as third hit. Using that last part specifying which site you want to search is extremely useful.

The Wipac H4 halogen kits are excellent, cost effective, E marked and legal. With Osram Nightbreakers fitted they're far better than the lights on my Audi using the same bulbs. https://www.island-4x4.co.uk/headlamp-wipac-rtc4615k-gdl003g-p-36438.html. Mine arrived in a Britpart box, but proper Wipac stuff inside.