Landrover17H

My thanks to you all. Minded to this being for my son, whilst I'll have a bash no doubt the genearl idea is to get him going. I'm beginning to see the advantages to TIG over MIG, and it seems once you know what you're doing, you're better having both. This is for a 14YO beginner, and I'll follow FF's wrods with a known brand. Seems, with a decent screen, we want a used ESAB, Miller, Lincoln, R-Tech, MTA (MigTigArc), Migatronic, Kemppi, NBC/Butters With gas etc, this is going to get rather more spendy than I thought? Been on eBay, seems anything by say ESAB runs to £5-600 ish or rather more. Ouch. Then there's gas and screen, blah... TIG once learnt, seems to have advanatages, but MIG seems to be the way to go for a start. MIG it is. Seeing stuff in Aldi for £50 and Clarke kit for £200 new, I had not realised. I thought £400 would do it easy.... It looks like it's easy to walk a £1000. Oh dear.

Thanks gents, I'm under order form my boy, and I tend to do as I'm told where my children are concerned. Vai FF's suggestion I've started to look into this on YT. Broadly, seems for 'precision' we want TIG, for 'production' we want MIG. And the camping-trailer is the biggy. As Stellaghost says, kick-off with MIG to get a feel for it, sounds wise. A self-darken helmet... that's a thing?! I'll get one. So in short we want a 200A MIG. Anything in particualr brand spring to mind?

OK, I realsie this is going to sound a little bizarre, but I have to ask. My lad is 14 yet has incredible ability with angle-grinders etc etc, and is very capable doing the sort of jobs many twice his age couldn't do. He'll do a head-swap no worrries. He recently converted his mother's car to gas. He did a damned fine job too. But I digress, he's started to learn spraying, and now he wants to learn to weld. Thing is, I can't weld. He's got library books out on the subject and seems to think he wants a TIG or MIG? This would be his Xmas present so I thought I'd start looking now. (Yes i know most fathers get their boy a games console, but then... my lad isn;t most lads??) I'm hoping to get something 'used'. Is a budget at £3-400 for decent semi-pro grade kit reasonable? I would rather see good tools, all my own stuff is good, and I'd like to see him learn where the limit is his skill, not the kit? What should I look for? He wants to work on his push-bikes, or doing heavy work on a camping-trailer project for starters. The variation in pricing is mind-boggling. Any advice welcome.

I'm with Tanuki on this. Vastly heavy, yet offering no payload area, and yes, moving things, small and heavy....perchance ammunition-boxes?, I can see it. They're cheap, but there's a good reason for this. For the rest of us, we've got to be seriously into our Waltdom. This is a shame, those things are made so well it's actually daft. I don't know anyone making a trailer of better quality? By all rights, they should be brilliant.

Yes, here we go, not sure what I'm truly looking at, and don't know why it's not usually routed this way ie: where there's more space?: S2 are different again - but here's what I mean. See it better at: Central exhaust route

As i said, I've had all manner of pain with exhausts: The root of the woe is the routing over the gearbox-mount etc. Part: LAND ROVER SERIES 1/2A/2/3 PETROL EXHAUST PIPE 517469 Not found one that just fits, frankly the path the pipe takes over the gearbox-mount must be so spot-on as to allow for little tolerance. Something that is hard to achieve, and with the vagaries of a Series LR, it's hardly surprising there's issues. Roland has the same problem. I think I'm right in saying it's the front-tank position in 88s and early 109s that restricts the head-room over the gearbox mount? meaning most can't go longer and higher (marked red). Running the tanks rearward, (S3 109), I can of course. I've heaps of headroom. But those afflicted with 'lack of real length' force the constraint on the rest of us anyhow. Where the front-pipe 'lands' dictates where everything else is forced to sit, and so it goes... and none of these pipes have joints-enough to 'wiggle'. Yup, every front-pipe I've seen 'lands' differently. When I finally got my system to fit with a given 517469 pipe, I immediately thought to grab my chance. I bought another from Craddocks. But - they beat me anyway, the second arrived, but clearly not sourced from the same batch. Thus having spent the afternoon fighting to get the first to 'sit', when the time comes, I'll still have to do it all again for the second. I've seen the custom-jobs route 'pipery' centrally which makes more sense, I've seen some Steve Parker kits take this route. Either way, sorry if I repeat myself - expect pain. I'm afraid it's the nature of the beast.

I like the look of the above part if only by virtue of the first joint. Suspect it gives some degree of wiggle-room, this must help with alignment.

Whilst we're on zhorsts.... 'tis another manifold offering - from back in the day. Sorry, no clue who produced this, and it's the only version I've never owned - and dear god(sic), I've had a few!

Leafer Bingo. Very good, not seen this played for a while. We trust the rest is on order? St Phillip will be pleased: The Gospel according to St. Phillip of Sterndale

I have the Santana PS10 based kit. After the shock to the credit-card, very much doubt you'll regret the discs, and you'll definitely not regret them in daily use. You might regret the rim choice the Zues kit forces though. If a weekend toy, discs are still nice, however more for willy-waving than practical reality. Drums need 'doing' every 4-5 months, and if you're not making the miles, you'll not see the consistency and maintenance advantages over properly set-up drums. Doubt a weekend toy will need the drums touched for nearer 2-3 years. However regardless of how you use them, if you've the pennies, discs and servo to match, this makes a definite improvement.

Yup in my front-pipe antics, I'd clobber it or it'd corrode. But.... because replacements would always finish 'pointing' the whole system in another place, (and it doesn't have to be by much), it'd mean a near-complete refit every frickin' time. Hence I have as large a bet as you'll take, that your er... 'identical' system is vastly different to mine!

OK, there's clearly different versions. And I can see what you mean. eg: I've gone thru' four of the stock 'front petrol pipe', and none were straight-swaps for the last. My centre-box is actually 'clocked' quite a bit, so that unlike the drawing above, the centre-box sits away from the vertical. This could well be a fault, in that it's not truly supposed to fit as it does. One thing's for sure, I've had no end of woe and expense, getting supposedly stock and 'correct' systems to fit. If I'm right, this system's 'poor fit' actually works in my favour. And from what I've seen, if yours has been a poor fit (or even as it should fit) and it gave issues, I wouldn't be in the least surprised, so i can understand why you're not a fan.

On the 109, in twin-box form the rear-box 'lives' in the same place as the usual single-box system. Whereas, the centre-box sits (closer to prop-shaft) further away from the chassis-rails than the matched rear-box. I would think in 109 flavour, this issue will be more prevalent in the rear. Not familiar enough with the layout of the 88.

My apologies, I see it as four lines of thought... i) LR folklore says it should be removed, but usually for the wrong reasons. ii) My proposal was that the PDWA has a value. This value is at best, more dubious than I'd thought. iii) Despite its detractors, it's a great device,. iv) No it isn't - It's junk. But it's all made into nonsense: Points i) to iv) are an irrelevance, the insurance reasons you gave settle the point. Insurers are highly unlikely to sanction removal of this 'safety-device' . Regardless of the truth, your points or mine don't matter, LR folklore loses. The PDWA stays anyway.

To be clear, you've really given three choices; 1) Leave system stock. It'll knock power, the single-box is restrictive. 2) Put in a single-box straight-thru', it'll be quite 'rorty'. 3) Duplicate the coiler system where you can. Follow modern practice - find a way to a twin-box in one form or another. In case you're minded to think S/S remains shiny, here's a piccy of the middle section of my 109 twin-box. And when I can find one, ACR's pipe up front, in S/S, but then I might have said.

With one or two large caveats, my blatant attempt to 'Myth-bust' fails. Even if the standard reasons given for removal don't hold water, with such a laundry-list of stuff against the PDWA, for once, LR folklore actually holds water. The problem is not the myth, it's the faulty herd-logic and expectations used to support it. By turn about, I think the myth IS properly busted. Your point about removal putting us on thin-ice for legal reasons, ie: 'removal of a safety device' does stand scrutiny. I will admit I'm miffed. I've succeeded in busting LR folklore in the past. Oddly this myth still got busted, just not by me. In short: An item of dubious one-use value it may be, yet, unless we want to run the risk of falling-foul of a loss-adjuster, we'd be wise to leave our PDWA on.

Lukey were, (or still are?) an Aussie outfit that brought a batch of the above (made of S/S) into the UK. Mind, that was nearer twenty years back. Ashley (at £400 ish) make a M/S version today ( I think?). But, in this department what we want is the ACR pipe, in S/S. Unfortunately, there's no such animal, and I grasp why not, hence my haranguing of anyone that'll listen.

Can't see exit route making any difference. We'd be wanting to ask those exhaust-gases their opinion, I would think, more a space issue and keeping all as straight as possible? If it becomes your chosen path, sorry, I'm afraid I've never seen a twin-box 88. You really are on your own here, I think the last S3 had them, but I'm probably talking out of my rectal-passage. The ACR manifold will add another dimension, exactly how you achieve 'right' could easily get expensive. Which is why so many V8/TDi conversions have shonked-in systems. Done right, you could finish with something superior to mine? Back-in-the-day, Lukey made a system, (it too had issues, I had one modded for my 109). Pix might give you clues.... but I know nothing of the 88... Couldn't lower myself etc etc...

Not to knock the ACR box, it's supplied with the kit to do a job and keep the overall kit price down. Things have progressed recently, yet historically our particular solution has never been mainstream. It'd be easy to be at the fringe of the fringe here, and I think our respective routes are definitely that! You won't get what you're truly wanting easily. At the time Rimmers offered every possible permutation, thus I found a 109 Double S twin box in S/S. If you had a LHD S2 CSW, and wanted S/S in twin-box, you could buy it?! But it's not what the market wants. Today you'll find an 88 M/S if you look very hard. You get more choice zhorst-wise. If yours were a 109, you'd have no chance.For you, under endowment, and it being a 'truck' and therefore a tad mincing.... isn't usually a good thing. If you've space, I'd cobble ACR's box, and another box further upstream. Exhausts in my experience are a massive pain to get right, and expense. I had a part custom job to get mine truly sorted. A mix-and-match of one of these in M/S will be a cheap route, but expect woe. If you don't find at least some mild issues, consider yourself v.lucky!

Just a thought, do you have the 88-variant of ACR's straight-thru' jobby there now? You might do better still - run with me here...

Ah, well, however you do this, insist on a twin-box. Comes a little more cerebral.

We can achieve 'flow' in one box, but it'll have that MGB rort... all very fine for ten minutes, then becomes as pointless as 'the others' and gets on your t*ts... For those insistin', why mess?.... we could have stopped 46 pages back. Had a V8 or TDi and be done. A V8 or TDi does that 'thing' better. Thus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z3mPpv8h468

It flows, as modern practice, because you're not trying to do it all in one box, and separates the two functions of the system better. Coilers have twin-box too.

Yes, for me, the whole point of the 17H is right there. No dilution involved, thus if you're after 'that indefinable Series thing' nothing else will do it. There'll be better, some faster, (unless you go my route) some more economical - yet none will run and 'feel' like a leafer. Hard to find for the 109, but you're handicapped. I only say this because I care.... you lack those critical extra inches. Sniff, it can't helped. Everyday, an 88 owner is harassed and abused, together we can stop this. Until this sad situation is put right, you poor tragic thing, you want the one on the left. Sob. Was mandatory in some export markets:

Oh yes, if my bloke comes back with production - he thinks he can come in at under £700 for the S/S item. Be ready to bite his hand off. Unfortunately, 'horses-for-pennies', won't be what you've become accustomed to. This won't be my bloke's fault, it's the nature of the beast.