Filbee

How old is the battery?

Wow, those are some scary quotes! Another one to try is A-Plan/Howdens. I currently have all my vehicles insured through them, and whilst I think I'll try shopping around when my Defender policy runs out as I thought it was a bit much, I did manage to insure my eldest daughter who's just passed her test for under £1k on a little VW Up, and no black box required! Things that will help include adding your parents to the policy, even if they never drive the truck, and limiting the number of miles you can cover in the year. Or if you can't get a sensible-ish quote, spend another couple of years fettling your Defender whilst you drive round in a s***ter accumulating no claims bonus and getting more on-road experience. Good luck and keep us posted with tales from your quest!

Ooh, that is a bit expensive! I also think 10A is too low. Isn't the original one rated at 40A? I measured the current going through the relay a while back with a clamp meter at around 14A if remember correctly.

Thanks for the replies folks. To answer the questions... I remade the connections in the relay holder last year (chopped off the last few mm of cable on each wire and crimped new spade terminals on to ensure they were crimped to clean wire) The relay is a proper yellow OE relay that was new last year.

Hi folks, Has anyone fitted a solid state relay for the fuel pump in a TD5? If so, which make/model of relay did you go for? The reason for asking is that I'm still having intermittent issues with the fuel pump relay on my TD5 110. On a fairly regular basis I'll go to start it and neither the glow plug or engine warning light will come on when you turn the key to the pre-start position, and there's no fuel pump whine. If I give the fuel pump relay a wiggle and try again, the glow plug and engine warning lights come on, the fuel pump primes and she starts straight away. Last time it happened, I wiggled the relay, started the truck and she cut out again within about 100 yards. I pulled the relay out and put it back in and away we went again, with no further issues for the rest of the journey. I've put a new yellow relay in it in the recent past but it ends up doing the same after a while. The relay socket connections are good, so I'm pretty sure it's the relay that's the problem. I thought if I replaced it with a solid state relay it might be more reliable!

Those Austin 1800s look awesome 😎😁

I was having difficulty starting mine from cold (started fine when hot), a lumpy idle for a couple of seconds after starting, and noises on the first pump prime of the day suggesting air was in the fuel system. I tried changing the non-return valve and air bleed valve in the filter head, but that made no difference. I then changed the injector copper washers and o-rings and all seems to be well again, although it's early days as I only did it yesterday! For reference my truck has done about 150k miles and I had already replaced the fuel pump and FPR a couple of years ago for other reasons. Hope that helps 👍

Thanks for the replies folks. It was worth an ask. I always drive slowly through anything that looks more than a couple inches deep. The issue is more when you're driving along at normal road speed, you come round a corner and there's a puddle. You don't have time to scrub off much speed off before your wheels hit it and SPLASH!! There's almost a comically disproportionate amount of water spraying up and covering the windscreen and suddenly you can't see anything until you flick the wipers on. My tyres are 265/75 16 Coopers, so nothing particularly big. If that's just how it is and there's no simple "if you fix one these (insert description of some piece of plastic/ally sheet/stainless that looks like it cost about half what's being charged to make) here it will solve your problem" option, then I'll just carry on as before and be quicker to hit the wipers 😁👍

I'm sure I can't be the first to ask this, but I couldn't find anything when I searched.. With all this water about, I was quickly reminded how much of a splash and spray you get when driving though even relatively shallow patches of water on the road at sensible speed. Every time I hit a big puddle/standing water/flood, even at low speed, I'm amazed how much water flies up in front of the truck, up the bonnet and onto the windscreen. If the wipers aren't going before you hit the water, you'll not be able to see anything for a couple of seconds. Has anyone found a way of preventing or reducing the amount of water that comes up at the front?

This may be a dumb question but my Td5 110 hardtop has some hexagonal holes in bottom flange of the outer sections of the rear crossmember and I wanted to ask if it was possible to get some sort of special captive nuts or inserts to fit into them? There seem to be two different sized hexagonal holes under the crossmember. It's the smaller sized holes I'm interested in 👍

Well I've not made much progress on this yet! I fitted the busbar behind the dash and identifed a suitable hole in the bulkhead to run the cable through from the battery/seatbox in the behind-dash area. There's a 12.5mm hole with a blanking grommet on the left hand side between the heater box and inner wing (next to where the pipe to the washer jet goes through the bulkhead) that will do nicely. I'm also going with 10mm2 cable, not 16mm2. I got some 16mm2 cable and it's massive! I've chosen 10mm2 because according to the workshop manual, that's the size of cable that runs from the battery to the main 100 amp fuse under the driver's seat that basically seems to run all the vehicle systems apart from the starter motor. That would include the OEM heated windscreen, seats, mirrors etc. So if 10mm2 is beefy enough for that job, then my 10mm2 cable should be able to run the heated windscreen, headlights and possibly a couple of other lower power accessories in the future. I'll stick some pics up when it's all done 👍

I haven't, but the heated window power circuit will be protected by a 30A fuse as it is in the OE set up, and the cables powering it will be 4.5mm2. The 16mm2 cable and 70A fuse will be supplying the busbar that I will take the power from for my heated screen, headlights and any other high current drawing accessories I might add over time. Each of the circuits coming off the busbar will be protected by appropriately sized fuses. I hope that makes a bit more sense!

Thanks for the help and advice all. I've ordered a selection of cables, terminals, a heavy duty relay, a couple of fuse holders and a 100A busbar. My plan is to use some chunky 16mm2 cable from the battery to the busbar via a 70A fuse, then run the power to the relay via 4.5mm cable from the busbar. The heated window controller can then run from the relay via the supplied cable, which seems to be 4mm2, via it's own 30A fuse as supplied. The relay will be triggered by the TD5 heated windscreen switch, which I'll run from my existing ignition switched live. Not sure where to put the busbar yet, either behind the passenger side dash, driver's seat box or under the bonnet. I can then also run the power to my relay switched headlights and any other power-hungry accessories I may fit in the future. At least with the busbar I won't need to keep adding more wires directly to the battery...

Thanks, yes I'm fully au fait with what happens when you overload wiring having nearly had my old Corrado go up in smoke on the side of the M5 many years ago due to a badly fitted alarm at some point in it's past! I just wasn't sure if the HRW wiring was beefy enough to carry 30amps. It looks roughly the same diameter as the feed in the kit I have but I didn't want to make any assumptions...

Thanks Western 👍 As it seems the wiring for the rear screen isn't up to the job of carrying 30A, I'll add a suitably beefy busbar behind the left hand dash fed from the battery via a 30A fuse and power the screen via a 60 or 70A relay triggered from an existing ignition switched live I have running to a secondary fuse box behind the dash.