Crashbanggg

My interior light was working very intermittently (/poorly), I stripped the light unit itself down and found a lot of corrosion on the switch contacts. Cleaned all that off and now working as it should. (...though perhaps not the case if it was working with the previous loom)

I use RMVR: https://g.co/kgs/hM2apR , just on the outskirts of Somerton (near Banbury). Fairly old school setup, but a really nice chap running it, suspect there's not a lot he doesn't know about Defenders!

No measurements, they owned up to the chassis being wrong pretty quickly. Sounds like pi$$ poor quality control is pretty rife there. Anyhow, sounds like your chassis must have been similar to mine, glad you've managed to get a new cross member sorted. Funnily enough, the garage I took mine for its MOT to yesterday told me that timing belt was just kissing the steering box on start up (I just assumed it was LR factory fit rattle) so he has spaced up the engine mounts to get it further away (not picked it up yet so haven't actually seen by how much yet). I was also never convinced by the fan/radiator fitment on mine so interested to see if the spacing has improved this.

I spent a lot of time on my recent 110 300tdi chassis rebuild from Richards scratching my head as to why nothing seemed to be sitting quite right. Turns out they had drilled the holes in the chassis for the gearbox cross member in the wrong place. They sent me modified crossmember to counteract the incorrectly drilled holes in the end. Richards were very helpful in resolving the matter (despite me initally assuming it was something I'd messed up), but certainly pretty frustrating and a lot of wasted time.

Seems it may not be the disaster I thought it might be. In my head I was going to need to drop the gearbox again which would have been very upsetting. New 300tdi slave cylinder bought and hopefully fitted without spoiling the push rod in the process.

Seems I have once again fallen foul of my eagerness to get parts bought on Paddocks website by seeing 'suitable for defender' on the overview page, but failing to open the page and seeing its only suitable for 200tdi defenders. Argh. I have bought and fitted a clutch slave cylinder for a 200tdi defender... to my 300tdi defender. This came apparent when trying to fit the new clutch flexi pipe today, with the 200tdi slave having a different pipe fitting. Before I swear a lot, maybe with a few tears, is there any difference between the two other than the hydraulic fitting? Suspect I know the answer already but I can cross my fingers...

I have c*cked up when ordering parts to refresh my rear axle, so hopefully looking for an easy way out...although I suspect deep down I already know what I need to do. I have a 1996 110 CSW which had solid discs, with no ABS. I then bought a LOF disc and pad kit for a 1998-2016 110, which I have fitted... and now realised my error when trying to refit the calliper (disc looks to be a different offset). Would I be able to get away with buying callipers for a TD5(?) 110 to avoid stripping everything down again? I assume not, but worth asking the question...