reb78

If the o rings are at fault the level wont stay stable, it will continue to rise. Was the right amount of oil added and are you checking it on the same ground/level ground each time?

Is that the power steering reservoir at the front? On my 200tdi that is the other side so the cylindrical air filter housing can sit in the space then?

One of these with a grinding stone? Probably still too big...?

Will a plasma cutter get in there and blast carefully around the edges of the hole!!??!

What about a long round file?

Fridge - can you recommend a good quality ratchet crimper, preferably one that doesnt break the bank if thats possible. I have a JCB branded one I paid £35 for from B&Q years ago but I am never sure it does as well as it should (or I use it wrong - not sure how).

They were good times! I have thought we are heading down the skynet route for some time!!

You are right ^^^. Best of all worlds then and the current tyre choice on the OPs vehicle would probably work quite well. My 110 200tdi on 265/75/16s with a GKN overdrive and a 1.4 TXB cruises well at 70-late 80’s. Very happy at 80 on long runs (across France of course ). There would be more there but the gearing gets too high for the engine without a tail wind!

Agreed. It isnt a Defender thats my objection to it!

Haha - I cant see Fred Dibnah strapping his ladders to the new one with a makeshift frame of scaffold poles... 🙂

My 110 bulkhead has to be changed this year. The doors are all padt their best. The chassis is sound but I have patched various bits of it (the repairs are all sound). Do I: 1. Bite the bullet and do do doors, chassis and bulkhead at the same time? 2. Just do the bulkhead and doors? 3. Just do the bulkhead and the worst of the doors (middle row frames are really bad) I guess what I keep wondering is how far towards a chassis change strip down, in terms of work and time, am I when doing the bulkehead and would it essentially be easier to build up from the old onto a new chassis compared to changing the bulkhead in situ. Cost isnt too much of an issue as I have the bulkhead and five new doors already (all need painting) and have saved for a chassis. BUT it is my daily driver and I have put it off for quite a while for this reason, but the bulkhead is unlikely to pas another MOT. What would you do?

For some weird reason, I can weld better with Arc than I can with MIG. My MIG is a decent Butters machine, whereas my ARC is the cheapest buzzbox freebie you will ever come across - someone brought it round for me to try and never took it away again (they didnt want it back).

Britcar as above - they are a decent supplier too.

All I can ever see in my rear view mirror at night is the reflection of what is coming towards me at the front. Its weird and as a result I have learnt to cope with the wing mirrors only.

You can see in my pics - i drilled holes for the seat bolts and the seat spacers are the same depth as these holes through the matting on the seatbox.

I meant to say that too - Exmoor Trim have a reasonably large markup according to all that i have read. I got mine second hand new but otherwise was going to buy direct.

I only tidied the sills about 3 years ago though!

Haha! Sorry!

Strangely I do. I saved all of the photobucket pictures before they alienated all members and I deleted my account! Here you go: I am still unsure how I should have cut the piece that sits on top of the seatbox to allow access to the underseat storage, but have a good think about this before you take a knife to it. Used the lids as templates, but this makes re-fitting them really hard and I think I should have made them wider. One criticism is that if you have to take the floor panels out, the whole lot has to come out, but that isnt the mattings fault and was more a problem for me given that my previous gearbox had regular failures every two years and had to come off for one reason or another (I wont mention where that box came from - thats all in another thread....!) Mo - my sills are a lot tidier now!

I watched the top gear one and just seemed to have a puzzled 'why?' look on my face. The ladder is weird, as is the pannier on the other side. The cab seems nice enough, but I bet its a bitch when its dirty. On the Van Zyl pass, the guy spent longer looking at the touchscreen and the CGI images of outside than anything else including the outside, hardly any real action shots of the vehicle... meh.

I bought a good scrap front end for £50 and cut out the patches i needed from that to weld into mine.

Quite agree. I wonder if they are going to go all out to rip bits off of it by driving it as stupidly as normal as well? That 'could' be interesting to see what a mess they make of it and allow us to compare it to how the proper defender would have handled similar treatment.

How old is your 110 Arjan? I think its similar vintage to mine (1989). I always have the same proud feeling when mine does regular trips like this - its good maintenance and good pre-emptive maintenance and then they are so nice to rely on.

So, Fridges camper has had me thinking for quite a time and I wouldnt mind doing something similar. Where are good places to look for Defender Ambulances?? I hate ebay for buying cars.

I dont want to argue at all. I am fine with my setup.