discomikey

What is the diameter of the holes now? It's worth noting that there are different types of rivnut, I believe we have at least 3 different types of M6 riv nuts at work, all with different outer diameters. I believe off the top of my head 7, 8 and 9mm od. we also have M8 riv nuts with a 10mm od if that's any help? If you need any sending over drop me a PM

Sorry to hear about your bad run of luck! Glad to hear you're getting back at it. If you're after inverter MIG welders I can recommend: Kemppi in general (but with euro torch) R tech 250, Esab Rebel Thermal Arc My general rule of thumb is don't touch anything that doesn't come with a euro torch as standard. It looks like you have a decent budget from the link so you should get a lot of MIG for your money. If you wanted older proven transformer technology, I can't recommend Oxford enough. Cheers,

yeah that's spot on. I'm struggling to picture what you mean.

They are in fact, cleverly simple inside. each bypass tube consists of a needle/ball valve with a spring, the spring only acts as a one way valve. Its position/orientation on the body alters what effect it has and at what point on the travel of the damper. Inside, the piston /shim stacks are laid out conventionally. There really isn't much to go wrong. and they prove to be reliable in use. Internal bypass is another feature. it is effectively a bumpstop, consisting of another pair of shim stacks, (one acting as the bump stop and the other acting as a one way valve to replenish the void with oil when rebounding, There is a needle in the top of the damper that goes into the hollow shaft in the last portion of travel, this needle acts as a piston forcing the oil inside the hollow shaft through the secondary shim stack.

That's the car. The dampers are built to spec ££££ bilstein and contain an internal bump stop system, which would replace the hydro bump as seen on U4 and some comp safari cars. Generally speaking, a normal damper or coilover does not have a specific ride height it is tuned for. Bypass dampers are a bit more complex and the position of the tubes determines a rising rate at a certain point in the travel. The reason they are used in Ultra4 is because they are much more tuneable to deal with some of the extreme terrains and the requirement of controlling the hefty weight of the axles we require to stay reliable. - more parts yes, but a night and day difference to a single coilover on a car that is required to change from Grade A fire road tracks to serious rock crawling and back within the space of seconds. The ability to drop a couple of inches of ride height on the road is attractive, but you soon learn to adapt. As someone that has spent more than the average amount of time behind high powered "defender shaped objects" and defenders, you can confidently pedal them into a corner of set up well at normal height once you get used to it's attitude. And yes they respond well to a Scandinavian flick, especially discoveries with the heavier rear! Just my 2p

The Bowler fast road and rally setups are very good for a bolt on solution to a standard defender - Take a look at some of the defender challenge footage. It wasn't uncommon for one or two of the drivers to keep up with/overtake scoobies on stage. Going a step up, take a look at the Bowler V6 110 Supercharged rally car. Live axle again but with some easily achievable modifications to geometry etc. - Radius arm all round, watts linkage rear, and Bilstien Coilovers. There is a video of it somewhere passing a tomcat at sweetlamb as if it was stood still! I can never find it on youtube though! It was seriously rapid! as @RedLineMike states, springs and dampers are critical! thats where you need to spend the money. Anti roll bars are something to be considered to fine tune the car's "attitude" - Don't get me wrong they make a lot of difference, but this needs to be understood, and depends on driving style, terrain, and various other things. I would stick with the setup you have for anti roll bars for now, then play with them after springs/dampers Increased caster over standard is something i only ever consider as a good thing. but you can go too far of course. agreed! I think the Ultra4 world is a great example of what both types of suspension can be like - For Land Rovers driving "a bit quick" on farm track type ground I'd definitely be looking at what the comp safari/hill rally guys run. The number one thing you absolutely need to do, is set the car up. whatever you buy, don't just bolt it on and call it done. If you can't rebuild and shim your dampers, be very sure that they are intended/set up for what YOU want. for that reason I would avoid them. Unless they are the defender challenge spec Bilstien piggy back dampers - hundreds of hours went into tuning them, but they are set up for a 90, with a cage, and a TDCI drivetrain. You need to calculate spring rates and spend a fair amount of time dialling in the damping rates. If you buy Fox, they normally ask what your vehicle is and what youre going to be doing with it etc, and put a preliminary setup in it that will be close to right. Most other manufacturers put nominal shim stacks in and send it out the door, and there is no way the same damper will be correct for both a lightweight independent comp safari car and trophy truck! Sorry for the rabble. It's an interesting/relevant topic for me and I have only just spotted the thread.

Air suspension - in the form of air shocks - is used fairly regularly in off road competition. It can work pretty well. Using LR type rubber bags in competition is something I would avoid, But if it's just for fun why not give it a go - risks assessed of course. However, the complexity of the system may increase cost quicker than you might expect. I would strongly suggest looking into coilovers, or even decent (not +2" off the shelf type) coil springs, and remote reservoir dampers. regardless of spring/damper choice i would recommend hydro bumps. Drop me a PM if you want any information on suspension choice, Coilover/Damper/airshock supply and tuning, spring rates etc, we supply and service Terrafirma and Fox stuff

I mean it is.. terrible at handling 🤣

No problem at all guys. Drop me an email mike@blackbirdindustries.co.uk with anything from a fag packet drawing to a ready to cut DXF and your material requirements/quantities and I'll do my best to help out.

we already do a P38 conversion kit for Defender chassis. Although thats normaly a resulant requirement from engine conversions to gain space. Looking forward to seeing the finished conversion Joe!

Any time. Happy to help

I'll take a look now

Yes, we've been racing together for years and decided to make the plunge and work for ourselves. Thanks for the follow!

Mods please delete if not allowed.. I have a CNC plasma, I don't charge a setup fee, and a pressbrake. I can work to cad drawings or sketches. Drop me an email mike@blackbirdindustries.co.uk Hope this helps,

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/264001894926 Use this type. They are much much better than the pressed steel type. The leave a clean edge and don't wander on entry. These ones are cheap as chips and are still brilliant but not very deep. I would expect a brand name version to be deeper to allow cutting through a 15mm plate

My other half isn't in the slightest bit interested in learning. You're a lucky man.

For sure. I had to do something for a customer last week. Puddle weld aluminium slot and tabs in 1.5mm 5056. Try and ease in and the slot lifts away from the tabs from the heat. You have to just get in and make sure you're ready with the filler!

As Ross states, sharpening to a point is the thing to do but sharpen so the grinding marks run down the length of the taper as opposed to round the taper. It makes a massive difference. I think weldingtipsandtricks did a video on the correct methods. Youre definitely on the right track. Comfortable propping can overcome a lot of issues. Get creative with things around you to prop and make a dry run before you hit the pedal. Propping is NOT cheating! And welding gaps is tricky. Gaps on outside corner joints, and butt welds are particularly sensitive to heat. If you feel it's all getting out of hand, sometimes it's a good idea to back off the footpedal until you're barely lit up, readjust your filler hand and get back into it. One of the big advantages of TIG is stop/starts aren't an issue in terms of lack of fusion so use that to your advantage. Get comfortable, reset and continue. You'll get further and further as you go and your muscle memory catches up with you. TIG is hard. But so rewarding too. I hope this helps

2.4 tungsten should be absolutely fine How are you sharpening it? That's the biggest thing. For a 1mm outside corner joint you don't need much power at all. Probably somewhere in the region of 20-30a? (I use a footpedal so couldn't give an exact figure) As FF says, there is no golden rule. My travel speed and torch height will be different to yours and amps will need to be different to compensate. On an outside corner joint fit up is 200%key. You shouldn't need a filler rod at all in that situation (1mm steel). If you do you don't want to be adding much filler at all. Just zip along the joint. Pulse is preferable but without also works. You just need to use less Amps without pulse than with

Here is a bracket which demonstrates the use of both processes. I designed this to incorporate "thickener" plates in the areas local to the bolt. I opted to use TIG for the thickener plates for 2 reasons: 1. due to the proximity to the edge of the main plate. Much better edge heat control means I didn't overheat the steel. 2. Because it's prettier and prettier means the racecar is faster The downside as mentioned above is it would have taken me half as long to physically weld, and the prep would have been much quicker if I had chosen MIG. The rest of the assembly was MIG welded in position on the vehicle. Time and access were a big factor here. Cleaning the steel before welding is still important for MIG though.

There definitely is. There are also a few downsides so you couldn't blanket state that one process is better than the other. Let me dig through my photo album to see if I can find some good examples of when each was better

Getting there, looking good. Hood time is the real thing here. Out of interest are you also practising at home?

Looking good. Looking forward to see the TIG practise. I was once told the phrase "Mig is easy to learn, but hard to master, TIG is hard to learn, but easier to master." In my experience this is definitely the case. TIG just sort of clicks after a while. Feeding wire is important.. practise running wire through your hands when youre not welding so that it becomes second nature when you are.. Otherwise try and think about feeding rod through your hand when youre already concentrating 100% on the puddle, torch etc 🤣

That's assuming Frontrunner haven't been given a very limited amount of CAD of the roof surfaces and fixing points to work with. If they have, there's no reason they couldn't have engineered a roof rack by now. Granted they aren't going to be handing CAD out to every man and his business but it's not unheard of.

Following with interest