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discomikey

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Everything posted by discomikey

  1. Hi mate. I co-drive (Winch bitch) in Ultra 4, so I may be of use. What we find we most commonly use (other than forward) is a direct backwards pull. But in certain situations we use the cage to pull sideways from near the main hoop etc. As a result we design the frames to incorporate strategic tubes and tube loops to throw the hook through and run round corners as rigging up pulleys takes too much time*. That is most commonly when winch ropes fail, so there must be a noticable increase in drag when pulling round the tube, but due to the spec of both the winch and the rope it is relatively uncommon these days. I'd definitely recommend over speccing both the winch and the rope here. With that setup we never really opt for an additional center winch. The additional weight and most importantly space penalty isn't worth it. *I won't teach granny to suck eggs about required structure and surface smoothness* It's nice to see some actual design time in your bracketry too!
  2. They do rely on the electronics, I can't argue with that, But as a result, the TC and air system make the vehicles incredibly capable off road. Take even a full fat Range Rover off road and you'll be amazed at its capability and nimbleness! The suspension is not complex either.
  3. I don't disagree that in some markets simplicity will overrule the advantages of air. As far as I'm aware I have seen evidence they will be offering coil springs too. What I do disagree with is those who state the downfalls of a vehicle when they haven't actually given chance to prove itself yet.
  4. The p38a air system was by all accounts diabolical. I'm sure everyone will agree. However the control methodology and system is to blame there. I think it would be unfair to tar any JLR product with the P38a system brush. In terms of hardwear, yes parts will wear out, but If you aren't checking the general condition of your car regularly enough to spot bags that are on their way out then you can hardly blame the car can you?
  5. Well said! there are far too many nay-sayers for which any new vehicle will never be good enough unless it looks like a unimog and takes 40" tyres from the factory. I know from experience that platform IS robust! If you take a top class ultra4 car off road, you can break it. You can sit here and predict certain components will fail on even the most robust platform! There have also been defender mules rolling around on coil springs for those who combust into a ball of flames when mentioning compressed air.
  6. It's D7U platform.. L405 L494 L460 and now L663. It's been around for a while it will be running these subframes. Those "tiny halfshafts" take a lot of shirt off road and in 3+ years of that subframe use in rally raid haven't caused a single issue, and I still stand by my previous statement that the D7u Platform walks all over old defender off road. They have reportedly been spotted completing some notoriously difficult trails out there in the past few weeks. I don't think it would have been planned per say to have some randomers turn up and take photo's, but they will know it's a popular trail and count on it! They obviously want poeple to see it out and about in the trails.
  7. It was crashed. Otherwise a very tidy car. only 28k miles on the clock. The owner will be selling it when the rebuild is complete I believe
  8. Thanks for all the suggestions guys, It definitely looks like a remote siren outlet, Unfortunately the conduit has been cut off just behind the crossmember so I'll never know exactly where it went to. I rang the graphics company and they could tell me it was definitely ex RAF, but no more than that. Cheers,
  9. Hi All. I'm sure one of you lot on here will have had experience with utilities/services vehicles. I currently have one in the workshop, a 2008 90, for a full rebuild. It will be an as-standard rebuild. The 90 was used for some form of utilties/services workhorse in the past. Although it is of no consequence to the rebuild I would like to know what it did/was out of interest. Here are the details I know: It's a Fuji White 90 It was stickered up with some form of signwriting, there are references, presumably for re-ordering and repairing the livery. See photos, is the RAF in the reference number coincidental? There was an auxiliary wiring harness that had been professionally fitted to the vehicle. Disconnected now but integrated into the handbrake switch wiring, the fusebox and moving through to the battery box it split out to the front of the vehicle, with breakouts to each front wing at the light area. Heavy battery cables to behind the cubby box along with a multiplug. Too heavy to be a fuel burning heater and there is no evidence of a fuel supply ever having been fitted. There is a ducting that has been fitted to the front crossmember just behind the grill, it's an odd design for just an intake, as it's a slot cut into the side of a hard plastic tube. Ducting ran backwards under the front crossmember but has been cut off at the crossmember so I can't trace it back to any general areas. Any ideas would be appreciated. There are no extra holes or lights in the bodywork, no blanking plates or grommets. No extra wiring to the very rear of the vehicle so I doubt it's warning or blue strobes.
  10. the plate is usually rubber mounted on the disco's. something thats probably worth mimicing.
  11. I can highly recommend the T6 transporter trailer. we have one at work and it has covered literally tens of thousands of miles in the last 3 years, from UK short trips to transporting cars to morrocco and supporting events out there. (their road quality is somewhat more questionable than even the UK! It's quiet, not like the equivalent Ifor trailer that it replaced. It's well built, smooth, follows extremely well and if you have a blowout loaded with a tri axle trailer at speed there is much more chance of keeping it together and bringing it to a safe halt. Yes, you do have higher service costs, that's undeniable and certainly a factor, but the brakes rarely need replacing. I've only just put a set of wheel bearings and brakes on our own Tri axle Graham Edwards trailer last year, we bought that in 2007 and it does get used more than average.
  12. I assume you have a C license then? A few of the ultra4 boys we run with take a rigid wagon. It seems handy, and our 6x6 Tatra service truck at work does the trick nicely. Even that can get a little small though when there's 4+ of you working on as many cars!
  13. Exactly the same problem happens when my compressor kicks in, Que standing on the bandsaw bed, on one leg leaning over with a broom handle to reach up and flick the trip back on.. Usually missing the correct trip and knocking the rest of them off, having to reprogram the radio etc.... 🙈 I need a C or D type trip for that too!
  14. I've been considering the same thing, Currently, my engine is too good to swap out, but if it died, would i stay TD5? The inner "take way too much work on" in me is half looking for a suitable V8 conversion, Not sure i want a Rover v8.. thats too easy, and why not put an easy 300+BHP in? Also considering pulling the TDi out my series in favour of something like a well played with volvo T5 engine.. That's probably more likely to materialise as a project.
  15. following! what type of racing will you be supporting with it? Looking good! our setup is a BT back on an Iveco van with a trailer, good, but somewhat lacking in space, and creature comforts!
  16. 138k, it had a hard life in the past 25k miles. lots of towing, hard driving etc. it's the first sign of any issues though! I went tested remanufactured
  17. I recently had the head fail on my TD5 discovery, While i had it to bits i checked it over and replaced anything suspect such as the weeping water pump, and FPR, Racked up around £1k just on good quality parts, gaskets and fixings. But at least I now know it shouldn't let me down in the near future! It obviously hurt my wallet more than just swapping the head would but this was the first time it has let me down, i'd like it to be the last too!
  18. Looking forward to seeing more! I've recently modified a dash (Massive job, much bigger than you think) to clear an internal rollcage. I'm just waiting for it to come back from the trimmers before I get some decent photo's. I've retained the standard look and feel though. It's super satisfying to achieve what you have in your head though!
  19. sounds like its having a lot of the same stuff? I obviously have no background knowledge on your car in particular, but are you fitting genuine quality parts? It does make all the difference to reliability. Does it owe you much more than its own value? If so, you won't ever benefit from selling it.. If you do sell it, for a like for like model, how much of the same may fail after 6 months, or a couple of years again? I obviously wouldn't recommend going as far as ploughing thousands more into a vehicle if the shell/chassis are on their way out though.
  20. It's not reached full droop by then, This video was very early in the suspension development process. It also has something to do with how the vehicles are set up to fly. I can't divulge much here for obvious reasons. Unfortunately not, the defenders that have been around there (on standard suspension setups) won't manage those speeds. The closest thing that will is our V6SC 110, but thats full coilover and a watts linkage rear end. The cars regularly attend international events, where they are not loaded with cargo, but carry a whopping 221 litres of diesel, 3 spare tyres, an on board hydraulic jack system, etc etc, and can reach up to 3 tons in fully prepped long distance mode.. They also regularly see forces in excess of 3G according to our dataloggers. a lot of the fatigue images you showed were various pieces of "structural bodywork", which a defender's poor design results in higher cyclic loading due to body movement in comparison to a monocoque. Our "current" bodywork, is almost entirely different in construction even though visually looking the same. still, by no means perfect though.
  21. The same symptoms are often experienced if the vehicle is remapped and the MAF is unplugged. It starts off in one map till it realises it should be running the other and switches over.. I don''t know the exact details. If it uses a standard cold start map or something, then switches over but mine certainly does it. As said above, it's not ideal to jump in and set off at a full rate of knots, but the same will happen just after a stall, where the turbo is still oiled etc by the time you restart.
  22. I don't have enough time to go through and reply to everything right now, perhaps later. in response to your question regarding what the bulldog actually is, please see below. Its not the best, nor the most representative video of what these cars endure, but it's something.
  23. Lets take our car and a standard defender as an example. We'll stay clear of mathmatical equations for now. Assuming that, for arguments sake, our 2 cars have been fitted with springs calculated to give exactly the same wheel and damping rates as each other. forgive me for teaching granny to suck eggs, for everyones benefit, Wheel rate being the effective rate of the spring at the wheel itself. Obviously the independent setup requires a stiffer spring due to the motion ratio of the particular linkage that transmits the spring force. (leverage) But, in short both cars could be made to ride equally in pure bump. Lets say 1.2Hz for example A bulldog (or likewise any other D7U platformed vehicle) is capable of tucking the wheel up into the (defender based) wheelarch as far as a defender in articulation, I recognise a defender in pure bump has less wheel travel than it has in articulation. This limitation in pure bump is not present with an independent vehicle, as regardless of being in either pure bump or articulation, the wheel takes the same travel path. As you know, this is not the case from a beam axle point of view. I would argue that this then makes the available wheel travel more useable more often. you could calculate the ground pressure applied to the front corner of a vehicle in full articulation, if you wanted to. The effective wheel rate, and amount of compression of that, will be equal for either suspension type. the calculation is the same. you would use available wheel travel, play with spring (and anti roll bar) rates, and suspension geometry (including roll centres, axis and CoG height in addition to basic arm lengths, motion ratio's etc) in design to achieve the desired performance. If you use an extremely stiff spring the initial compression of said spring at ride is small, at zero compression, there is zero force applied through the spring and pushing down onto the ground. Effectively, droop travel becomes useless in the application of ground pressure. on the opposite end of the scale, and extremely soft spring, would, deflect a lot, through little pressure. If you used a soft enough spring, you could achieve a large wheel deflection with a very small alteration in ground pressure. It's the principal rock crawler type vehicles use to maximise their grip. we could go out and fit an extremely stiff set of springs to a rock crawling beam axled buggy and it would almost definitely lift wheels left right and centre. As you stated yourself, these uneven forces would then transmit to the body. Fair comment. I would, however like to put forward that the failures seen to date on our current models have been much easier to "get home" on than failures of earlier designs. Take halfshafts and diffs for example. Todays components are much more robust, reliable and durable. Sure, a couple of linkages have failed in the past, but these can generally be fixed out in the middle of the desert with no support, only using a ratchet strap, enough to get back to service, 200km away. I have also seen failures on beam axled suspension linkages, for example trailing arms bending under a compressive force (i.e. when in reverse). It's all still just nuts and bolts. You may be suprised to find that fatigue is a much more prominent failure mode in rally raid type events than poeple expect. You seem extremely switched on, therefore you will know that fatigue life is a combination of cyclic loading and the sizes of said loads. The S-N curve of a given material shows this quite well. The size of loads and deflections are vastly increased in a rally raid type event, Dakar events regularly near 10,000km. easily enough, if not over a single race, then over 2 or 3 to expose fatigue issues. Fair comment, I wasn't thinking regarding lateral loads. The forces will be higher. I guess that time will only tell with this argument. In terms of wheel bearing sizes, and life. I would put forward that this is more related to the chosen design of hub rather than PCD size or suspension type. Good point, I still prefer the hub unit design over open bearing and race. from a service and maintenance point of view, I can change 4x discovery II hubs in the time it takes me to replace 1x defender wheel bearing set. Time, being money (and as a fleet manager you will know this) I believe it's more cost effective to maintain this type of unit than the defender type. Unfortunately Current Full size JLR stuff is bearing pressed into upright. Bearings pressed into uprights, when not 20 years old, I would say are much nicer to change also, but when they've been in a while, not so much! Bearing life from unbalancing due to debris can only be speculated unfortunately? Fair comment. I won't deny this. or the tyre wear issue. In all fairness, I spend much more time repairing poorly handling defenders even sub 30,000 miles (yes.. I know they handle poorly anyway) Removal of the body is not necessary, even for the rear belt. It's a pain to do yes, but at least unlike a 200TDi defender you don't have to fight soft timing case bolts, and drop the coolant. You could pick fault with any vehicle. I fully agree. They aren't comparable in nearly all areas, however It's the next best thing on the market for a farming business that needs a do-everything vehicle. We didn't stay with the JLR brand purely because the D5 was too expensive, and bulky. (although since the girlfriends father has got one, I've driven it. as usual for the JLR vehicles it's very nice to drive. It's sprung differently to how I would expect but maybe that's because its a commercial?) We'd have another Ranger, but certainly won't be discounting the new defender when it's released (price permitting)
  24. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/KAP-Outlaw-Comp-Safari-Rally-Car-Frame/332811069399?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D20170920101022%26meid%3Dd2c6aacc25cb40d8b5de9581751bb64e%26pid%3D100010%26rk%3D9%26rkt%3D12%26sd%3D112874676482%26itm%3D332811069399&_trksid=p2047675.c100010.m2109 bargain!
  25. I have no defender on steel wheels to actually check here right now, but from memory, at least with a D1 steel, the centrebore is actually still used. The last few mm on the hub is slightly larger dia than the drive flanges. Aftermarket rims don't use this feature and do rely on being nutcentric, which is less than ideal but does cope. My argument still stands that the PCD at least in most (and the application discussed) is used for torque reaction, not shear resistance from wheel impact loads.
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