Pam

Dave White (North Yorks one) and myself will be there, with Yorkshire Off Road Club... we have a club stand, so if anyone from the Yorks/North East region is interested in seeing what we do/joining, pop along and see us Cheers

Might seem like a daft question, but was the fill up the same amount of litres? Perhaps the place were you get less miles needs their equipment callibrating? Saying more litres than you actually get? Or activating your tank full valve when not at 80%? I'm sure I had differnces with different pumps - especially when we had the Disco with 3 tanks to fill. I've certainly encountered similar discrepencies, but not as widely varying as yours. One place I used to fill up, I think they changed the butane/propane mix over winter and it wasn't as good, but another place seemed the same all year round.

Well obviously that is what I meant Mark as the vast majority of this thread is a discussion about MSA events and so doesn't apply to anything run outside of MSA.... Although a lot of us have been used to MSA stuff for many years it is very new to people who have not come into off-roading via those routes... therefore it is important for each point to be clarified so people do understand the implications and get to events well prepared. Rather sort out confusion now than at signing on!

I know its good to have clarification on what is a Clubmans event and what is a National B BUT according to the clarification on the MSA website it doesn't really matter what permit the event is being run on as "At events of National B status and above and all Competitive Safaris, Timed Trials, Team Recovery, Point to Point, Challenge Events and Junior Trials, Drivers must produce a Competition Licence [as detailed in Section H]......” So, as per the original question on this thread, yes, if you are going to enter as a driver in ANY Challenge event you'll need a Comp Licence (the £23 one). Or am I being Mrs Thicky??

Indeed, that is one of the points I was making. It would have been much simpler (and made more sense given the variety of types of challenge event, and that the navi is an integral part of the competetive team) to require all competitors to have EITHER just a Clubman licence (as before) OR all competitors to have a Nat B..... Badly thought out and, as I said before, lack of awareness of the amount of input the navi has on the event, even if they do not need to actually drive (ie, a lot!)

You've completely missed my point. My point is that the newly 'announced' regs require ONLY the driver to purchase a National B License. Whereas the 'passenger' is only required to produce a Club Card (ie. a Clubman licence which you automatically get by becoming a member of an MSA club). A Challenge Navigator is NOT just a passenger !! A point the MSA appear to have completely missed! (And of course, potential for additional confusion/aggravation when organising events, setting driver/navi tasks, and writing SRs....) (Note: I have been a member of a MSA Recognised club for almost 20 years and as a Club Comp Sec and Rally Sec I have a reasonable understanding of how MSA regs, permits, and SRs work... I have no big problem with the MSA but just think this one has been handled very badly.)

I find it particularly odd (even to the point of being annoying) that this Licence requirement applies to drivers only. This seems to point to a misconception and/or poor understanding of the role of the navigator/co-driver in Challenge events. Winching and directing the driver through off-road sections are skills that require at least a basic understanding of off-road driving and vehicle performance. The driver/navigator act as a team and therefore should be considered 'equal' to the driver in competition terms. The most successful teams are those where the skills of the driver and the skills of the navi are well matched. And besides, some events the navi may even be required to drive certain sections or tasks.... so how would that work? So if we are to go the way of Licences for Challenge events then this should surely apply to the whole 'team' in a vehicle, not just the driver. This should really have been considered by the relevant MSA committee/s. Pam

We've got the 100" already for Challenges and general fun, but the current project is a re-build of my 1998 90 (which was previously re-built in 2002). Will be pretty much same as before - 3.9 Auto on LPG but with more fancy bits and bobs like air con, leccy windows etc. Got loads of bits off ebay - some real good bargains too! In the future my 90 may get used for a bit of overland stuff, so have built it with possibility in mind of changing to diesel later. Won't have as much room for overland kit as a 110 but we are thinking about an off-road trailer or just travelling as light as possible - as long as there is room for essentials we'll manage!

In 2000 the Ancient Road Conservation Volunteers did a lot of work up there. See this pdf for more info - http://www.laragb.org/reports/Daletrax.PDF Not sure if ARCV still exists or if anyone else has done any work since.

Not really true if you are driving in snow - ABS can be a positive disadvantage !! The main thing that has helped me these last few weeks is the Traction Control on the p38 RR I'm using for commuting. It is particularly good at helping make the transition between icey and non-icey surfaces easier and safer. On the other hand the ABS nearly caused us to have an accident on Christmas Day as it decided to not allow the brakes to do their job when approaching a junction at what was an appropriately slow speed for the conditions. I had the same problem in a 2wd car with ABS some years ago. A guy in our club has his Outlander's ABS come on this morning when he was braking in traffic and it resulted in him hitting the back of series Lightweight LR! Lightweight came off with pretty much no damage, same cannot be said for the Outlander..... Don't ask me about the technicals but have a look here - http://www.abs-education.org/faqs/faqindex.htm particularly here -

Bad news! Hope you manage to recover it and hopefully undamaged. This is from our area so we'll certainly keep an eye out and also pass on to Yorkshire Off Road Club members.

That's odd. I looked at one of our Simex ETs last night and it deffo was rated L - which is 75mph ! We bought them just over a year ago, so maybe the rating has changed at some time. Out of interest, I'll check the others tomorrow.

I might be reading landmannn's post wrongly, but it sounds like he doesn't think the Police should try to prevent accidents and prosecute people who break the law. Funny, I thought that is exactly what we should be paying them to do. Sorry if I misunderstood but that is how it reads.... If you are caught with any illegal / defective / unsafe components on your vehicle, yes, of course you can 'get done'. Rightly so. As a driver you are responsible for ensuring you drive a safe vehicle. That's the law. Some people may think it doesn't apply to them and they 'know' their vehicle is OK but whatever, the law is the law and is there for good reason, not just to spoil someone's day.... Under-inflated or wrongly rated tyres are potentially dangerous, therefore a valid reason for getting pulled / a ticket. It might do well for many 4x4 vehicle owners who claim their mods are all 'road-legal' to actually have a really good look at the law and decide if their safety, other road users safety and their driver's licence are more valuable to them that having the biggest, widest, baddest of everything... Sorry, bit of a soap box one for me there.... The Police and MOT have been checking cars at the roadside for years, either on a case by case basis, or due to specific campaigns at certain times by individual regional police authorities or at national level. I don't see it as anything new / suspicious / underhand / worrying / menacing. Perhaps we don't even have enough checks. .... for example Travelling in Australia last year I noticed they have a high number of official pull-over areas. We even got the once-over in the 100"....everyone was being pulled, so no one was being singled out, which I think works well. If it prevents accidents I'm all for it. After all, if your vehicle meets the requirements of the law and is safe there is nothing to worry about. Imagine how much taxpayers money would be spent on the Police and other emergency services clearing up after an accident caused by an unsafe vehicle.....

Dave and I might have entered but unfortunately it clashes with the Ilkley Classic trial and our committment to help out there... Pam

That should be plural - The Wars Of The Roses started in 1455...

Bad luck Brendan! It is reasonable to expect the clatter board to be an accurate guage, but when we had a Disco I was always very wary of judging the height purely on those because of the raised part of the roof and not always knowing how much the back half had cleared it by.... As for knowing the height of the vehicle, wasn't a problem for our N Reg Disco 1 ES the heights were printed on inside the drivers sun visor and I always added a couple more cm to allow for any extra tyre height

Please note that the Muddy Truckers is not a spectator event. It is a 'traditional' challenge event with the sections spread out on large areas of private land, and not accessible to the general public (and in some cases barely accessible to the competitors! ) The best way to see this type of event is to volunteer to be a marshal. Have a look on the Muddy Truckers website for details. http://www.muddytruckers.co.uk/ Cheers Pam (MT Team 14)

Just to clarify the two-piece military doors I was talking about in my post above are the ones fitted to military Defenders, not Series vehicles

You may want to consider military Defender two-piece doors instead of Series ones. The tops are made of aluminum rather than steel (series door tops are steel and seem to rot quickly and come loose). The windows are cut diagonally (rather than vertical) and both sections can be moved, rather than just the rear one as per Series doors. This is quite handy for adjusting/pulling in wing mirrors and also for punch challenges as you can slide the front part back to punch the card if attached to the passenger side grab handle on the end of the dash! (Just remember to lock the window in the open position as otherwise punches on downslopes can be a PITA if the navvie is out of the vehicle and the window slides shut on the way down!! ) Dave says look at ebay or ex-mil specialists such as Blanchards, etc. The bottoms can be got cheap from Britpart, not sure about the tops.

I work in York, where the snow had pretty much all gone by Tuesday afternoon. A very light covering yesterday morning was gone by lunchtime. Went home yesterday evening expecting the thaw to have set it in Knaresborough but no, pretty much still got the 4-5 inches we got on Monday (although now crunchy ice rather than the powder it came down as). Now at work in York, snowing light to moderate, but fairly wet. Settling in places. More forecast for the weekend, and we are running the annual Yorkshire Off-Road Club Navigational Scatter (on-road stuff). Everyone has to drive an off-road 4x4 vehicle anyway, but some of the members will be wondering which of their 4x4 fleet to use - the shiny one or the toy!!