moose

If you want to go bear minimum then i would think: Comp truck entry €1400 Support truck €250 Trailer €150 one support person €250 total €2050 then getting there fuel + ferry + event fuel and this cost all depends on what and how you tow... Nope its not pocket money (well not for me)... But it is 2 weeks of some tough, demanding offroading, with the biggest emotional highs and lowest lows If any ones interested we did a short day by day blog last year which Allmakes put in their web site. http://www.allmakes4x4.com/blog/team-moose-offroad-compete-in-croatia-trophy-2013-part-1 http://www.allmakes4x4.com/blog/team-moose-offroad-compete-in-the-croatia-trophy-2013-part-2 http://www.allmakes4x4.com/blog/team-moose-offroad-compete-in-the-croatia-trophy-2013-part-3 http://www.allmakes4x4.com/blog/team-moose-offroad-compete-in-the-croatia-trophy-2013-part-4

A catalytic converter is not the "particulate filter" they describe so cant see a problem....

Sorry when i said "you cant do the event with out some support", what i should of said is "i couldn't do it with out support" by all means you could do it all by your self if you want to but ... most nights the truck came in looking like this... and when your covered head to toe in mud and in need of food etc.. it helps massively to have some one that can jump straight on the truck and start getting it fit again for the next day. We were lucky really and didn't break all that much but a few night we were working on the truck until gone 2am, some team where working pretty much all night. I do know that some of the teams share support but what happens when both trucks are broken which one get the most attention etc.. I was incredibly lucky to have 3 guys able to come along not sure i will have that luxury again. doing it all your self as a 2man team adds a whole extra level of hardcore

Rough cost. of event and fuel require at event? I cant remember entry cost but i have it in my mind that it was around 2000euro for a race car two people for this you get 8 day of full offroading and food (breakfast, pack lunch and dinner) support people need to pay for food/camping plus there is also a charge car per support/tow vehicle and trailer. Fuel during the event depends on your engine we were doing a about 25 litres diesel a day, but then i am running an old 200tdi not a 5liter V8 the longest day was about 80km. Traveling down there. best and easiest routes? rough cost for the 1500+ mile trip Its a slog especially when towing at 60 ish mph last year we did it in 30 hours door to door (Southampton to the event camp) non stop driving. I found the most cost effect channel crossing for us was car ferry at stupid o'clock at night booked well in advanced. The route we took was the main arterial (non toll) road through Europe its busy even in the dead of night. My tip for driving in Europe is get into a habit of always driving with your head lights on then when you hit a country where its law you don't forget. We were pull (almost at gun point) near Budapest on our way to Romania one year by a very bad tempered cop. You will not even notice the first few country boarders, the Croatian border was the only one we had to stop at as we have a van so wanted a look inside. Just remember to buy a Vignette (road Tax) for the countries that need it. Event camping / hotels whats best and cost? Camping is included in the entry cost, you could hotel it as it is cheap (all the press i think do) but you would miss out on camp life which (for us) is a much fun as the offroading. Camping is basic tho, porter loos (and thats the European kind) and hose pipe for water, If we go again we will defiantly take a shower. The weather at the time of the event has the potential to be very wet so i would advise a good pit tent to work under, last year some days it was 30degC and sunny others is was chucking it down and 14degC. Spares availability or is it a case of helping everyone out / take your own? I was surprised how much LandRover there was about so bog standard part could sometimes be swapped/begged/borrowed of other teams but best to try and take as much as you think you will need. You can forget getting any thing shipped down to you, we needed a m24 rose joint (I forgot the spare) it took a week to get down to us broke it on the first day and had the new one for the last day (a 30 quid part ending up costing a few 100 pounds). But every one in camp is helpfully we were able borrows welders etc... Did you trailer or lorry it down there with a 1 or 2 vehicles on? I would do not use a lorry as this is a commercial vehicle so extra costs every where, ferry, tolls, road taxs etc.. Also places like Germany you can not drive a commercial vehicle at certain times like (i think) weekends and public holidays (like the day we drove down). food while at the event? diy or provided for you? Food is provided with entry but we did supplement it. But once when we had a good day and got in early after the truck was prepped we headed in to town for a beer a pizza. In the reg sheet it says no home made cages, how far / true is this? do you have to have a serial number on the cage? The scrutineering is like all the European event I have been too, there is more interested in if you have all the stickers on in the correct place. But that said in that week we rolled the truck onto its side twice and rammed a tree at about 30mph on the front wing, so i wouldn't do it without a trusted cage. For the extreme class, (trophy) how much equipment (trip counters etc) do you need? it says no mobile and gps equipment allowed bar for emergencies, For both classes (we did adventure) you need the same amount of kit ie winches, lockers and a trip. The difference between Adventure and Trophy class is the winch sections Trophy have the longer harder sections. I only have single motor winches so we did Adventure at first we thought might be easy but we had to really work at it and this class for us made for some good close racing. One thing you have to factor in is that you can not do this event with out support, we had 3 good friends helping us (me and my co driver). Its a lot to ask and you need to have guys that you can completely trust or the whole trip can fall apart quickly destroying your event (I have had this happen). hope this helps a bit Paul

I think we will be going again had such a blast last year, But have yet to sit down with the rest of the team and plan it. If anybody is looking to do this event for the first time and has questions shout and i will try and help with some of the lesson we learnt last year Paul

Had almost the same issue on a 300 would some times get lots of white smoke from the exhaust. Engine was a 200K plus mileage found a crack in the head in the exhaust port of number 3 you could see the crack by eye.... the water marks on my cylinder wall was not as bad as in your images so i just whacked on a replacement head job done and its been running for many more years. I would be inclined to just glaze bust that cylinder and stick on a replacement tested head if you don't want to go through all the effort of a complete rebuild. paul

isn't the engine earthed from a point on the transfer case? so no where near the slave. more likely to have moved the pos feed to the starter as that's right above.

If the connections all look ok another idea might be the starter motor/solenoid might be full of mud or on the way out as this will make it crank real slow

Although not on my road car I have started using Creepy's 37" on 15, and I am impressed.... moved to these from 35"' Silverstone's before that Boggers and before that Simex. The creepys I got do measure in life what's written on the side wall which is nice all the other tyres used before were allways under sized. As expected (and why i got them) on the rocks dry/wet they preform loads better than the mud tyres did. I was surprised by the performance in the deep muddy glop as seemed as good but this could also be put down to the greater diff clearance. Side slopes also seemed good. On fast open tracks (and the tiny amount of tarmac I do) I found they handled great, nice good predictable grip and great for sideways drift action try that with a Simex type tread pattern and those lugged side walls are always trying to catch and put you on your roof. I have yet to try them some where like Croatia where the Sliverstone's have been amazing and I have been thinking about re-grooving them like they do in the states to help the tread clear quicker in the mud. SO far i think they are a good tough tyre and (at the moment) supply also seem good

Not a expert, but my thoughts.... turn down the wire speed a bit especially on the rear of the piece where you doing a butt weld. did you push or drag? it looks like you dragged... if your pushing then you can use a lower wire speed and so go slower and get more heat into the piece. also remember that your test piece is small so you will get heat into it quite quickly. I would say your welder is up to the job, whats the amps ? Paul

I run limit straps on the rear of my comp truck these are 6 ply "Trail Gear" straps rated to 9,000 lbs these are not there to limit travel but to support weight on the axle when its in the air rather than hanging all the weight off the air shocks. with some creative thinking you could easily mount these types of straps (and you can have custom lengths made too) in a way they could be disengaged... The much better way of doing it is with an anti roll bar like si (XEng) produces. But really if you have so much body roll that your worried about going over then you need to look at your setup. How much travel do you have?

Depends on what tools you have access to.. But i need to 2 8mm thick round plates for the end of my which drum project, did think about getting a laser cutters to do it for me but thought would give it a go first. Did as Simon suggested and made a circle cutting guide for my plasma then just cut to circles out of plate. The plasma did an ok job, but I made sure i cut the circles just oversized and turned them down perfect round on the lathe. Or just make a square lid for the BBQ much easier

I run have 2 winches through that type of switch for years no problems at all...

My problem with the rear setup is the angle that which the two links converge. Effectively i guess your looking at a single triangulated four link here (again i am not an expert) and the only thing that centres the axle are the top links. The more parallel these top link are the chassis the greater the side loadings are on top axle joints as they try keep the axle in place. This is the reason why the stock a frame ball joint it set vertically in its strongest orientation. I have found this by my own experience after building my own extended (for a 101" wheel base) a frame and rear trailing arms. As I increased the axle drop travel I was soon destroying the stock ball joints as i was pulling it passed its limit of movement. So I changed to good M24 rose joint and set its orientation to be parallel to the axle. But i soon realized that i was now going passed the limit of the rose joint when fully articulated and on occasion i could push through the centre if the rose joint due to the side loads. So to combat this I have limited my rear axle travel (7" bump and 8" drop) and used a creeper joint on the a frame that will take big side loading some thing like 14 tons. My set up is a massive compromise (and far from bolt on) but a complete redo from scratch will have to wait for my next truck. I never had any failures of my setup when testing or doing playdays etc... only when competing as this is when you (well i find i do) over driver the truck and do things you would never normally do. With the front set up i don't like the way the springs dislocate and rest on the shocks. I can only see the shocks in the image with the disco so may be they have been moved? I also think the chassis bracket is way to exposed, the under sides of both my axles after a week of Croatia where polished back to bare metal I can only imagine what those ball joints would be like after blasting through a few good bogs, I have to change the steering joints all the time as rubber gators get ripped away. I am not having a go this is just why i think this kit would not be for me and of course i can only base my views on what i can see in the pictures. Paul

(disclaimer) I not a suspension expert far from it... and i commend the guy for doing some thing different. every one uses their truck differently and i am sure that for some this kit will be fine mainly i see this being used by the playday guys whos truck's never see high range or more than 10mph. But handling aside I would never fit this to my comp truck, it just wouldn't last the distance from the images posted (as that all i have to go on) i can see lots of points that would fail quite quickly with the usage that my truck sees.

Is this Kit for the front or back ? I completely agree... there is not any where near enough separation using stock mounting locations

and some one..... worked out that the whole step section if you just drove round it would only cost you 15mins in penalties. shame we didnt even get that far... drama all weekend for us... tyre change on the rock section of the prologue was not the best of starts and a cracked rad kinda finished us off....

I have a Myford ML7 and I cant do with out it. I fabricate a lot of my own stuff and my myford gets used as much as my welders, plasma cutter and pillar drill. I have a small knee mill but i hardly ever use it. My advice would be get as big and you can fit in your work space. which in my case is a Myford I would like some thing bigger but i don't have the room. But having said that don't under estimate the little myford there is a alot you can do with it, true it might take longer because you don't have the same power to plough through that big bit of billet that you would on a bigger machine. Although this means Myford can also be a more forgiving machine when you get things wrong because it has less power behind it. Other Myford benefits are tooling is very really available for it turn up to any model engineers fair and you will get almost any thing. Due to its large hobby following there are also lot of info about on how to do stuff, handy if your like me and learn as you go here are few things i have thrown together with the help of my myford.. wide reduced diameter winch drum for my warn 8200 miss-alignment spacers for suspension links bearing holders Threaded bungs for suspension links lots of lathe time went into this aframe. Suspension bush holder Bump stop stroke spacers and so on.... Paul

Do you have aircon and ace pump on your engine? Just wondering which way to get at the water pump on mine

Steve, Told you it would be that pipe, I didn't bother to replace the dryer just changed the pipe and had the system charged. I just got it charged at kwik fit Now I am not sure how they get away with it because i am lead to believe that its illegal to vent refrigerant or charge a system with a known leak, but they are quite happy gas any system with out a pressure test.... I first got the system charged at kwik fit and it blew cold for an afternoon before it all leaked out, I had asked them to put in the uv die when they charged it so i could find the leak, as it turn out the leak as so bad that i didn't even need to play CSI and spotted the leak by the lubricating oil that had been spat out the system. So i ordered the new pipe, fitted it and then back to kiwk fit to get my free recharge nice and cold since. The only thing i pointed out to Mr kiwik fit was the right amount of refrigerant need for my disco as it has the optional rear passenger aircon oh and the "econ" button when he couldn't get it to blow cold

All depends on how its done... It could be said that the standard "A frame" set-up is already a four link a single triangulated one, so by removing the a frame and replacing it with 2 links (like | \/ | ) will give no real advantage at all, maybe improve the travel over what can be achieved with a single joint. But you will still get the rear axle steer aspect as it moves through its arc of travel. If the lowers and the uppers are both triangulated (like / \/ \ ) then this will stop the axle steer but still give very good travel..

like on this engine... the plate top left (of the pic) on the air intake... Its common place on the American tractor pull and drag machines.

Really depends on what you do with your car? As there is a huge difference between these two shocks, accentually they do the same job but in different ways If your looking for a "fit and forget" then OME would be the route i would suggest The Fox shock is a mono tube emulsion shock which is quite a different beast to the twin tube OME shock. The difference is explained quite nicely here http://www.billavista.com/tech/Articles/Coilover_Bible_Part_1/index.html#ShockDesign but note an emulsion shock does not have the oil separate to the gas its mixed hence the "emulsion" bit The fox shocks will/would need attention and servicing (oil change) all quite easy to do, but you need to have the ability to gas them up which is an added cost. hope this helps Paul

there are lots of thread pitches. I use a M24 rose joint for my a frame its still called a metric fine with a pitch of 2mm. You really need measure the thread pitch of the old joint Paul

wow what are you expecting to pull with a centre top winch? I could be wrong but it will never see the same loads of the front and rear. with mine (ep9) i have even down graded motor to a smaller 3hp one, which makes the whole unit shorter. I only really use my centre for changing tyres, the odd really bad side slope, and for putting the truck the right way up again.