Dave W

No, that wouldn't work unfortunately. The hitch needs to be fully extended to allow the pin to engage and just the act of slowing before reversing can compress the hitch slightly. Ideally you want to engage it while still moving forwards. Sods law means the trailer always seems to be facing downhill when you want to reverse and the weight of the trailer compresses the hitch enough to prevent you engaging the locking pin. I've bought a solenoid suitable for continuous use and will add a warning light on the dashboard though !

A slight change of plan, just ordered a 12v solenoid as decided air would be too fiddly to changeover between vehicles.

I haven't attempted to used CAD for a LOT of years but after seeing this topic I thought I'd give it a go to help design the frame we're going to build for the Sankey. It seemed to work OK, took me a while to get into the swing of it but pretty pleased with the result for a simple project, took me a couple of hours.

Looking for ideas first off from anyone that may have looked at this or done it in the past. I have a MKIII Sankey trailer which is pretty much the best thing I've ever had to tow and does almost everything I want from it apart from just one problem. A few times when I've had to reverse for whatever reason I've ended up blocking the road while I get out, try and push the reverse lock in, realise it's under tension, put the handbrake on the trailer, pull forward to release the tension, back out of the vehicle to put the lock in, handbrake off and back to reversing. In short it can be a real PITA, not to mention the odd looks you get from passers by. So, it seems that it wouldn't be too difficult to replace the current setup with a solenoid of some form. Ideally the locking pin could be sprung so if you engage it when there is tension on the pintle it will lock once you pull forward. Air operated would be possible for mine as both the vehicles that tow it have on board air for lockers and winch freespool already. I haven't taken the original apart yet but it looks like it should be pretty simple to unbolt the manual one to replace it with a remote operated one.

It's normal to fit the same wheels/tyres to the Sankey as the tow vehicle, that way you only need to carry one spare. If you fit different size wheels or tyres then you need to carry an additional spare.

The two boost alloys I took off our Sankey had wheel spacers fitted and it does look as if that's the only option to fit them. As you say, without them the wheels won't mount properly. Am I right in thinking that the NAS step uses a 2 inch receiver ? If so perhaps you could use an offset hitch that raises it ? I'm looking at that as an option for mine at the moment, the NATO hitch is normally mounted direct onto the rear cross member and our 2 inch receiver is below the rear cross member so the Sanity is nose down - they are supposed to be slightly nose down but not that much ! I keep meaning to put the boosts and spacers up for sale

Yes, that looks like the one

The late V belt setup had the power steering pump mounted in the same place and, as you say, the alternator mounted further out with a small belt between the power steering pump and the alternator. I may be wrong but I believe that Land Rover moved the alternator to the passenger side to make way for the air con pump which was fitted to the driver side in place of the alternator. Not sure of the exact changeover but all the EFi 3.5 and 3.9 engines I've seen have this setup, the carb V8s have the alternator on the RHS. I think I'd look at driving the alternator off the power steering pump if it has the spare pulley as a sort of hybrid version of the two. If nothing else it means that if you do overload the belt the effect will be constrained to the alternator. On the later setup the alternator and power steering pump mounts were combined. An adjustable bar was then taken from the top of the alternator to a water pump bolt to provide the tension.

Looks to me as if you're trying to drive a 3.9 style alternator pulley using an early 3.5 setup. Your chances of getting this working on a 3.5 setup are slim, to say the least and also pretty risky given that you have a single belt driving everything. The biggest issue is that the length of belt makes it difficult to tension and prone to being thrown. With a high output alternator there's a good chance that you'll melt the belt and it's better if that only effects the alternator rather than also losing your cooling. I had a team mate who ran a similar setup and, on average, we'd have to fit a new belt maybe 3 or 4 times a day during competitions. Having said that, getting an alternator pulley for an early 3.5 should fix the immediate problem. I have a feeling that it's also a bigger diameter pulley than the one you have which may help with traction. The 3.9 setup uses multiple belts rather than a single one with the water pump and power steering having their own belts from the crank and then the alternator driven off a second groove on the power steering pump pulley. The alternator uses a narrower belt than the other two and it looks to me as if that's the pulley you have. The main advantage of this configuration is that you can continue driving from the battery if the alternator belt dies - in the winter when SWMBO had everything turned on including the heated windscreen we'd occasionally lose a belt and she knew that as soon as the alternator light came on she had to turn everything off and head for home so I could fit a new one

When I did mine I got a selection of belts from simplybearings.co.uk - part measuring and part trial and error to get a belt that gave the best grip and fit. They have a good range of belts of different designs, widths, depths and lengths.

As above, this is normally a result of a corroded exhaust, the lines run over the exhaust, directly above a normal point of failure on the exhaust, the hot gasses melt the pipe. It's normally the pipe from the air pump (front, left in the engine bay) to the reservoir on the right hand side chassis rail in the centre of the vehicle) and this fits in precisely with the symptoms you describe. The best/quickest way to fix this and prevent it happening again is to run a new section of pipe from the pump to the air tank, routing it around the back of the engine, down to the chassis at the drivers/right hand side and along the chassis to the reservoir. That way it never goes anywhere near the exhaust and it saves you trying to faff about repairing or replacing the original pipe. You should get the exhaust sorted too though ! It uses 6mm o/d pipe and push in connectors at both ends, you can buy the pipe at any pneumatics place for very little cost (around £20 for a 50 metre roll), a roll like this, for example, will give you plenty as you only need 4 or 5 metres. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/like/380239912008?limghlpsr=true&hlpv=2&ops=true&viphx=1&hlpht=true&lpid=108&chn=ps&device=c&rlsatarget=&adtype=pla&crdt=0&ff3=1&ff11=ICEP3.0.0-L&ff12=67&ff13=80&ff14=108&ff19=0 The connection on the tank goes into the rear at the end from what I remember - it's a couple of years since I last did one of these. If you can't figure out which pipe it is at the pump/solenoid box end let me know and I'll take a couple of pics... preferably when it's not raining Takes around 30 minutes including securing the pipe to suitable places along the way, obviously taking care to keep it away from any sources of heat, especially if you have a V8.

This is mine... The rear section of the tub has slightly less overhang than a 90 to improve departure angle and the rear tub itself, behind the cab, is the same size as a 90 tub so I have the option of fitting a 90 tilt or Ifor Williams canopy.

You are mistaken in that belief. The ALRC are an MSA recognised club (they are not an association as such). When you join an ALRC club you also join the ALRC as an individual member of the ALRC (part of your membership fee goes to the ALRC). The ALRC have their own regulations that supplement the MSA regulations, however, all their events must comply with the MSA regulations as well as their own "self-imposed" regulations. On top of that, an ALRC club may add it's own individual regulations on top of the ALRC regulations but these may not contravene either the ALRC standing SRs or the MSA regulations for the permit. Any MSA recognised club (including ALRC) agrees that it will not run any motor sport event which does not comply with MSA regulations. Any ALRC affiliated club agrees that it will not run any motor sport event in contravention of the MSA regulations and the ALRC regulations. Some ALRC affiliated clubs get their MSA permits through the ALRC who apply for the permit on their behalf, others get their permits direct from the MSA. Anyway, we digress because there really is no way of running a pay and play under an MSA permit

That's the MSA requirement, yes, for the majority of cross country events you only need 3 officials, those officials can also be marshals so for something like a trial (which is a lot easier to marshal than most events) we only need 3 people signed on as officials although we normally have a minimum of 5. You can't run pay and play days under an MSA permit of any kind really, CCV would be a Cross Country Trial permit - there is no distinction between CCV/RTV etc... for MSA permits, that's something that clubs have invented to "grade" their trials. The MSA Clubsport permit level is the grass roots level and, as such, the requirements are lower for both officials and paperwork.

For someone worried about things like "liability" suggesting that you don't have enough people to safely run an event is probably not a good idea The official roles required for a Cross Country permit is three people - Clerk of Course, Scrutineer and Steward and an "adequate" number of marshals. You are correct regarding the MSA and Pay and Play, the two aren't compatible, you can run under a "Promotional Event" permit that is designed to allow clubs to give an introduction to motorsport but it's really not suitable for pay and play and limited to a maximum of 3 events per year. It's more designed to allow clubs to give the general public a taste of organised motorsport. A few years ago a number of clubs were taking the proverbial with these permits, organising commercial Pay and Play days, and were taken to task over it by the MSA.

I Scrutineering isn't something that transfers any "liability" onto the club, it simply shows that the club is actually fulfilling it's obligation as far as duty of care is concerned. If a pub has bouncers on the door, do the bouncers get arrested when a patron they let in assaults someone ? At the end of the day you're taking money off people to take part in a potentially dangerous sport, the very least you need to do is a basic safety check on the vehicles taking part, regardless of their MOT status. None of them will be insured anyway, that's your responsibility to put into place adequate third party liability insurance for the land owner and injury to competitors, officials and spectators. It sounds as if you already expect your marshals to scrutineer vehicles on the fly which kind of negates any suggestion about liability, after all, if a marshal doesn't deem the vehicle unsafe are they not already giving the vehicle the "green light" ? Marshals should have a single person (scrutineer) to refer it to anyway, you need some form of consistency in making those decisions. If you make it clear that vehicles must pass scrutineering to take part in the event and that scrutineering will cover basic safety items, steering, brakes, fuel and cooling systems, exhaust systems, isolation of the passenger compartment, chassis condition etc... that in itself will keep away the trailered scrap vehicle brigade. Just because you ask people to pre-pay for an event doesn't mean you should reduce the basic safety requirement because you don't want to upset people. You always have the discretion to refund any entry fee if you want to although I wouldn't make that too "automatic" or you'll encourage people to take a chance as they have nothing to lose.

Yep, you're right, keyboard working faster than my brain today The dwell has to be set by the same ECU that controls the ignition timing, I was thinking about EDIS so ignore item 2 !

LR Coilpacks don't have built in drivers, they don't need 12v, ground and trigger, they have a common 12v connected to one side of both coils and the remaining 2 connectors are the other side of each coil. A built in driver in the coil has a few advantages: 1) No specialist circuit needed to drive them, in the case of 5v triggered versions you can literally hook the trigger up to the microprocessor output (although it's always a good idea to buffer it with a low power transistor). 2) The built in driver is preconfigured to give the optimum charge time for the coil. 3) Having the driver built into the coil reduces the chance of electrical "noise" being generated that can interfere with the operation of the MS. This is often a problem with MS when people mount the coil drivers inside the MS case and can cause all sorts of strange issues. (Which is why, if you use the BIP drivers, I always recommend mounting them in their own cast aluminium box in the engine bay).

Another idea that might be available to you as alternative coils/drivers is the VW unit - VW Part number 06A905104 It's a 4 cylinder self contained coil pack and driver unit, just takes a 12volt supply and a signal from the MS to drive each coil, fitted to all sorts of VW/Audi/Skoda vehicles. The coil driver that does all the hard work is built in. Here's one: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/VW-VOLKSWAGEN-BORA-CADDY-GOLF-2-0-IGNITION-COIL-06A-905-097-06A-905-104-12726-/111458305540

I've set up a few MS installs directly driving the coils, if you happen to have an engine with a factory crank sensor fitted you can also then make use of that rather than having to fit a toothed wheel/pickup. The MS will need to be built with the 4 coil drivers and I'd strongly recommend that, if you go down that route, you get the coil drivers themselves installed outside the MS ECU in the engine bay - I find it reduces any problems with electrical interference with the MS ECU. You can fit all 4 in a small cast aluminium box which also acts as a heatsink and provides electrical screening. One alternative you could think of, given your location, is to look at the LSx engines which I think are fitted to Holden V8s. The coils on the later engines, where each cylinder has it's own coil mounted on the rocker cover, have built in drivers and the MS can drive them directly in a coil near plug setup.

Similar to the above, I fitted a 120A alternator to a V belt 3.9 although it was the later style V belt setup with the alternator mounted high on the LHS above the PAS pump. I had real problems with belt slip and tried a number of different designs including toothed belts, none of them coped well when it was under heavy load but it sort of worked. I only fitted it because the original alternator died and I wanted to use the spare for my LSx so there was some commonality of parts. It did the job at least... my team mate tried running one on the original single V belt 3.5 setup and used to have to fit a new belt 2-3 times a day during competitions because it would slip and melt through. To mount mine I made an adaptor mount as there was no way to get it lined up any other way. I've attached a couple of pics...

Whilst a wideband is certainly better in allowing you to know how far out the mixture is, the narrow band sensors give you a pretty good tuning tool and are both cheaper and more robust. I used to install wideband as "standard" for fresh MS installs but gave that up when it became clear that I seemed to spend more time dealing with temperamental sensors and interfaces than actually tuning. I use 4 wire narrow band sensors because they heat up quicker (due to the heater element that takes up two of the four wires) and they are more reliable due to having their own earth signal so you're not relying on the various joints in the exhaust to provide an earth return path. They cost around £50 for a Bosch sensor or £40 for a generic one new. Given that you can't change much in terms of tuning on a carb unless you carry a set of needles with you so all you are looking for is a baseline at idle, narrow band is definitely the way to go. If you want a "live" reading you can probably still get a dash gauge from a tuning site or build a simple LED array. A simple op-amp comparator circuit would allow you to have a 3 LED weak/good/rich indication or drive a 10 LED bar... something like this circuit... egobar2-jpg.9663 It's been a LONG time since I messed with carb V8s but from what I remember each carb serves two cylinders on each head (middle two on one side, outer two on the other) so if you use two sensors you'd need to put them in the manifold to get an independent reading for each carb. Using narrowband allows the use of more than one sensor and still works out cheaper !

As above, just change the extension from .msl to .txt or .log, not sure which file types the forum will accept but it's unlikely to look beyond the extension on the end of the file name. I'm sorting out a reasonable spark table for you. Regarding the load/MAP steps, assuming that load% is actually MAP then there is no point in having positions below 20 kpa. Rather than having equal steps between 20 and 100 it's often worth having smaller steps around the idle just to help fine tune idle which is pretty much the most difficult part to tune. Hopefully the log file will confirm the load vs MAP thing, can you also upload the msq that was in use when the log file was created.

A ratchet cable cutter is the best tool for the job, neat cut and you can cut through thick cables with one hand. Also really useful for cutting up fuel pipe and radiator hoses. Second choice is a hacksaw.

That's posh ! If it's fitted, leave it as it is. I can't find any info at the moment on how it converts MAP and TPS to engine load, Phil or James are the best people to ask about that (they wrote the code). You might need to change the maps so they use MAP instead of the load algorithm or it may be that, using speed density, the load % is actually the MAP reading anyway - perhaps a log file will show if this is actually the case ? For a MAP base map I'd normally use steps between 20kpa and 100kpa with 5 point steps around the idle point. Can you post a log file ? Be interesting to see how the load/MAP/TPS/req fuel all co relate and it might throw up something else to look at. I think your MAP reading is OK for an engine that's not been fine tuned yet so I wouldn't worry too much about that at the moment. I know some people can get the MAP down much lower, perhaps as low as 20, but that's unrealistic on an RV8. I managed to get my LS1 down to around 30 after a lot of fine tuning. Your ignition map is very aggressive at the bottom end for an RV8 and probably a bit tame at the top end, most of the RV8 maps I've seen coming off rolling road sessions start at around 8 or 9 and hitting around 32 at high rpm with WOT, yours starts at 15 (ish) at the bottom end and only hits 29 at the top end although it's up over 40 in the mid range, low load area and 36 in the high range which is OK but might be a bit over optimistic in the mid range (that might be to help cruise speed ?) area. Not sure what sort of cam the JE has though so that could be OK.