Dave W

Regardless of the wording of the warranty I'd still expect any claim to be treated on it's merits but then I've never had an ARB item fail within it's warranty period so haven't had any dealings with them I've had pretty disappointing service from some UK off road companies when it comes to defective parts but in general I would say it's better to judge based on how they handle actual warranty claims rather than on the wording of their warranties. Most "big name" off road suppliers are pretty good at playing fair with warranty claims in my experience, regardless of any legal get out clauses they may have in there as an opt out should they suspect you're taking the p**s From the original post it's not clear if they actually tried to claim under warranty or just read the warranty and didn't bother. Personally, if the unit is in warranty period, I'd claim for the repair anyway and see what happens although I'd also be looking at any external factors as potential causes of the O ring failure.

You may, or may not, remember the problems I had with leaking air seals on my rear ARB. It took me 2 years, 3 sets of seals fitted by me and 1 professional rebuild which included replacing parts of the ARB that had any kind of mark on them. Every time I thought I'd fixed it and at the next competition it would start leaking again, filling the axle with compressed air and blowing oil vapour out of the axle breather. Having replaced everything else, I swapped the axle case in desperation, problem fixed. There was never anything wrong with the ARB and changing the seals was just fixing a symptom, not fixing the problem. Given the use of the truck, have you checked to see if the axle is bent ? Expeditions normally = very overloaded truck traveling on carp roads, bent axles aren't going to be unusual. As for the warranty, it seems reasonable for an item like that to have limitations when it comes to competition, there are very few places that will replace items under warranty that have been used in competition, Ashcroft are one exception to the rule that I know of.

For MSA regs the problem you will have is (K)6 which states: The "normal" way around this in your situation is to either route the filler to the outside of the vehicle or to encase the tank and it's filler in a second skin that effectively isolates it from the passenger compartment. You need to then make a sealable "hatch" over the filler that you can remove while you fill the tank and then reseal it.

The roof is a bad place if you're using it seriously, roll your motor over in 3 inches of water and see what happens to your ECU ! Best to put it somewhere central around shoulder height and in a waterproof box, that way whatever way up your motor is the ECU is as far away from the ground as it can be As for survivability, the MS in mine has been there since 2002, it's run two different engines in that time, first the 3.9 and now the LS1. It's completed the Outback Challenge twice without missing a beat... and there's some SERIOUSLY deep water and harsh environments involved in that including sustained vibration and shock loading. On top of that it's taken part in most of the major challenge events in the UK at least once, many of them multiple times. As others have said, the only problems I've experienced with MS installations have been down to the way they were installed rather than the MS itself.

I liked the look of it until I saw a real picture rather than the "artists impressions" types... £275 from UK distributor: http://www.cmldistribution.co.uk/cml_product.php?new=true&productId=0000004662

A wire connected to the wrong place ?

Was it caused by a faulty component that you had to change out ? (as opposed to something disconnected or a wiring problem)

What does it do if you try and start it in "flood clear" mode ?

As above, cranking fuel setting is where I'd start. Until the rpm exceeds the cranking speed rpm the cranking fuel pulse width is the only thing used as a basis to calculate fuelling. I'd guess that your cranking pw is set too high and your WUE may be too low when it's cold, you need to get the cranking pw set when it's hot and let the WUE compensate for that when it's cold. When you are cranking and it doesn't start, is it trying to fire at all (catching and dying ?) or is it as dead as a dead thing ? Not sure why you'd change sensors out unless megatune was showing something amiss, was it ? Is it using a standard fuel rail/return setup ? (thinking about possible fuel vapour locks)

Good luck with convincing a scrutineer that anything with a switch or relay in it isn't a circuit The MSA have yet to respond with a definitive answer, I sent a written request for clarification of this in May and have yet to receive a definitive answer. If the people that wrote the regulation don't know what it means we have no chance !

The problem is in the wording though, I agree that the way you put it is the common sense interpretation, however, that's not what it actually says in the new regulation though. It says "must be fitted with a circuit breaker that isolates the battery from all electrical circuits" that's a fair way from saying you are allowed to maintain the winch circuits provided the power to the controls is cut. Bear in mind that the AWDC rules require additional mechanical isolators as the winch solenoids alone aren't considered to be adequate for battery isolation, how can they then be considered adequate in this case ? AWDC require an MSA cage though and, as such, it needs to meet all current MSA roll cage requirements or you'll be excluded and that includes the problems with wing bars both with the new materials specifications and that no part of the ROP can extend forward of the front suspension mount.

Unless they change the wording then the new cutoff switch rule will exclude all electric winch competitors unless anyone knows of a cutoff switch that's capable of taking the load from 2 or 3 winches simultaneously and has auxiliary contacts. The current AWDC setup of using separate mechanical isolating switches for the winches is no longer allowed, you need to have a single switch that isolates the battery from all circuits and kills the engine at the same time.

Many years ago our house heating was done with storage heaters and I often wondered if the same principal could be used to provide or supplement a warm start system by storing the heat overnight and then using it to warm the engine at a pre-determined time in the morning. Essentially storing the heat from the engine's last run to warm it up prior to starting it. It would also be a safe option to supply a source of cab heating when the engine is turned off if you are sleeping in the vehicle overnight. I did play around with it and the main drawback was the weight and bulk of the bricks that are used in household systems but it did kind of work in theory at least. I always had the suspicion though that transporting the bricks around would cost more than any potential fuel saving !

The coils are common to the centre pin, the outer two pins go to the coil drivers. The input pins control the pair of outputs nearest them so if pin 1 is at the top it will control the top two outputs and pin 3 will control the bottom 2 outputs.

I have a couple of doors that may be suitable if it helps. They are complete but the bottom of the frames has gone through in a couple of places.

On an EFi or injected diesel it's pretty simple to work it out. You know the pressure on the fuel rail, the rating of the injectors and the time that each injector is open. From those you know exactly how much fuel is going into the engine in each cycle. All you need is a speed input and you have all he information you need. For Megasquirt you can simulate the speed from the RPM and create a gauge in Megatune that shows instantaneous MPG if you are in a particular gear. You can do the same for an auto if it's locked up. Obviously that assumes you've correctly entered all the data about the injectors in the first place but you can always add a "fudge factor" if you find the gauge doesn't reflect the real MPG If you look in the .ini files for Megatune on any of the more modern MS-Extra versions you'll see that such a gauge already exists, you just need to enter your gearing values into it.

Closed loop?? Wasaht? It means the amount of fuel is controlled electronically based on the exhaust gas (O2) reading at the lambda sensor. It's more advanced and more accurate at fuelling than the simpler "mechanical" or open loop systems and usually they are a lot easier to live with and give better consumption.

Funnily enough we nearly ended up buying a TD5 to replace my wife's 90. We were looking at a TD5 auto 90, basically exactly the same configuration as her old one except that that was a 3.9 V8 on LPG. We borrowed the TD5 90 off the seller for a few days and she did some "real world" fuel consumption tests comparing the TD5 auto and the V8 LPG auto on her daily commute (15 miles into a major city and back each day). It was a close run thing but the V8 came out a few quid cheaper to run per week than the TD5 so we rebuilt her 90 rather than buying a TD5, there really wasn't a lot in it on price although the V8 sounds nicer and was more relaxing to drive.

In all the LPG vehicles I've owned I've typically seen around a 3-2 MPG drop using LPG. My Disco (3.9EFi) would get around 18MPG on petrol and 16MPG on LPG. 1000 miles on LPG = 285 litres at 16MPG - at 60p per litre that's £171.00 1000 miles on LPG = 303 litres at 15MPG - at 60p per litre that's £181.80 1000 miles on petrol = 253 litres at 18MPG - at 113p per litre that's £285.89 So, at those figures you'd be saving up to £114 every 1000 miles. Obviously the less "advanced" the LPG system the bigger the drop off in relative performance so the smaller the saving at the pump relative to petrol. I know some people get a lot less MPG than that both on petrol and LPG but then the more fuel you use the bigger the saving at the pump assuming your LPG system isn't so bad that it trails the petrol by more than 2-3 MPG. There are only three disadvantages to living with LPG IMV: 1) Fuel planning/availability can be an issue when out of your local area, having to divert to find LPG is a PITA 2) Space taken up by fuel tanks can be a problem if you're always short on space anyway 3) Filling up can take FOREVER on some pumps

If you update your profile and add a location it would help recommend an installer. At the moment you'll save around £30 each time you fill a rangie up with LPG (compared to filling it with petrol for a similar range). If it costs you around £1500 to get a conversion done you are looking at filling it up 50 times before you break even. The higher the pump prices go the quicker you get your money back assuming LPG prices go up by about the same as petrol just as they have done in the 15 years since I got my first LPG conversion done. If you only intend keeping the car for another year it's not worth doing as you won't get any benefit from it unless your doing above average mileage.

I'd go for positive, mainly because it makes it simpler to bypass the switch for specific circuits such as radio memory and clocks. If you isolate the positive you can run the feed through a small fuse just to those items whereas isolating the earth and putting a fused bypass in allows you to forget to turn the isolator switch on and blow the bypass fuse when you turn the ignition on.

The 4 wire extra air valve can't be driven directly from the old Megasquirt 1 although Megasquirt 2 and 3 will drive it quite happily. I don't think it's particularly easy to bypass the stepper on that plenum although you could plumb one in using one of the spare ports on the back of the plenum. The extra air valve isn't a necessity but it does make life more convenient, particularly for cold starts, it's been over a year since I had a working one on mine, like your 4.0 mine has a 4-wire stepper and I'm currently running MS1 with it, I was using an additional board to allow the MS1 to control the stepper valve but the controller chip on the board went west and I've still not got around to repairing it. A PWM controlled valve like the Volvo one is far simpler to get working with MS1. The stepper air valve you have, unlike the earlier type, can be adjusted by hand so it's a trivial task to either block the air coming through it to use an external PWM valve or to set it to an optimum warm idle position and do without an extra air valve. The stepper on that plenum is, BTW, a far more reliable design than the earlier one. It's extremely rare for it to miss steps in my experience whereas the older style was notoriously unpredictable and unreliable. It's the same stepper that my engine uses and prior to the driver chip on my expansion board blowing up it worked perfectly for over a year in closed loop idle mode, compensating for engine load and ticking over and starting from cold at any temperature without having to touch the throttle.

Thought I'd update this as I think it's finally fixed ! Having changed/repaired/reconditioned everything else the only thing left untouched was the axle tube. Changed that last week, went for a play at the weekend and NO LEAKS ! I think the rear axle must be slightly bent, causing the air seal to twist and leak under load. It was noticeable that, when replacing the drivers side half shaft, it went into the new axle tube easily whereas on the old axle tube it was slightly stiffer as it located into the diff. I must have bent it on the OBC in 2008 as it was working fine then but has been giving me problems ever since it arrived back in the UK.

What colour wires does it have going into it, any chance of a picture of it ? I can't think of any TPS that has 4 wires although on some models a feed is taken off for the evaporative control which can make it appear as if there are 4 wires (in which case you'll have 2 red wires).

I'm in Knaresborough, PM me if you're not sorted already.