Dave W

What is the problem you're trying to cure ? There's always a lot of play in the drive train components, what you describe doesn't sound particularly bad.

I just found it irritating, what sort of brain dead moron thinks that there is less rain in Newark than Northampton ?

The rear mounting points for the tie down loops aren't suitable for use with JATE rings unless they are reinforced. The front ones are reinforced as standard but the rear ones are just holes in 2mm steel chassis in most (not all) cases. Not sure which chassis/vehicles have the reinforced rears but I know my 110 chassis doesn't and neither does Pam's 90. All they have is an "anti-crush" spacer inside the chassis that doesn't do anything to add strength. If your chassis doesn't have the reinforcing plates then the allowable force on rear JATE rings would be around 680KG before the chassis deforms/tears. Assuming 2mm steel with a 10mm dia bolt spread evenly between the two holes. With the strengthening on the front a JATE ring will take about 4 tonnes before the chassis deforms.

You really need to replace the rear door lock mechanism with the central locking version, unlike the front doors there isn't a suitable lever to attach the solenoid to otherwise.

The genuine Land Rover door looms aren't expensive and that way you get the right conectors for the job too... Remember that the driver's side door needs more wires for the central locking than other doors (5 wires IIRC). I'm in the process of concerting a pair of doors to electric windows/central locking, The main expense are the electric window lifters and the new door cards, the genuine central locking bits aren't very expensive at all.

I have a master winch switch (on-off carling) between the front and rear switch, this enables/disables both the front and rear internal switches and also the external push button switches. It also powers up the winch isolators (albright single contact) so with that switch turned off the winches are completely isolated.

The local hydraulics place had one and supplied it when they made up the power steering pipes for me. I think it's a pretty standard item as they had one on the shelf, just a metal block with three connectors and an adjuster to set the pressure. I put it inline with the pressure pipe and T'd it's return into the return pipe. Any excess oil from the pump cycles straight back into the reservoir.

It may well be a problem with the P38 pump working at a higher pressure. The Land Rover (RRC Defender) steering box seems to run at quite a low pressure compared to other units. I had to use a pressure reducing valve on mine to save the box. If the pressure is OK then I suppose the first thing to check is that the return pipe is clear and plumbed in to a suitable point on the reservoir. Another option might be that you've swapped the pressure and return pipes over, that certainly causes some odd results.

The only thing you might have a problem with is the native resolution. A lot of the 7inch touch screens are only 640x480 native and when trying to display at 800x600 they look a mess with text fragmented (unreadable in many cases) and so on. Windows XP and later doesn't support anything less than 800x600 and, as a result, most of the apps you might want to run (MemoryMap for example) won't even launch below 800x600. You can force XP to run at 640x480 with a bit of messing around in the display settings but you can't convince a lot of the apps to launch. I run an 8 inch touchscreen which is native 800x600 but, sadly, it's too big to fit in the mud dash. This won't be a problem with megatunix, it just severely limits any other uses for the screen such as on road navigation or mapping utilities.

What are you trying to isolate and where do you expect to be when you operate it ? If it's for your general vehicle electrics then having it somewhere inside the cab where both driver and passanger can reach it with their seatbelts on is normal. If you are anticipating isolating the winch with it then you need to look very carefully at the specs for both the winch and the switch. Those switches are normally rated at around 100A continuous. If your winch is likely to pull more than that (which most will) then you'll need a higher rated switch. Given those switches aren't waterproof either you don't want to mount it in the engine bay if you can help it. To mount it you need to drill a hole big enough for the key hole "tube" to go through, the body of the switch is designed to go underneath the panel it's mounted on, if that makes sense.

The ARB is 2.5CFM, no idea how big YOUR tyres are but that'll take 35 inch Simexes from 5PSI to 30PSI in around 3 mins per tyre. The high output ARB is a VERY different animal to the old pile of S***e compressor they used to do that overheated and had no practical way of adding a raised air intake. By the time you've added a 90psi pressure switch and adaptors to take the ARB solenoids there isn't much of a difference in price, especially if you get the ARB compressor from Britpart. My only criticism of the high output ARB is that it uses a maxi fuse rated at 40A (IIRC) which makes carrying spare fuses for it a pain. I wired mine up using two standard 20A fuses in parallel as I always have a selection of standard blade fuses with me. Due to differences in current flow between the two I think I might be running 25A fuses now... can't remember. The Tmax compressors are very good too but mounting them isn't as "flexible" as the ARB mounting and for some reason all the TMax and Vlair stuff comes with the connectors arse about face.

Rope for me by preference between normal nylon rope and a strap NOT kinetic though ! Strops are OK but have no give in them so are very harsh on the recovery points, especially when snatching. Ropes give a slight "cushion" reducing the shock loading. The only problem with ropes is storage space, straps are much easier to stow away and take up less space. I've started using an ARB recovery strap as a compromise between the two, it is easy to stow but is slightly elastic so it absorbs shock loading.

I've been told that the B&M Megashift can be used with a ZF, not tried it myself though. It's a ratchet shift so as well as giving you a very substantial shifter it has sequential style shifting and quick shift from reverse to drive.

There are quite a few jobs these days that require the body to be lifted... of course the vast majority of those jobs can also be done far quicker with the body in place if you know what you are doing. I was talking to a local LR specialist not long ago about a D3 he had in for a new turbo, again it's officially a body off job, he hired a LR dealer mechanic for a day to show him the technique for replacing it with the body in situ, took them about 4 hours to do the job I think. A main dealer would have probably charged 2 days labour for the same (out of warranty) job.

I always though an aftermarket electronic control for hydro steer (front and rear) would be interesting to look at. Lots of inputs/sensors, logic to keep everything safe and interfaces between hydraulic and electrical system etc... kind of a "fly by wire" system for Land Rovers. Rear steer could be controlled proportionately with speed and self centering, crab modes, adjustable front/rear steering bias at low speeds... all sorts of things to play with once you have the sensors and interfaces sorted. Steering input could be via a wheel or joystick, no good for road use though so maybe that limits the appeal. Another interesting project idea I had was to automate air suspension possibly using pressure transducers on each bag to monitor and adjust ground pressure, gyroscopic level sensors and height sensors... all sorts of fun to be had there I'm sure ! Imagine a demo where you drive through crab holes and the air bags respond and hold the body perfectly level and at a specific height above the ground... As for the diff lock idea I suspect that the electronic/electrical aspect would be minimal (although maybe that's not a bad thing !) amd the engineering side of it would be far bigger unless you can modify an existing diff lock... but then what's the point then.

Do us all a favour, leave your air rifle locked away at home where it belongs or sell it/hand it in. You're obviously not stable enough mentally to be trusted to carry a firearm around with you. Basically what you just said is "If I mistakenly thought someone was chasing me I'd shoot them in the head". You've also announced this fact on a public forum so if at sometime in the future you do decide to shoot someone in the head there is evidence here of pre-meditation.

I'd considered the opposite at one time (using a TD5 rear tank on a 300TDi and decided the easiest way was a flush fitting cap mounted on the side and then linked up to the original tube via a 45 degree bend. Might take some fab work on the tubing. If you were feeling brave you could "unpick" the filler recess from the back of the TD5 tub, cut the appropriate hole at the front and retro-fit it. You can forget linking to the tank from the rear filler, even if you managed to hook the pipes together it's be a real bitch to fill with all those opportunities for airlocks in the pipe. For the neatest solution of all, why not just fit a TD5 90 rear tank anyway, that way you don't have to hack the bodywork or end up with unused filler recesses.

Weird, I've done 3 V8s now with direct drive and about to do a fourth. This next one is using the new drivers rather than the VB921. Maybe it's the way I configure it as I always run logic levels to the engine and put the coil drivers in a small aluminium cast box in the engine bay with their own supply. I know a lot of people try and bolt the drivers inside the MS case and the one time i tried that I had problems with odd resets. I've had problems with MS in the past with the lack of screening in the loom and internally, maybe putting 4 coil drivers in the case is just overpowering the MS with stray interference. i even found that running the 4 spark outputs in screened cable inside the MS case reduced problems with false crank trigger signals. Anyway, all of that is a moot point if you're converting to manual and the tyre valve sounds like a good mod too, i remember having all sorts of problems with the clutch on my old manual after wading and leaving it in the drive for a week

No real problem with them in a solo vehicle (I normally just pull into the middle lane though and avoid them) but they give me a few issues when towing the caravan sometimes.

They both use an LT230 transfer box so they should be straight swap. It was only the Disco II that they started messing around with "optional" diff lock. You might find it too high geared though as a Disco will be a 1.2 ratio, depends on your engine and tyre size.

It's worth noting that there are at least two different threads, the sender from a 3.5 carb motor won't fit a 3.9 EFi, I remember that causing me some real grief when I did my first 3.9 into Defender conversion because I thought I could use the sender off the original 3.5 V8 to match the gauge.

Ah, OK, hadn't realised you were using EDIS, you are right, EDIS doesn't have the f;exibility of MegaSquirt so can only cope with a 36-1 configuration. I guess the next question would be, why use EDIS when you can just plug the OEM crank sensor direct into Megasquirt ? I know there's a bit of an "EDIS fetish" on LR4x4 but I'd have thought that when an engine can run off the original sensors without EDIS it'd make more sense to run it that way than messing around reinventing the wheel (literally in this case ) It seems like you're doing a lot of extra work getting a toothed wheel to fit so that you can use an extra box that you don't need in the first place. Megasquirt is more than capable of driving the coil packs without EDIS and you also get the option of adding different coil packs (coil near plug, for example). I'm pretty sure there is a 4 wire stepper at the front of the engine for idle control which can be driven direct by MSII or via an additional board with MS1. I know the Thor engines use a different idle control valve but I think all the plenum chamber style engines have the 4 wire stepper somewhere, apart from the early flapper ones obviously.

You could try these guys... http://www.devon4x4.com/forum/2009-off-roa...for-challenges/

Why don't you just use the OEM crank sensor ???

Not sure Gary has a motor at the moment, he was marshalling at the MT with the Rangie but I don't think they'll be looking at using that for UK events... you never know though, it's probably the best set up vehicle for moving around Frickley at any speed at the moment. If it helps, a reminder that anyone that competed at the MT as a driver or navigator is a member of YORC so meet the MSA club requirement for the BADLRC series. I can't make it this weekend unfortunately as both myself and Matthew are committed to recovery duties on the Ilkley Classic on Sunday so we'll be winching classic cars up muddy slopes and out of muddy holes. We're committed to making it to at least one event in the series though.