FridgeFreezer

Yes. I can vouch that facets are noisy buggers, mine's under my seat and going back to an in-tank pump is very much on my to-do list!

3A * 24H = 72Ah per day you need to run the fan 24/7 A 100W panel will deliver an average 10W (ish) over any given 24H period (which is including night time) = 10W / 12V = 0.8333A which = ~20Ah per day ish, more on sunny days, less over winter. Our 100W panels can top 5A on a hot & sunny summers day but only when the sun's overhead beating down. As you can see you'll need a fair chunk of panel to get to a solid reliable 72Ah. It may be more cost-effective to pull a mains cable through to the greenhouse and just run it like that, 864Wh/day is less than one unit of electric so maybe 15-30p/day. I'd say jump straight to an over-spec panel and a cheap eBay controller, the amount that the big names want for MPPT controllers you can just buy a bigger panel (or a 2nd panel & controller) and get more electric that way, and the cheapy £15 controllers have better information display and configurability! These cost me maybe £20 each because I wanted the nice display, they claim to be MPPT but I've not checked. As you can see there's configuration for it to switch the load on/off automatically based on battery voltage or at "night" when the solar voltage drops off, so this would let you easily run the fan until the battery charge drops off and then shut off to avoid damaging the battery. This setup would mostly run our fridge & lights in the camper (~28Ah/day) when we were also driving around every few days to top the battery off, when we were parked for longer periods it would drop so we just added a 2nd panel & duplicate controller and now it's fine.

Strop, rope, couple of shackles, spade, a soft shackle someone gave me. If I'm going somewhere nasty I take the hi-lift in the hope I never have to touch it.

Honestly I'd stick with the in-tank pump it's much neater and it's out of harm's way there.

Fancy telling us how much they charged?

How much power does the blower take? Any of the cheapy solar controllers that will handle the load would do it - the ones like I've got in the Ambulance have a programmable "load" output that allows you to only run the load when the sun's out / battery is healthy, they cost about £10-£20, then you just need a panel that's rated about enough to run the load.

Doubt they'll care much, the genuine batteries will have decent protection and the £18 tool is likely to set itself on fire before it manages to upset the battery.

Tracking through Wurth's website for the correct part: The sprayer is And the seals are: Interesting that they are very specifically listed for brake cleaner and versions for other solvents, acids, alkalis, etc. all have different part numbers.

Lithium batteries are hard to get right & are a runaway thermal event waiting to happen otherwise... hence all those cheap chinese hoverboards exploding a while back, likewise eBikes, laptop batteries, exploding mobile phones, vapes... Good ones have good quality cells & robust protection & charging circuits but that's (partly) why genuine batteries cost what they do - because they are FULL of expensive protection & idiot-proofing. Also 99% of the cheaper ones for sale from the far east exaggerate massively about their capacity.

I've got a couple of black top ones that fell into my lap for free, I think you can get uprated seals for them... however my original red top one has been going strong for many years now so the others have remained on the shelf.

Garden sprayers don't like brake cleaner, it somehow eats everything, even the legit Swarfega brake cleaner spray bottles don't last, Wurth are the only ones that have ever lasted for me.

I thought I recognised those from the top of a CCTV camera and thus also the top of an ambulance... Been up there a decade now with no issues.

Your batteries will be fine, it's the other way round that's the risk - non-genuine batteries from the far east are at best consistently massively exaggerating their capacity and at worst will burn your house down. Project Farm and Torque Test Channel on youtube have done a LOT of these tests. That said I took the leap and spent a whole £30 on a fake Makita impact driver that came with two "3 Ah" batteries recently, although I've not had much chance to use them yet.

Have to say if I had the money I'd probably sooner spend it on something like this than a brand new whatever costing a similar amount. Given you can spec almost anything JLR make or a Grenadier up to this price or beyond, I suspect this RRC will outlive them all.

Nige isn't there a good video of you testing it out in a gulley at Hogmoor or similar?

I'm the same with other stuff, some folks can really master things whereas my brain loses interest right about the time I'm just barely competent enough to make whatever it was I was trying to make... I envy those internet folks with spotlessly clean lathes and organised workshops but that never seems to happen for me

No to disparage his skills in any way but as Jez was fond of saying - no-one is born knowing that stuff, most folks can learn most things if they give it a go. Especially these days when we have a thousand Youtube videos on anything you can think of. Obviously there's a fair bit of skill at play too, and not everyone has the aptitude for everything, but folks often tell themselves "I couldn't do that" for no reason.

Hampshire police ran a couple of officers through the HGV licence and sent out a truck cab with two police in it with a video camera cruising up & down the motorways just being nosey, the stuff they caught truckers doing because no-one can see up into the cab was shocking... they gave the best ones to the local news to get the word out too.

Nah, I've seen "normal" people, they scare me. Far better off in the shed! Oh I forgot to add one for 2024: A hell of a lot of dicking about with my new 3D printer as well as getting better at using my 2023 major purchase of a small Warco mill. Having had easy access to a 3D printer at the old office I didn't realise how many things I would find myself thinking "Oh I could just 3D print a thing...", there's a whole slew of projects that have been waiting for its arrival.

As Ross says, thoroughly deserved - there was a time in the early days when there were a lot of really novel builds going on with a lot of knowledgeable folks throwing in great technical observations and tips, but a lot of those folks moved on or the builds finished, this has been a very welcome return to those days of really great technical stuff that sets this place apart. If nothing else it's a reminder to the rest of us that it's all just metal and you can do a hell of a lot with it in a suburban garage with a bit of determination.

@miketomcat you'd be referring to Spag's "The Roughest V8Mini Deathtrap In The World": http://www.spagweb.com/v8mini/doris/index.htm And here's the transverse straight six metro at Gaydon:

First hand experience is that an LM1117 or similar will struggle with automotive voltage as normal charging voltage (14.4v ish) is VERY close to its operating limit (so any spikes or other wobbles will exceed it) and it's dissipating a lot of heat do drop 9-11v across itself (classic linear regulator problem), you don't have to be using it very hard to hit the thermal limit pretty quickly. There's nice little switch-mode modules all over eBay for peanuts that will be more efficient, you can always chain one into the linear regulator so the switcher does the heavy lifting and the LDO just does the last little bit to make it properly smooth but without having to dissipate all the power.

It's about to be 3... Anyway, my daily is a nice sensible supercharged Mini

If BL can build a 6-cylinder Metro prototype I reckon someone could fit an M57 in a Freelander

Proper thermostats have a small bleed hole at the top to push any air bubbles out of / let a very small amount of coolant past, but as PaulC says while the engine's cold the coolant is blocked from flowing (other than through the heater core) because you want the thing to get up to temperature, that's literally why they fit a thermostat - because a cold or over-cooled engine / oil is not good.