FridgeFreezer

Having just come into freelander ownership for a lot less than 8k I can't offer any great pearls of wisdom. I would say though, that "avoid the petrol ones" could be ignoring a bargain. Most people know about the head gasket problem and write them off, I would find a decent independent garage who will do a head gasket for cheap and see how it stacks up - the later head gaskets and proper coolant are supposed to pretty much cure the problem so you could get a much cheaper vehicle just because people are scared of the problem. Oh and you can (and should) test drive stuff that's on eBay, any seller who doesn't let you do that I would ignore. Same as any other sales method, you need your head screwed on to avoid the dodgy dealers but it's no worse than anything else IMHO. My uncle (who used to be a trader) has bought his last 3 cars from eBay and all have been bargains.

You nasty man I have to agree though, if I'd just hacked a big hole in the side of my car, cable-tying a pipe out of the way would not cause me emotional trauma. That is, of course, if it's not a genuine fault with the kit, which it could be. Mind you, if I'd just paid over a ton for a glorified drainpipe I'd want it to arrive with a hot cup of tea and a trained monkey to fit it for me. My coat? Why thank you!

My prats book says RTC5089 but it may be superceded as mine only covers up to '91. A good alternative is to upgrade to a GM one, my RR has this and has been running a stoopidly powerful sports coil on this system without problems. BTW the smear of grease nige mentions on the body should actually be heat-sink compound (like when you mount a cooling fan on your PC's CPU) also known as thermal grease. It's not critical but if you've got some it's preferable to just grease. Maplins sell little syringes of it for pennies, or I can post you one FOC.

I'm quite surprised you got a reply TBH, a lot of companies seem to ignore e-mails altogether.

Under a heavy landing you'd have to assume the bump stop compressed totally I think. The 1-ton shackles are about 1" longer, your tape measure should tell you everything you need to know.

Yes, they don't have a good rep from what I've seen. You can shave the bottom off a salisbury to give the same or better clearance than a Rover. For a back axle IMHO they're a no-brainer.

Beats most power stations any day.

Andy - all you have to do is ask I'll wave a tape measure about in the 109 and get back to you. Hell, I can bring it to the next committee meet and you can clamber about in it yourself. I'm about Saturday if you want to come over and measure / take pics.

Speaking to Mr Banfield about his J**p it was a lot of car for the money, relative to a similar RR for example, but the price of bits was just shocking, some parts were at least 10x the price of genuine LR parts, one I remember was he had a new steering bar and it cost him £400 or something silly. LR/RR may not be great but at least there's a plentiful supply of bits. Also bear in mind a lot of J**ps use leaf springs at least on the rear.

You can get a decent car for less than £10k, a decent used Mondeo / Vectra / 406 / Golf etc. should be easy to find under £5k and pretty reliable. OK a few more bits might need fixing compared to a brand spanker, but that's countered by the initial saving and not having to get it done at a main dealer. As for car park cred, just play the anti-fashion card - if your life is so empty you have cupholder envy then things are bad. You could go ultra-chap and buy a £250 beater and just replace it every year or whenever it broke - then it doesn't matter if it breaks, if you spill coffee on the seats, it gets scraped in the car park - hell you can change your car every time the ash tray is full for the price of the yearly depreciation on a new car.

Options, options; - Fit EDIS (controlled by either MegaJolt or MegaSquirt) to the V8 and have waterproof ignition and switchable timing tables for petrol & LPG. Better power, more economy, tunable, nice burbling noise B) If your V8 is carbs, converting to EFi would also up power/driveability and economy. - Spend a huge amount of money on a TGV and end up with good power, slightly improved MPG, and spend all your life replacing drivetrain components. - Buy a non-electronical TDi and tweak fuel pump / add big intercooler etc. for usable power/economy - Buy an electronic TDi and spend money on chips etc. - Stick a non-Land Rover lump in and be a dirty heathen. For the price of a TGV you could have an LS1 on the more sensible side, there are some good Japanese lumps that can be fitted. Personally in something relatively light like a 90 I can't help but wonder what would happen if you fitted something modern like a 2.0 Zetec lump, probably has more power than a V8. It really depends what you want and how the numbers/logistics stack up for your use of the vehicle, depth of pockets, size of tool collection, etc.

Buy a £500 diesel shed for commuting / dog walking, it will get far better MPG than almost anything Land Rover and serve as handy backup if the LR breaks or you want to take it off the road for a bit to work on it. There was a discussion of this just recently here. Spend all the money you save on the Land Rover. As Tony says, you can get a TDi lump for £500 and it will bolt in place with minimal fettling. Do a search, it's been covered many times before.

ADFM = a typo for AFM = Air Flow Meter TPS = Throttle position sensor, the little black lump with three wires (red, yellow, green) on the side of the plenum. Green is GND, yellow should be +5v and the red wire should have 0.283 volts (I think) on it at idle/closed throttle and rise smoothly as you open the throttle. Any jumps or drops mean it's knackered. A resistor is a basic electronic component that (you may be surprised to hear) has a resistance to the flow of electricity. The coolant sensor varies it's resistance with temperature, which the ECU measures. Replacing the sensor with a fixed resistor means you are fooling the ECU into thinking your engine is up to temperature. JW is not quite right, if you stick a resistor in place of the coolant sensor and the engine runs fine, then the wiring isn't faulty but the sensor probably is. If you want to be really sexercisey, splash out on a 5Kohm variable resistor which will let you dial in a range of temperature values. It may cost a whole pound, compared to 1p for a normal resistor. Hell, I'll post you one FOC if you like.

Or dry sump it, or raise the engine a bit? Just how big is this engine you're trying to fit?

That may be your problem Since you say (in your other thread) it was running fine till it got muddy I can't believe something like the cam timing has suddenly "gone wrong"

Erm, exsqueeze me? What exactly are you expecting to happen when half the ECU's inputs are missing and you have done the equivalent of putting a brick on the accelerator? Lucky it didn't catch and rev itself to pieces.

You may experience axle wrap and my general disapproval of SOA conversions Why do you have to move the axles down?

Measure on the ohms (or K ohms) scale, the sensor has two contacts and your meter has two leads, polarity isn't important.

You can measure it yourself to see if it looks right: 2 Celcius = 4000 ohm 74 Celcius = 362 ohm 94 Celcius = 212 ohm The full range is in this text file, ignore the extra columns.

Some amps are on the side of the dizzy, some are under the coil. All suffer from heat-related faults (IE fail when warmed up). Coolant sensor if it fails will usually fail either reading dead cold or really hot, so you'll either be massively rich when warm or massively lean when cold. Stepper motor controls the idle speed, if that's not the problem then don't worry as they're £££. Apparently there is a universal one in the US that fits in its place and costs a lot less.

For the squealing, is the belt tight enough? I had to tension mine quite a bit to stop it squealing on full lock. You should hear it load up and then the pressure relief valve will hiss when you hit full lock.

Me too - it supplies enough for my 4.6 V8

A good day, bit quiet but then the day had been on/off/on/moved a bit due to F&M so good to see people turning up at all really! About 20 trucks in total I think. Brilliant weather, this global warming malarky gets my vote wonder if we're gonna get a really cold/snowy start to 2008? As usual - anyone with photos please send them to photos@shirelrc.com. The new tyres (37x12.50 Creepy Crawlers ) worked nicely, don't think I got stuck once (although I came close), and managed to do stuff that I don't think is usually possible, like doing a 3-pointer (to recover Ryan) in the deep ruts along the bottom of the site. I did fail a couple of hill climbs but that was mainly out of mechanical sympathy. Also I really must adjust my front locker actuator as it seems very intermittent - I don't think I actually set it up properly before Russia (since it wasn't plumbed in then it wasn't an issue) so a quick tinker may be in order. Feel sorry for Miketomcat who managed to break a front shaft in about 3 minutes of playing A few pics from Ryan: Jules stuck - this is a nasty section unless you have a short wheelbase or your car bends in the middle Good action shot: Ryan copying Jules, 8" less wheelbase but similar result: Yours truly deciding against a rather damaging descent (hmm, rock sliders needed perhaps?): Considering it's wet chalk with some clay on top I was well pleased with the crawlers climbing the bank behind me, in fact I was kinda wishing they wouldn't grip so much so that the rear end would slide round a bit! Hmmm, fiddle brakes perhaps... Next SLRC event is a play day and fun challenge at Bunny Lane on the 25th November, hope to see everyone there.

Yes If you're talking standard filters, find a filter & airbox that are from a vehicle of similar or greater power, and that has an outlet of convenient size. If you can find a LR one all the better as it makes buying replacement filters cheaper & easier.

Try swapping the ignition amp, they often fail in a heat-related fashion. If it's the type that sits under the coil you can replace it with a GM one for about £25 'cos new ones are £eeek