FridgeFreezer

Not quite - they're not as aggressive as grizzlys but still perform very well, and for the money I reckon they're great, especially as a first step away from road tyres. Horses for courses, the guy has a stock series and is looking for a bit more grip on a budget, I'd say Colways fit that bill nicely.

TB's can work but I wouldn't bother, the V8 is not really suited IMHO to that kind of mucking about, plus balancing 8 TB's is not my idea of fun. How they'd stand up to mud ingress in all the linkages would concern me. Shopping list - if you can find a good flapper (3.5) setup then that loom is easier to modify, although many of the looms go crusty with age, check the wires aren't brittle or cracked - a telltale area is the wires on the throttle sensor - if you can see bare copper, don't bother. Failing that, the hotwire setup contains more wires but basically that's it - make sure you get ALL the plumbing - in fact buying a whole block with everything on can be a worthwhile investment of £50-£100. If you can find a knackered 3.9 with everything intact that would be good. If you want to make your own loom, then ignore the bits above about looms although all the other hardware remains the same. The 3.9 injectors & fuel rail are a better design than the 3.5 but there's not much else to choose between them, either will work and the rest of the assembly is basically the same give or take a bit of plumbing. If you are getting rid of the distributor, you'll need an EDIS-8 unit (I have some, forum price £40) and a trigger wheel to bolt to the crank. For the crank sensor and coil packs, get to the scrappy and rob a few Fords - get VR sensors, coil packs AND BRACKETS (saves time fabricating) plus at least 8 HT leads. While you're at the scrappy, get a lambda sensor (1, 3 or 4-wire) attached to a bit of exhaust, and maybe an air temp sensor as mentioned in Nige's build thread. Then you need an MS ECU - the V3 does what you need and is solid, these are £225 built from either myself or Bill Shurvinton. Bill can sell you a kit of parts instead if that's your bag. If you are splicing into a loom and don't fancy lots of fiddly soldering I can do a "pigtail" of wires ready-soldered to the ECU connector: I find this makes life MUCH easier connecting to the loom. Price depends on length I'd have a good long read of Nige's build thread as it will tell you a lot of what's involved, what problems you can hit, how it all works etc. Nige bought a wideband lambda sensor, these are sort-of a luxury although many consider them a very sound investment for tuning, especially if your engine is worth a few bob.

Running current past the LED's they won't light unless you use a shunt resistance, which will seriously limit the brightness of your lights if it gets near enough resistance to make an LED light. Shunts are also extra complexity, and high-power ones are costly. Running current through the LED's to ground (as your plan seems to suggest) will blow the LED's, tehy are only happy up to ~50mA, maybe a smidge more for the really bright types - but who wants a dashboard of blinding bling when you're trying to drive at night? Why not just walk round the truck with the lights on when you get in or out of it, far cheaper and more reliable All those squillions of cables will be adding resistance and extra points of failure too, I tend to join cables at convenient points and run just a few big earth wires back to the battery or earth point - for example, one for each wing (or light cluster) and one or two for the engine, fans, etc. Keep it simple! Oh and if a bulb fails short circuit the LED won't indicate a fault.

Any of the companies listed in the thread, at a guess

Depending on your thermostat it may not get hot enough without a thrashing, TDi's just don't get hot sitting about.

So do you need 12v into the laptop in a car-type environment? If so, it may be able to put up with in-car direct voltages (~12v-15v), plug in the laptop adapter and measure the voltage on the end with no laptop, it may well drift up to 15v with no load, in which case I'd say go for it and just wire direct from a cig lighter plug to a laptop plug and cut out all the faffing about in the middle. Toughbooks will run on anything from ~9v upwards even though their specs say they need 18.

Bike throttle bodies are no more wiring, you'd have 8 injectors (same as stock) and you only use one throttle sensor (if you use it at all). The fiddle is getting them all balanced and working smoothly, and keeping them that way in the mud. The stock inlet manifold is not perfect but they work well enough and are pretty robust once you've chucked the airflow meter and stock ECU away. MS/MJ Is MegaSquirt / MegaJolt - it's what I run on my 4.6. And my 3.5.

Is this in-car? If it is, just wire 12V direct into the laptop. If not, and you need a 70W mains-to-12v converter, I might know a man... Then again, Maplins have quite a few of each flavour.

Lewis - any 3-doors kicking about with unused tops? Had a few quotes today, considering every freebie leaves the factory with a roof of some sort I can't work out why they're so frickin' expensive best one so far was £200 for a not-perfect commercial hard-top.

Great expense, pah! I'd use Bull Bar Cowboy's system - both fans come on slow, then both fans come on fast - it's what I've got on the 109:

Another vote for colways - not quite as grippy as the others but damned good value, you won't cry if you shred one on a rock, and a bit kinder to your half-shafts and diffs too. Dad runs Colway MT's, I run AT's and they have performed very well considering they're less than £50 per tyre.

First off, before you get carried away - what are you doing and why? If there's a problem with the axle, then post up and people should be able to tell you how to sort it. If you're doing a strip & rebuild then the list changes. You ask where's cheap to buy parts - please note though that some parts are bets bought genuine as the non-genuine ones are made of cheese. Wheel bearings - if it's that bad you should be able to jack the wheel up and rock it, the play should be fairly evident. If the camber really is out (who told you, how was it measured?) then I would wonder if you've bent the axle or stub, have you done anything that might have caused this? (Heavy landing / hitting something fast etc.)

Loosen everything, get it all lined up and then tighten it up again! Depending what you've been doing, if the back end is reasonably unchanged then get the tub bolted in so t he rear X-member is holding it square, then line everything up working forwards. If you've had the bulkhead off, that has some jiggle in it too which will obviously affect the doors (among other things).

What's essential and what's useless depends very much on what sort off-roading you're doing - there are a few universal constants though: Gloves A couple of decent bow shackles A sturdy recovery rope A hi-lift jack (they are lethal but amazingly useful in equal measure) Strong recovery points (JATE rings are cheap and easy but not always the easiest thing to get to when you're stuck) Of course, if you were a member of the Shire LRC you could enjoy PDF's of the series of introductory articles to recovery and off-roading basics...

I suppose, in this example, a "welder buyer's guide" in the tech archive would be the ideal thing - telling people what to look for, which makes are better/worse, how all the knobs and baubles work etc., plus some pictures of different units, and then they can make up their own mind. Of course that assumes someone has the time, knowledge and inclination to write such an article and donate it for free to the forum.

It's insurance, also making people join up in advance as we do has cut down massively on idiots treating it like a site day and turning up with a £50 shed on a trailer. And what would be the point of a club if you didn't have to join it to get the benefit enjoyed by the members?

I might be able to make it, might be able to drag a few Shire LRC marshals along too if you need?

I have the same problem, I've decided to go for sliding doors when I build mine because: - They don't need to swing out, a problem for me as there's nowhere for them to swing - They are easier (IMHO) to support & keep straight, the load is spread along the runners and supporting wheels at the bottom rather than needing a hoofing great hinge & post each side. - There were some travelling ladders & runners in the bin at work I have "recycled" for parts

If there was a single correct answer to a problem, no-one would ever post the question.

Depends how picky your MOT man is and how well you do the job - I can't see it being a problem but then I'd weld 'em on anyway and save mucking about.

I think it's partly LR tolerances - after all the vehicle is 30+ years old and manufacturing standards were different back then. BUT in general, you get what you pay for with aftermarket bits, the cheap stuff is cheap for a reason - it's built quickly and with minimal attention to expensive details like accuracy or quality. I have given up buying anything non-genuine if the part is in any way critical, either in function or fit. Bearings, seals, filters, panels, bushes I just don't think it's worth saving a couple of quid on something that will be rubbish quality as you'll only have to do the job again much sooner, or have a whole load of mucking about to make fit. I have bought non-gen brake pads and discs, and filters, but always branded. The unbranded / own make stuff from Bearmach, Britpart, Allmakes etc. I just don't trust - some people have found good quality stuff in a non-gen box (for example a GKN wheel bearing re-packaged) but it depends on who was selling them cheap that week, next time you might get a chocolate wheel bearing in the same box.

Another vote for what Jez said - cycle it, add a bit for luck (you don't want to tweak the suspension and have to buy a new prop) and then call the propshaft clinic.

There's nothing to pickup - take the top off and it's a pickup, but then it fills with water

I'm sure KAM and Staun would be interested to hear about this, and the nominet rules about malicious domain registration...

In - out is for J**ps.