cotleigh crasher

Do you mean the new one I've just fitted? To what end? The problem is that they're in Blackpool, I'm in Devon, there's obviously postage etc involved and all the time my car is off the road. Time is of the essence, its going to be at least the middle of next week before I get the replacement fitted as it is.

Thanks Guys The alternators are similar but not identical so I guess a regulator swap is off the menu. I'll get in touch with the suppliers first thing in the morning and arrange a return. What a pain in the A*@%. Never mind, these things are sent to try us. Thanks for the info Great help as always.

Update: I just tried disconnecting the little box thingy, no difference. Disconnect the small wire from alternator (which goes to the charge light I believe?) light goes out Tested the voltage at the battery: 12.4 volts engine off, 14.9 volts engine running. Voltage at alternator = 14.9 volts So all seems to be well apart from the charge light being on all the time. Confused.com. Help!!!

Hi All My alternator failed a couple of days ago, bearings self-destructed. Got a new 100 amp one off a well known auction site, fitted it today, everything seemed fine, then about 2 miles into my journey the charge light came on, flickered at first then stayed on. The ammeter needle rises up to 3/4 up the scale, as usual, when I start the engine. I've checked the belt for slipping, checked the wiring is still connected etc. all ok Any suggestions anyone? Also, on my old alternator there was a small box attached to a wire, connected to the third terminal. What is this? I refitted it to the new alternator, should I have? Thanks in advance. Ralph

Hi First thing, is it drinking oil? There will always be a little bit of oil in the intake/turbo, just a fine misting. You could try disconnecting the engine breather pipe from the air intake ducting (it may go into the air filter box), blank off the hole in the ducting with something that won't get sucked into the turbo, gaffer tape would do as its only temporary, see if it still happens. if it does, its probably your turbo pumping oil into the engine which is burning it as fuel. Simple fix, change the turbo. If it doesn't, its probably oil vapour being blown out of the breather and into the intake, result as above. If this is the case you will see it blowing out of the breather pipe. Difficult fix, engine probably knackered. A simple bodge is to run the breather into a catch tank (plastic bottle cable tied to the wing) and permanently plug up the hole in the intake ducting. It won't fix a knackered engine but it will stop it burning its own oil and running fast. If neither of the above applies, its probably your injector pump playing up. Don't fiddle with it, take it to someone who knows. Ralph

Just looked at the link again (Doh!) Mine were brand new, not used at all except from the transporter into the garage. 20 yards probably. Ralph

Sorry Just looked at the link above. Exactly what I bought. (note to self......must pay more attention) Ralph

When I bought my 110 last year it had some hideously worn tyres on the original rusty rims (tubed) I was faced with a similar dilemma to what you're facing now. limited choice, all for a high price. On a well known auction site I found a set of 'take off's', which are apparently wheels fitted to a defender for delivery, these are then replaced with alloys of the customers choice and the garage ends up with a pile of spare wheels and tyres. Mine are standard steel (white) wheels with Michelin Latitude tubeless tyres, which seem to be pretty good all-rounders, though I must confess I haven't done much off-roading, but what I have done, they've been ok. They are excellent on the road, quiet and grip well. I got a set of 5 new tubeless rims with new Michelin tyres for £550 including delivery. Not a bad deal I reckon. Worth a look at. Ralph

Hi I don't know about the quality of the rivets, but don't make the mistake I made. On refixing some body panels recently I inadvertantly used some rivets with steel centres (the bits that snap off) and I now have rusty sreaks running down the white paintwork so I now have to drill them out and replace them with all aluminium ones. An easy but annoying mistake to make. Ralph

Update: Fair play to the garage, they changed the master cylinder, no difference. Took the servo off, found the linkage behind all mashed up and about to fall apart, changed the servo, brakes locked up solid. After a lot of buggering about, realised too much fluid in the system due to the amount of slack in the old linkage, drained some off and bingo, brakes. They worked until 9:00pm to get it sorted for me to go away and true to thier word, they did. The problem seems to be that a previous owner or garage changed the servo but fitted ordinary nuts & washers instead of nylocks, they subsequently came undone and allowed the linkage to slop around causing huge amounts of wear & bending of the pushrod. My garage bleeding the brakes took it to its limit and it finally gave up the ghost, so its not really thier fault that things failed, but they are definitely at fault for passing it and allowing me to drive it away like that. Anyway, a happy ending. went away friday night, had a great weekend, just got back, still got brakes. Ralph

Result ! I visited the garage this morning, complained firmly but politely to the manager, who looked suitably ashen faced when I mentioned that his tester had passed a car with dodgy brakes, he apologised profusely and has now picked up the Landy to fit a new master cylinder and sort out the brakes free of charge. I should bloody well think so! Yet another example of what a mockery the current MOT test is. Thanks for your support chaps. Looks like I'm going away tonight after all.

Thanks guys Its got discs all round, so it isn't adjustment. I also think it is the master cylinder thats given up so I'm going back to the garage this morning to kick up, they should never have passed it like that. The problem is that its my local garage and I don't want to 'burn my bridges' completely, I may need them one day. But I am going to talk seriously to them about their standard of work, maybe get them to supply a cylinder FOC as an apology. Looks like I'm not going away tonight as planned!

I have looked at all the bleed nipples and they have obviously all been undone. I don't beleive they actually had trouble bleeding the brakes, I think they mistook the excessive pedal travel for air in the system, but thats clearly not the case as the pedal won't 'pump up', it just stays soft and ineffective. I've just thrown a small fortune at it and I'm reluctant to take it back to the garage for them to deny any responsibility and just fit a load of new parts and charge me another small fortune for the priviledge. What worries me most is that they passed it with 50% brake efficiency and a pedal that goes to the floor! The brakes passed ok when it first failed on everything else,so I can only think that something has happened to the master cylinder in the process of them changing the pipes. The difficult bit is going to be proving that they caused the problem.

Hello again everyone. Well, things have gone from bad to worse here and I'd appreciate some advice/confirmation. The 110 now has a valid (?) MOT, but the lord only knows how. I'll start at the beginning so it makes some sense........ When I took it to the garage after sorting out all the previous MOT woes, the brakes worked fine, there was a fair bit of travel on the pedal but they were powerful and it stopped on the proverbial sixpence. The garage changed the front brake pipes and flexi's and did the re-test, which it passed. They said they had some problems bleeding the brakes and noted on the MOT certificate that the brakes only had 50% efficiency and that there was too much travel on the pedal. Well, the brakes are now absolutely .......I beleive the phrase used on this site is 'ploppy plop plops', An emergency stop is completely out of the question, I'd be quicker sending the brakes a telegram! Also the pedal now goes 3/4 of the way to the floor before anything happens, and if I hold my foot on the pedal with the engine running it slowly goes down to the floor. It doesn't pump up with the engine off, so its not air in the system, and the pedal falls slightly when I start the engine so I presume the servo is working ok, theres a pretty healthy vacuum at the end of the pipe. I phoned the garage and they said 'bring it back and we'll bleed the brakes again', but I really don't want to take it back again, I don't trust them anymore, this whole MOT business has been a right fiasco, it took them 3 days to bugger up my brakes and they messed up my air filter set-up in the process. Another thing, previously when I stopped the engine it used to hiss gently for a couple of seconds, now silence, not even a slight hiss. I'm guessing that the master cylinder has given up the ghost? Anyone any better ideas? Please help, I'm getting close to putting a match under it! if only diesel would burn!!! Ralph

Hello again everyone. Well, things have gone from bad to worse here and I'd appreciate some advice/confirmation. The 110 now has a valid (?) MOT, but the lord only knows how. I'll start at the beginning so it makes some sense........ When I took it to the garage after sorting out all the above woes, the brakes worked fine, there was a fair bit of travel on the pedal but they were powerful and it stopped on the proverbial sixpence. The garage changed the front brake pipes and flexi's and did the re-test, which it passed. They said they had some problems bleeding the brakes and noted on the MOT certificate that the brakes only had 50% efficiency and that there was too much travel on the pedal. Well, the brakes are now absolutely .......I beleive the phrase used on this site is 'ploppy plop plops', An emergency stop is completely out of the question, I'd be quicker sending the brakes a telegram! Also the pedal now goes 3/4 of the way to the floor before anything happens, and if I hold my foot on the pedal with the engine running it slowly goes down to the floor. It doesn't pump up with the engine off, so its not air in the system, and the pedal falls slightly when I start the engine so I presume the servo is working ok, theres a pretty healthy vacuum at the end of the pipe. I phoned the garage and they said 'bring it back and we'll bleed the brakes again', but I really don't want to take it back again, I don't trust them anymore, this whole MOT business has been a right fiasco, it took them 3 days to bugger up my brakes and they messed up my air filter set-up in the process. Another thing, previously when I stopped the engine it used to hiss gently for a couple of seconds, now silence, not even a slight hiss. I'm guessing that the master cylinder has given up the ghost? Anyone any better ideas? Please help, I'm getting close to putting a match under it! if only diesel would burn!!! Ralph

I quite agree, one test a year is quite enough. Good idea to have a completely independent organisation do the testing, though Maverik is right, far too organised for a UK government to adopt, it makes much more sense to blunder on with the broken system we already have. Whenever our goverment tries something new they usually make a complete hash of it........they'd probably contract Kwik-Fit to do the testing !!!! Can you imagine?

It just goes to show how pointless the mot test really is. The certificate becomes a worthless (but expensive) piece of paper as soon as you drive the car away from the test station. There must be a better way to ensure that the car is roadworthy and give some peace of mind to buyers. Rant over (for now!)

I would, but I haven't got the pipe, fittings, flaring tools, time or inclination! I've still got to finish the body crossmember, weld up the chassis and change the track rod ends, oh, and I've gone down with man-flu now...oh joy! No, I never expected it to be maintenance free, but I didn't expect it to be a full-time job either. My other half didn't recognise me when I came in from the garage last night, she'd forgotten what I looked like!!! I admit that it will be hugely satisfying once it passes, what worries me is what its going to fail on next year? Incidentally, its interesting to note that last year,(4k ago, previous owner) it passed with two advisories, a worn tyre and corroded brake discs..........dodgy MOT, never!

Oh, and the rear 'A' frame balljoint, what a b*****d of a job that was!

Hi All Well, the saga continues...... After curing the smoking problems by changing the cylinder head, I started to love my 110 CSW again. Then came the dreaded MOT time. The tester spent an hour and a half doing the test and a further half an hour writing it up. I thought that maybe he was just a slow typist but it seems that there really was half an hours' typing to do! Four pages! He then spent 5 minutes sweeping up all the rust from the testing bay! Good news.....it passed the emissions test Bad news......it failed on just about everything else! Track rod ends, sidelights, brake hoses, brake pipes, body mounts, body crossmember, seat belt mounts, rust holes in chassis leg, handbrake contaminated with oil from drive flange, etc etc. The list of advisories was just as long. AND, he had the bloody cheek to call it a horseshoe !!! So, my bank holiday weekend has been spent under the Landy changing the drive flange, handbrake shoes, body mounts, body crossmember and patching holes in the rear floor which appeared when I took out the old crossmember. What a horrible job changing the body crossmember. Every bolt was rusted up solid and either snapped off (good) or rounded off and had to be cut off (bad). Lying on my back on the garage floor, rust and mud raining down, in my eyes, down my neck and up my nose! The garage was right, there is no way to replace it without cutting it in half, I spent an hour trying! Who was the complete idiot that designed the chassis with so many dirt & rust traps, I can't believe the amount of mud I've dug out of all the nooks & crannies, revealing a nice rusty hole behind. My welder is going to be so busy next weekend! So, tomorrow night I'll be fitting the new crossmember, then I have the track rod ends to do, then weld up the chassis, refix the body panels I've had to remove, then to the garage next Monday to have the brake pipes renewed and re-test. With any luck it'll pass this time and I can start to enjoy it again. Ah! the joys of owning a 22 year old Defender eh! Ralph

A quick update: I renewed the temp sender and everything seems normal now, temp gauge reading bang in the middle. Also, bottom hose gets hot first, top hose gets hot when thermostat opens. Thanks again to you all for your advice, as usual, spot on. Ralph

The 300 is a retro-fit (it was originally a 200) so presumably there was a reading problem between the sender and gauge, this could explain the apparent hot running? Is it just a question of changing the gauge to a 300 gauge or is it more complicated than that, i.e. does the wiring need modifying? Any idea what the part number is for the correct gauge? Thanks

Bleed screws ??? what bleed screws? I'm only aware of the filler on the thermostat housing.

Thanks guys This kinda makes sense, the top hose does get hot after a decent run but it never seems to get quite as hot as the bottom hose. As far as the running hot is concerned, it never enters the red, the gauge just settles a needles width below the red and stays there, quite reliably. The electric fan only kicks in on the rarest of occasions (its set on the lowest setting), usually only on a hot day after a slow run. I have changed the thermostat (with the new head) and its just the same. Something that has baffled me though, I have discovered a tiny diode like thingy in the cable from the temp sensor in the thermostat housing, its only attached by the wires twisted on and I can't imagine why it should be there. I'm wondering if its affecting the reading on the gauge. Anyone come across this sort of thing?

Hi Folks After changing the head on my 300tdi defender I noticed that the coolant seems to be flowing in the wrong direction. The bottom hose gets hot first and remains hotter than the top hose. I always thought that the top hose got hot first, cooled through the rad, the back to the engine via the bottom hose. I wondered whether the pump may be runing backwards but to reverse it the belt would be running with its ribbed side against a smooth pulley. I've not altered the belt run since I've had it , its always run a bit hot, at the top end of normal, just below the red. Can somone tell me which direction the pump pulley should turn, clockwise or anti clockwise? Is it normal for the bottom hose to get hot first? Anyone got a picture of the auxiliary belt run please. Ralph