streaky

Thanks Jon. I wish I had a Rover specific article though....fussy git arn't I. The job I have to do involves removing the rear ARB diff locker and fitting new bearings. Whilst the diff is out I want the workshop to check all of the settings, back lash, pre-load, meshing of the R&P etc. When the Ring gear was fitted to the new Locker it wasn't checked for mesh with the pinion gear...this is what my original post was all about really. I'm not the person doing the work. This will be done by a Filapino at the ARB workshop in Abu Dhabi on Saturday. Having spoke to him on the phone yesterday...he had never heard of checking the mesh of the R&P using Engineers blue hence my post. I'm not the expert in these matters but I am probably a dammed sight better at reading instructions that he is. My experaince when working with these people is that they usually have the basics of a job down to a fine art...but when it comes to getting technical they suffer from brain freeze and just start to waffle. I beleive that anyone with basic skills can install a diff fitted with a new ring gear...but the expert will know how to set it up and get maximum life out of it. Do you get my drift? Thanks. S.

Thanks Steve. I've scoured your website but can't find any specific insructions regarding setting up of the R&P. Do you have a link to the page please? Thanks very much. Regards. S.

Here's one that's crossed my mind before I whip the rear diff lock out (again). When fitting a ring and pinion set is it really nessesary to use engineers blue to look for high spots and whitness marks prior to fitting the diff back in? Many installers will say that they've done loads of rear ends and not had a problem with them...but what about 100,000km down the road when the incorrect settings between the R&P have caused premature failure? Will they warrant their workman ship then??? My workshop have said that they will check the pre-load & back lash, but when I asked them about checking the meshing between the R&P they didn't have a clue what I was talking about. Am I being too critical? Thx. S.

It's best done with the large flexible wall ballon tyres...like the Micky Thompsons etc...I tried this method on a quad bikers tyre during the DC once when we couldn't get it back on the rim and succeded in setting the tire alight. Yes it works...as you can see by the video..... but I didn't feel comfortable doing it.

Steve. Is there any reason why you don't just use the standard V8 Defender cowling? I used one on my V8 Defender with LT85 box. My 130 used to have a deisel engine before I fitted the 4.6....so it must be do-able. This is the only picture I could find that shows it. Regards, S.

Thanks for the comments...you're right about the silver bling. I never thought of that. The shovel is a Swedish one made by Fiskars. Aluminium and unbreakable ABS. They are very light weight and make moving sand alot easier than the regular garden center common all garden spade. They also make a five foot long version.

Nice looking truck you've got coming along there but I have a huge concern about your choice of front recovery points. JW Riyadh was involved in a very unfortunate accident in Saudi when a guy used them to tow out a stricken Discovery. To cut a long story short...one of them came adrift from the Discovery and embedded it's self into the skull of a guy sitting in JW's back seat. The unfortunate guy was a mate of mine who suffered a frontal labotamy costing him his job as a nurse and the majority of his senses. Those points are not rated for recovery or anything else come to think of it. FYI. S.

This thread caught my eye some time ago and since then I've been adding to the ICE in the Disco. I picked up some RockFord Fosgate 6.5" 2-ways and component speakers that sound sooooo dammed good I just had to get them inside the Disco some how. My car is a base model Disco without the seperate tweeters in the front door pillars but I was able to get a couple of the pillar trims from my local workshop and remove the puny Rover tweeters. With some fettling with my Dremmel tool and the old faithfull hotmelt glue gun I was able to get the RockFord Tweeters into the factory location with any problems. Next was the fabricate and cover a couple of MDF rings to space the mids out a bit. I had the fettle the door grab handle but that was easy. I have a couple of spare handle if I want to revert the car back to standard trim. They stick out a little more than I'd planned but they have good strong steel grills and the trade off for such great sound quality makes it worth while. The rear 2-way 6.5's are also spaced out by 3/4" inch. I removed the old speaker basket which takes up far too much space behind the rear panel. The rear panels are secured using panel plates and not the plastic puch-in cli[ps that I find break off every time I remove the panel. The RockFord Punch 10" sub is in a custom made MDF enclosure that I tuned with fibre-fill and covered with auto-interior carpet. It's secured with two ratchet straps and transforms the system. Amps are currently 3 x Denon DCA units. Bridged @ 160 watts RMS per corner and 280 watts RMS into the sub. I picked up some PA speaker grills in India for 4 quid each! I have three Rockford Punch amps ready to replace these when I get time but the wiring will take more time than I have available right now....so it will have to wait. Hopefully this will encourage others to fit something abit better than the rather weedy little speakers that Land Rover deemed suitable for in car entertainment.

Thx. The reason I ask is because I am fitting a set of Rockford Fosgate 6.5" components in the front doors and didn't know where to mount the tweeters. My base spec Disco didn't have the 'A Pillar' tweeters but I picked up a pair today complete with the trim panels. At first I was just going to use the plastic mouldings...but then I thought I'd give the Rover Tweeters a go and see how they hold up to 400 watts per channel. If they go bang then I'll use the same plastic A pillar molds and fit the Rockford tweeters in their place. I've looked on the reverse of the Rover items but they don't have any specs on them....just gobaldy gook.

Has anyone used the standard LR door pillar tweeters as part of a stereo upgrade? How much are they rated at in terms of power & KHz? I was thinking of using some as part of a stereo upgrade that I'm doing in the front doors. I have a decent set of mid range component speakers fitted in the doors and now have to locate some tweeters, but if the Rover ones are up to it I might use them instead. Failing that I will cut out the LR ones and fit another type in it's place. Thx. S.

Brian. I have installed the HID auxilery driving lights and was so impressed with them that now I want to replace my head lights with HID items. Be aware that the results will change between various cars because of the differences found in the lens pattern. From what I've learn't the HID lights fitted as original fitment on modern cars utterlise the reflector pattern more than they do the basic clear lens (which is just for protection). IE. Just because the HID lights give good performance on a Range Rover doesn't mean the same lights will perform as well on a Defender. What car did you want to fit them to? I am looking for the same answers for my 300 series Discovery.

I was following a Jeep Wrangler a few weeks ago who'd also gone completely OTT with the checker plate. We were going really slowly in a traffic jam tail back at 9 oclock in the evening...I had my head lights on dip beam and found it really hard to concentrate because my dip beam was being refelcted right back at me by all this bloody checker plate on the back of the Jeep. The stuff he had was the really bright polished stuff that you tend to see on Fire Engines etc...but it looked just as daft as that Landy in the Ebay pics!

That seems to have answered my questions thanks. One think I should add that might be of interest to others. When I first bought the new synthetic rope I thought I'd be a clever clogs and put a few 5 meter indentification marks on the rope by way of white PVC insulation tape. This way I'd have a visual indicator to warn of the last 5 meters on the drum as I was spooling out from inside the truck. The PVC tape made a right mess of the un-tensioned rope on the drum and very nearly caused a wraparound on the drum. Luckily I spotted it in time and avoided a potencial disaster that could have mean't cutting the rope to remove it from the drum. For my 5 meter marker I have now used a dark red water based marker pen which seems to do the job quite nicely. Thanks for the pointers. S.

I changed my steel winch rope over to a synthetic one last year and haven't had the oppertunity to use it much since. But on one of the occasions that I used it I found that the bottom few windings of rope were not as tight as i'd like..... so when I wound the rope in under tension it started to dig into the bottom layers. This made it quite difficult to pull the rope out again. I heard that if you zig zag the rope onto the drum in the first place this will prevent the rope from digging into the previous layers...is this true? What about putting a new synthetic rope onto the drum under tension in the same manner as you would with a steel rope....is this still the correct way to do it? Thx. S.

I'll bring this back to the top by mentioning that QT have sent me a new set of replacement arms by UPS to Dubai at their cost. It simply highlites that they still rank amoungst the UK's reputable suppliers in my book. These new ones are painted...not electroplated like the old ones which are rusted to hell and don't look too pretty. Thanks to QT....top marks. S.

So I changed the seals very carefully for new ones, put the diff back in the axle and the problem still exists. The air is coming out from the axle breather. I checked the seal carrier and copper pipe assembly...looks fine. I also inspected the seals mating surfaces...again they look fine. It seems to be a manufacturing issue with the ARB unit it's self. Any one heard of the ARB units having manufacturing issues? This one is under warranty so I hope ARB Middle East replace it.

Sorry mate...I'm even further away! Good luck all the same. S.

I'm assuming we are talking about the water temp right? The best place to fit a capilery water temp sensor is in-line with the top radiator hose. You'll need a straight through pipe with a screw-in adaptor. Don't X-Eng sell them made from flashy anodised aluminium? This is the only picture I could find showing the location in the top hose.

Thx Steve. Thats all I need to know. S.

I just received a mail from QT regarding the replacement arms that they will soon send me. One question though.....apparently there are two different widths......what is the front bush width? 45mm or 38mm? I don't have the car at the moment to measure up and won't be back from India for 10 days. It's a 98' 300 series. V8. Thx. S.

I can't see much (reads 'none' actually) musical benefit in fitting a second speaker down in the bottom of the door card storage pocket. Your efforts would have been better spent fitting a two way component system with seperate mids and tweeters. I'm currently undergoing a project with a spare set of front door cards to install 6.5" component speakers in the front doors. It's a lot harder than it sounds and will need some custom made fibre glass facia panels. Does any one have a picture of a Discovery 300 front door with the door cards removed? As for fitting speakers underneath seats. This is fine with sub bass because the sound coming from them is non-directional...but from mid range speakers and above it would just be music without any enjoyment to it. The only benefit is as you've mentioned...out of sight. If 'out of sight' is what you want then making speakers invisible by way of speaker covers matching fabrics etc might be the answer? Each to their own I guess. Thx. S.

Or the shortened version. Your reason for not attending either of the shows is you don't want to pay but are willing to try and get in for free.

They have indeed changed Chris. The later type of ARB uses square section twin lip seals and use the wire clip retainer as you've already mentioned.

Quote from Si. "I believe that both camps are 75% likely to implement the idea above of a free day pass for the other show if you turn up at the gate and show your weekend pass for the other". Is there an agreement from both sides that this would be allowed then or is it still gossip with a "where's there's smoke there's fire" ring to it? There are simply so many threads going around on different forums that I can't keep up with it. Maybe someone can give a definative answer to save me from reading every post on the net about it. Thanks. S.

Thanks guys. Spanners...I'm only familiar with the version I have so can't say if it's the earlier or later version. My locking system didn't use the C type lock but that's only relevant to the type of diff isn't it? I think you are correct in saying that my copper pipe went into the bearing carrier though...perhaps this is teh later version then? Steve. Could you find out a bit more about the seals that Ciderman reccomended please? Devon 4x4 sent me two sets of teh square section seals but I wonder of regular O rings would do a better job then? I'm removing the rear diff on Saturday...hopefully it was just bad luck but if it stats to leak again after such a short time I won't be too pleased with ethe ARB design and will look at making small alterations to the seals used. I'll only know the exact fault when the diff is out...it could be something as daft as the copper pipe rubbing against the gears! I'll give updates as I get them. Thanks. S.