Ed Poore

What's your budget? I know of a Ford 655 (I think it's a 655 he's selling not his 550) that might be up for sale if he can convince himself to do it. Extremely well looked after and just had a load of work done on it that wasn't really necessary.

Different filaments would easily be suitable I'd have said. After all @simonr 3d printed some air intake bits (if I'm remembering correctly) for @Mo Murphy's M57 conversion. @Retroanaconda if you want post up some fag packet drawings of what you want or at least some dimensions I can knock up a 3D model for you. Other people have far more capable printers than I do so I'd recommend someone else printing them. Alternatively I have a slab of 40 or 50mm thick delrin somewhere which is a lovely thing to machine.

I got some treasure this morning. No wait I gave up some treasure this morning... Needed a 250Nm torque wrench for the JCB engine and surprisingly Dad had a meter that went to 360Nm so used that. Cue two days later and I now need a torque wrench capable of 410Nm. So some treasure was given up and a meter (3/4" drive in, 3/4" drive out with beepy buttons) capable of 1000Nm was delivered, along with a 3/4" breaker bar and an impact set of adapters and the required 36mm 12 point 3/4" drive socket. Stupid Range Rover hub... Haven't even unboxed them yet.

It's a nice idea but it takes time, we had a great example of this in my old job one of our customers had a directive from on high in the government of that country that they wanted all stuff relating to their area of work sourced in-country rather than from overseas. It was admittedly a very niche and extremely small market but our customer responded with "okay, but are you willing to go back 10-15 years in capability?". The higher-ups were very put out and demanded an explanation and the response was "That's how far ahead of the rest of the world this little team of 50 odd engineers based in the UK are, we can do it but you'll need to give us a couple of decades to source the talent and catch up". Needless to say we were rather chuffed.

Rough ball park when I dug out the back behind the house to extract some shale (and provide a hole for a future garage) was roughly 250 tonnes. It was a conservative 7.5x7.5x3m hole (in terms of measurements).

I would have had one had they been created when I was in the market for one. As it was I ended up getting the little Husky. By all accounts the Milwaukee runs rings around the Sthil offering and is ahead of the Husqvarna by quite a way. Basically Husky and Sthil don't have the investment that Milwaukee do in a battery platform or motors so that's where it's pulling ahead quite substantially.

Just to throw an offer in there but I have a couple of contacts who I might be able to coerce into doing the boring free of charge or very cheaply.

I wouldn't wish that upon him. Revs nicely (and high for a diesel) but gutless torque - at least trying to drag the 6x6 around. In a lightweight with very short gearing perhaps. I had to drop to low first with an 18ft Ifor behind it with what amounted to most of a scrap P38 distributed between the 6x6 and the trailer and only just made it up the hill then... SL35 on the other hand - if we can find a cheap replacement V8 for the 6x6 perhaps...

I'm not sure a 300 offers that much more although on paper there's an appreciable amount of extra torque. Perhaps a VNT for the 200 to get the power kicked in sooner would be a decent compromise. Rebuild the 200 and find a VNT that would suit the 200. That's the biggest improvement on the TGV compared to the 300 I think.

@Mo Murphy just did a 200Tdi to M57 swap so will have up to date figures. He had a bit of a healthier budget than Mike and was going auto but I think I can safely say that it was a damn sight more than rebuilding a 200Tdi. I doubt he regrets it but it ended up costing more than even he initially planned on.

If you've got the option for a block and tackle or chain hoist then go for it Jon. I find it far more controllable than the engine crane, I've got a reasonably built but Chinese engine crane and it does the job but they're unwieldy to move around, mine folds up reasonably well but is always in the way. Even with a relatively small and lightweight engine in a Tdi or 1UZ it's creaking about. It can just about manage the Perkins from. The JCB which is 500kg. They never have enough reach either. Chain hoist off the JCB is far more pleasant to work with. If you can set up a gantry then that would be way better in my opinion. Pillar drills as Mike says are invaluable. I reckon a pillar drill, welder, lathe and grinder and you can make whatever you need. A suitable scrap pile as well is invaluable. I recently acquired some off cuts of round bar up to about 5" diameter, previously pushing out bushes from radius arms felt a little sketchy although I never had an issue. Last time I did it a few months back I made a proper tool out of that stock on the lathe (basically just skimmed off a few mm from the nearest matching bar) and it made the bushes a doddle and far safer.

With regards to the 400Nm I'd say that's generally okay for undoing nuts that have just been done up etc. My little M12 stubby is almost there at 340Nm and I'd say anything above M12ish (seized) is going to be pushing it. Removing seized suspension bolts on the P38 I scrapped I generally used my second gen M18 Hi Torque which is 1800Nm nut busting torque. That's not found a bolt it's struggled on, it'll either shear it or get it off. Quality and fit of sockets becomes critical at that point. Batteries also come into play, it is noticeably more powerful on 5Ah batteries than smaller, haven't tried it on my 12Ah battery actually. Biggest problem with it is it's physically a monster so there aren't many places on a LR where you can fit it in. I've got the extended reach M12 ratchet and it's great for restricted access. The starter bolts on the JCB are a pig to access (the original starter required a special CV jointed socket to remove them), there is an access hatch but not enough to get a decent amount of rotation on a ratchet. The ratchet goes in and if the motor torque (not massive) can't shift it you use it as a normal ratchet, once cracked off you can then whizz it off with the motor. I did see some review which pointed out that not all colours were made equal. I think the yella offering you risked breaking it if the motor couldn't spin it off, I.e. Unlike the Milwaukee you couldn't lean on it and abuse it like a normal ratchet. I think the Milwaukee was less powerful but had a smaller head and was genuinely a motorised ratchet so if it couldn't undo it with the motor you cracked it off by hand and then kicked in the motor. The other offering if you did that then it stripped the head. The most useful one I have is the M12 stubby, it's really small particularly with a 2Ah battery in it, light and fits in lots of spaces.

A friend does that as well. The problem is at the moment IBCs are bloody expensive for just log crates. He got them all when farmers were throwing them away.

Our neighbour has the right idea. He brought up probably 600 tonnes of firewood up from the fields. Chainsaw through the big boughs until he could pick them up. PTO sawbench and splitter onto the concrete yard. Bucket on the tractor to pick them up and tip them into the top end of the cattle barn. When he wanted a load for the fireplace drove the tractor, picked up a bucket and then tipped them into two log baskets to carry into the house (in the bucket).

Modify the log splitter so you can put the bucket under it. When I use the big saw bench I put the JCB bucket right up next to it so that logs just fall straight into it from the bench. I really wish I'd put an access hatch in the roof of the log shed so I could simply tip logs into the top. Would have saved all the double handling.

I think there's the crux of the matter "refreshing", it's something new. I've not driven a tesla, nor been in one but I did have a Jag on hire which had moved most of the functions to the screen and I hated it. The main reason was it was badly executed but a decent chunk of it was having to look down to find things. It's personal preference but I like stuff I don't have to look at to turn on and off. I recently built a new bespoke controller for a big sheet metal controller and the screen I used came with a touch controller. It wasn't used and a completely new PCB made to mount some physical buttons on it because again it just wasn't appropriate not being able to push buttons.

It massively depends on how long said bucket has been sat there. It's the fumes on petrol that are the most flammable. I poured some on a bonfire to get it going but forgot to get the blowtorch ready and nearby. Suffice to say that it was rather explosive when lit, done it previously immediately after pouring and it's not a nonevent but nowhere near leaving it sit for a few minutes.

Yes. I was thinking in terms of revs rather than speed.

Short answer yes. The speedo takes its measurement from the back of the transfer box so it "doesn't know" about any changes downstream of it - basically tyres and diffs. Larger tyres should make the speedo "over read" a little as for the same revolution of the transfer box the vehicle travels a little further. Going from a 3.54 to 3.75 means that the transfer box how has to turn the propshaft a little bit more to achieve one revolution of the wheels so should cause the speedo to "under read" slightly. If you want more precise answers it's some basic maths.

The article says that the portals were used in another "top class winch vehicle".

I'll usually stop and see if I can offer help. Usually get an odd look and questions from the driver when I'm pushing it by hand rather than using the Defender or Range Rover to pull them. I usually reply with "do you know where your towing eye is?". "Um..." To which my response is usually well, no offence but usually people are muppets in driving in the snow and ice and all it needs is a little push to get you going again. The only time I've regularly towed people was a hill near my old house in Surrey. I was trying to get through to get to the vet to pick up wormer for the dogs and everything was blocked. Thankfully there were a couple of sensible people so we had three people on the junction stopping people causing more carnage, there were three other people walking down the hill getting people ready to be towed up. One group of four or five pushing the smaller cars up and then a Disco and myself towing the bigger ones up. That just about worked but it did require three people helping car owners find their towing eyes.

Damn, if I'd seen this earlier I'd have done the work I now need to do tomorrow today. We're not massively far from Strata in the grand scheme of things. If you fancied an alternative there's some spectacular lanes nearer us in Brechfa. More fun than Strata but not as scenic (in some ways).

I think electricity is avoiding him...

It's my super secret spy name. Ah ****....

Bear in mind what you have there is the fuse box for a very high end car with lots of electrics. The engine itself is pretty self contained as it was fitted to a bunch of cars so Toyota by and large tried to simplify it by having only two connectors to deal with - the big Main Engine Harness connector that provides power etc. to various engine related things and then the fourth connector on the ECU for it's required comms.