Ed Poore

Pretty obvious, one 4" OSMUND pipe and a gas pipe...

You laugh, I finally gained access to our second cellar and one of the waste pipes from the downstairs cloakroom runs through the corner of it.

Bunker

You missed a trick with the forklift @FridgeFreezer. Bob mentioned that a mate of his has a similar forklift to the one you sent me - he cut a 10mm road plate and used it as a workbench in the garage because it tucked up neatly. If he needed the forklift he removed the workbench table and used it. Bonus was it was infinitely adjustable in workheight

He has mentioned that in the past - but he's probably been working on it for 30 years.

There are a couple of people on here who have met Bob (@Gazzar springs to mind), he's the friendlies / (semi-) most helpful person you'll ever meet. And there in lies the problem, he's always dropping what he's doing to help the next person - the problem being he never quite finishes helping the first person and never ever gets around to doing his own stuff. When I went to his yard last time the 40ft shipping container which was rammed with transfer cases somehow had managed to squeeze double the amount of stuff inside it. There were two 40fters side-by-side, the plan was to move the now empty one to another spot on the yard and then sort through the transfer case container whilst moving the contents to the new location. I'll keep pestering him but unless I go up there and look for it myself I doubt he'll have the time too - and that's going to involve basically finding all LT230s in his yard and removing the plates to see what gearing they are as he doesn't recall it being labelled up as such

Okay but Sid has a proper transfer box 😆

My 110 did have a good fight with parts of Wales. I think we can say it was a draw, Wales snapped 4 of the 8 bolts holding on the towbar but the 110 did snap a 4ft boulder of Wales in half. Only one of us had to tow the Argocat back to my parents though...

I'd go with the don't bother approach unless you're going to be doing really silly stuff. I mean you're going to be sitting much higher than most Land Rovers are anyway - as long as you don't hit anything at speed then you're unlikely to do any damage. The Southdown guards were 6mm steel but I reckon you could go thinner with some bracing (weld some angle over the top to triangulate it etc). Problem with a belly place is you'd need to be religious about cleaning it out - there's a reason why Land Rover have lots of holes in their chassis (well before they start getting rusty). Dad's Shogun has rotted out and if you look at it the "drain" holes are tiny compared to LR ones and also quite often not in the lowest spot on the chassis . People also seem to have this misconception that aluminium is "lighter" than steel. Yes it's density is lower but if you build the same structure in aluminium as you do in steel then you need substantially thicker aluminium to achieve the same strength, where aluminium allows you to play games is by making lighter structures through clever designs / bracing / triangulation etc.

Well just done a run up the M4 and M5 to collect a boot-full of bits from the annodisers in Birmingham. Filled up in Carmarthen before going and re-filled when I returned, 340 miles of mainly motoway cruising but some heavy traffic in spots, but I was a good boy and stuck to the speed limits, albeit with some lead footedness. The Range Rover indicated 31mpg overall and by my calculations did 29.2mpg so a little variation but then it is running 255/55R20 tyres rather than the standard 255/50R20s which is ~3.3% oversized and the mpg estimate was ~6% over.

I can only speak based on the experience I have from helping out my mate a handful of times. They are bigger groups than a typical laning group (in this instance with "staff" vehicles) we were 12 (10 clients) there's no denying that. Unfortunately this is just down to economics - I quizzed my mate on it a few years back and his break even point is 6 vehicles - if he gets 6 vehicles on a trip then that covers his costs for a single trip (his fuel, accommodation, food and entry to the estates). Bear in mind that entry to estates can vary from a hamper at Christmas to several £100s per vehicle for a single days access. When I've helped out I'm usually at the back of the convoy on the road or at the front (or infront of the least capable / most inexperienced vehicle) on the more challenging tracks. There's a fair amount of road driving involved but I've not usually found the convoy size to be an issue, we're often being held up by other tourists. Once we're on the track it's irrelevant because all of them are private in Scotland so apart from the land owners or estate workers we don't meet anyone in a vehicle. If we do and they don't have permission then they're trespassing as simple as that, we're usually forewarned of any other vehicles on the tracks. My mate has worked hard to secure these permissions (it's taken 20 odd years of going back and forth to Scotland from the South) so he works his socks off to keep them. For example on one estate we met as we came down off the hill a kid on a motocross bike, that was immediately reported to the estate factor and they confirmed he didn't have permission thanked us profusely for doing so. In terms of the group dynamic it largely depends on the clients but in the 20 odd years the number of bad eggs is very small, only a few. He's normally pretty good at weeding out people who want to off-road rather than "see Scotland off the road". Bear in mind there's a hell of a lot of road driving compared to tracks because Scotland is so big, the stuff on the tarmacced roads is often more spectacular and the route chosen tends to be off the beaten path and even more so. Historically the trips were 2 weeks and predominately French, Italians and Swiss. He didn't like taking Brits, Germans or the Dutch because unfortunately they tended to fall into the category of wanting to tear up the country side and off-road. COVID changed that and he had to take on British clients, as such it's a 5 day tour now but you still see a lot of Scotland as well, just with less "touristy" stops (e.g. going on a boat trip around Skye). Honestly the size of the group makes it work as well, everyone has a whale of a time in camp in the evening and there's enough people that no one feels left out. Feel free to ask more questions via PM if you want but I'd best not derail this thread any further... (PS it's definitely worth doing it! Just let me know when because I'd love to see a Series 1 going around).

I think the main belly plate was 3" . They acquired the tractor I think as a job lot and no one had any clue why such stupidly thick armour had been used.

@Stellaghost I know one of our neighbours up in the Highlands was selling some forestry belly plating for a big Valtra, probably suitable for this. He wanted it off and was introduced to another member of the deer management group - the chap buying it asked if he should send a trailer around and the owner said nope. I'll bring the tractor around, we'll block it all up and drive the tractor off it then you drive your tractor onto it. Turns out the armoring came in at just shy of 10 tonnes... Chap didn't know what possessed the "purchasing department" in buying such heavy duty armoring, the tractor struggled to go anywhere with any useful load.

Except you as you seem to have missed the bulkhead build...

I think we as a forum have a very different opinion as to what constitutes an overlander compared to the rest of the world. We all have and enjoy Land Rovers because we're part of this forum, which let's be honest, are one of the most capable off-road vehicles (certainly road based ones) therefore we all naturally like to explore those capabilities and that's our enjoyment. The vast majority of overlanders simply want to see the world whilst being largely self-sufficient (not through necessity but it gives them the flexibility to stop as and when they want without having to worry about making it to the next stop) and having some home comforts. Given most of the world is not covered by paved roads then having some modicum of off-road capability becomes rather desirable. A good example of this was on the "off-road" trip I helped guide around Scotland. Only one and a half of the tracks would have needed a decent off-road vehicle but most could have been driven by a vehicle with decent ground clearance. I suspect with enough enthusiasm a 2WD would have made it around all the other tracks but with less enjoyment from being thrown around violently trying to get up "obstacles" a Land Rover things nothing of. The collection of vehicles was unusually diverse on this trip from a D2 and my 110 as guide vehicles to a new base 90, Td5 90, Troopy pop-top, Land Cruiser with custom trailer, US spec V6 4runner with Opus trailer, VW Amarok with demountable camper, L200, Fiat Pickup, Freelander 2 and a new Hilux. The only ones to have any significant trouble were the new 90 struggled for clearance (on coils not air) and traction (apparently LRs semi-offroad tyre but looked like a slick to me). The Freelander struggled due to no low box and thus lack of control. The Troopy struggled on one bit being a bit long with lack of turning circle. Obviously the ones that didn't struggle on the off-road bits were the older ones wearing a LR badge but then they didn't have all the creature comforts the others did. The Swiss couple with the Amarok decided not to do the last track incase they damaged the vehicle (they did have a couple of thousand miles left to do on their journey) which was admirable in my eyes. They decided to walk the track instead, they still got to see all the same scenery we did which was the purpose of their trip and that tells me a bit about their ethos as "over landers". They wanted to see Scotland and having the camper on the back meant that they weren't tied down to when and where they stopped.

Not that I'm aware of - he's on Instagram I think. He's the same Clive who ran / was Black Sheep Offroad.

Clive aka pressbrake1 over on mig-welding.co.uk does some proper British designed, British cast and British machined welding squares. I think they're cheaper than the Fireball ones too and nice to support a small British bloke. They'll be stupidly square as well given Clive does it all.

I can send you some measurements of a proper V8

Don't be silly - that's for his lunch box

But this is @Stellaghost, 20mm is @Hybrid_From_Hell - surely they should be 40mm at a minimum? Or maybe an inverted Rover diff case...

Mimi the alpaca also made an appearance too... Think there was a teddy bear somewhere in the back of the Land Rover too as well as a rucksack of a load of other cuddly toys that didn't really make an appearance.

If it's any consolation Mike our trip north wasn't plain sailing either. After meeting up with a mate in Johnstonebridge the 110 developed a rattle. Whilst at a pee stop for the group in Invergarry I drove in circles around him and he said prop UJ. Strange as they were fine when I set off from Wales and greased regularly, anyway to appease him I went underneath and checked, and there was a slight side-to-side play in one of the spiders. So cue calling into our neighbours yard whilst the group do the first track (decided might as well sort it since I can do that track whenever we want as it's partly ours, partly our neighbours and partly his brothers). Only to find that neither of us had a big enough UJ for the prop so what was a 15 minute removal (amazingly the first UJ I haven't had to resort to a grinder) ended up in a 3h round trip to Inverness to pick up a new one. We didn't have the luxury of sitting on the beach waiting for parts to arrive. Suffice to say rattle was not cured, after finishing the trip and spending a couple of nights at my nan's I decided to have a look and found the culprit. One of the bolts holding the handbrake drum onto the transfer box had worked loose and was rattling around in the drum. Copious amounts of thread-lock and some jerry rigging of a chainsaw sparkplug spanner to a 17mm socket meant I could tighten it up. Worth it for the views though

Forgive me but if it's all welded up why the seam sealer? Incase you missed anything?

Previous build on a different vehicle. Looks well done. Been having similar thoughts about something for the 6x6.

Don't know about the V8 ones but the 300Tdi are cast steel wheels (at least all the ones I've got) so would be a bit of a sod to machine down. Mean to order a new bearing (think they were £3.50 from RS 6302R possibly) and swap one over as its still 10x cheaper than a replacement tensioner.