Ed Poore

I don't know about trailer floors but any composite "wood" I've seen has been floppy as a floppy thing or incredibly brittle and fragile. We got some reconstituted 2x4s to replace the slats on a bench in the town hall. Couldn't support their weight over a 6ft span.

Not the closest to you but not horrendous is Scaffolding Direct on the wirral. They'll do delivery but it costs a bit usually. We've bought all our scaffold clamps from there in the past but two out of three times we've been passing.

Only just started messing about with petrol EFI stuff as Pete knows but electronics I do understand (hence designing my own Speeduino board). You say you don't have a 4 channel scope on hand - does that imply you have an oscilloscope to hand? If so can you attach it to the VR sensor output and see what that's doing? If the sensor is producing garbage then my guessing is it's game over for MS to try and figure out what's going on (hence the unreliable results). On Speeduino there's a VR conditioner which cleans up the signal before sending it into the processor, I'm guessing this is built into the MS hardware, if you can figure out where it is then scoping the output of that if the input looks good would also see whether that's behaving itself.

They can also be doubled up so that the winch line runs through the central hole as well.

This is the old school non politically correct powerful motor too.

True but with all the dust escaping through cracks I kind of assumed there'd be enough leaks...

If you do Stephen's suggestion of hooking up a vacuum then make sure you have a hole in the other side. I was blasting the RRs hub and got fed up of not being able to see so though I'd attach a Henry. Turns out he's really really good at sucking Taped hose to the cabinet filter output, switched on all good. Put hands into gloves, gloves suddenly "swelled up" then big bang and 6mm thick glass imploded into the cabinet. Guess I should have opened a hole opposite then...

Shipping container buried in the garden to hide all the bits.

You throw some big stuff out too! Shame the batteries died making it's way down to me.

Mine does... Seriously though those Range Rover seats in mind have taken some abuse, okay they weren't the best shape to begin with but for £150 for the complete set and making £600 profit by selling the old ones I couldn't complain. Wet muddy dogs daily with their claws, the missus' dog being sick on them, child accidents, dogs accidents etc. Some wet wipes and they're good to go. Leather is far easier to keep clean I've found. Comfort wise I didn't find the Defender seats uncomfortable but they're not in the same league as the RR ones, even without the lumbar support switch connected to adjust it. Mind you they are the older 2004 vintage so have the split back rest which is adjustable which I've found so much nicer on long journeys being able to support my head and shoulders. They can be fitted to a standard seat box but you have to be a certain body size to make that work (I remove front seat motor to drop the front of the seat squab down). A custom seat box is so much better though as it allows for more variability in driving position. Even if I still haven't painted it 5 years on...

Slight tangent but how does the P38 box affect turning with the tyres? Does it sit inside the wheel arc so to speak so doesn't affect it? Just curious because a 1UZ with factory aircon etc., is very tight to a standard 4 bolt setup.

I can't remember what the maximum overhang width is for car trailers (2.55m for the trailer itself). Artics are definitely around the 9'5" mark before needing escorts. Probably not rotated sideways from on top but maybe tipped over if that's what you were meaning.

Out of curiosity how much do we reckon they weigh? We'll likely be travelling to the lakes the end of March and could possibly help out with the relay. With any luck we might have up to 4.5t of payload if a suitable trailer could be pinched.

On a smaller scale I got (for work as well) a dinky small CNC mill. Took me embarrassingly long to work out I was installing the collets incorrectly, once that was rectified the run-out was improved massively. There's a faster spindle to install as well (20kRPM vs 10kRPM), I did try it out but the aforementioned run-out made me revert to the 10k before realising what I'd done. A vacuum bed is high on the list of things to add to it - double sided tape is too sticky and a pain to remove from the back of the boards, this "trial" run was using double sided tape on the MDF with then 3M blue tape (similar to frog-tape) upside down so that it held the PCB down but is easy to peel off. Broken PCB drill bits make really good locating pegs incidentally. On the whole really happy for <£500 and a day or so messing about to get it set-up and drilling and cutting the boards out. Low stock of the 0.8mm blanks meant I was being very cautious taking baby steps to not mess up the etched boards. Dust shoe should be delivered today so I can attach Henry properly. Incidentally Henry is also very good at pulling things through duct work... A bit of a rush job a couple of years ago meant that we didn't install a draw string into the ducting from near the oil tanks to the workshop, a run totaling about 35m. The duct goes through a nasty 'S' bend 5 yards to the right around a tree and then a fairly straight run before a sharpish 90° turn where it's been split and the water pipe enters it near the workshop to then go into a 4" waste pipe which then goes through another sharp 90° to vertical to enter the workshop. I was trying to feed a CAT6 cable through from both ends and only managed to get it 1/4 of the way from either end. So trying out a trick someone suggested I got a plastic bag (Tesco bag for life), tied some baler twine to the handles, shoved it in the pipe at the workshop end. Got Henry gaffa taped to the other end and turned him on. Little bit of poking the bag with the cable from the workshop end and all of a sudden the bag inflated and the baler twine started vanishing really really really fast down the duct. CAT6 pulled through to measure two lengths and both ends of the string have been tied off at either end to prevent it being pulled through completely.

Doesn't look like you can swap the battery packs out - there was a discussion over on mig-welding about them and that was the main criticism about all of them, you can't buy separate batteries so you can have one set on charge whilst you're using the other one. Imagine they're great in certain situations but I can imagine the frustration when you need another half a rod to finish a job and now you have to wait a few hours for it to charge up.

Ah but Stephen would have make some tooling out of his scrap pile to press a new one for you

Given how much slackening off an injector pump causes knock I wouldn't be surprised if dodgy seals cause lack of pressure resulting in the same symptoms. I've never had the need to rebuild a pump though so no idea whether I'm spouting nonsense.

Bear in mind that some wires are very very difficult to solder. We recently tried out a reel of CCA (Copper Clad Aluminium) and that's unsolderable by any normal means, intended for crimping only. What you have might be the same given trailer wiring is normally intended to be in screw terminals or crimped.

What's more impressive (if I've understood correctly) is he didn't sandblast it.

@Stellaghost it's probably worth speaking to Vince the owner of Speedshift. That's a pallet shipping company but he recently set up a company that just deals with import / export logistics and paperwork. He's probably the best placed to know about the requirements and how much it's going to cost.

Polish van

I've seen a Polish van driver watching porn whilst driving up the M6...

I never saw it but there were two blokes I coached shooting for a bit who were mates at Reading Uni doing some agricultural degree had put a Rover V8 into a mini. It was mounted longitudinally and rear wheel (and rear seat) drive. They left the front seat backs in notched around the gearbox and mounted the steering wheel on the back of the seat. They said it was a deathtrap and only really drivable if you had a really fat mate with you to weigh it down. All that was made up for the looks from people when you pulled up next to them at lights and they saw there was no one in the front.

You're doing better than me, I've had to weld my 1220's exhaust back together twice so far in two years... I'd highly recommend looking at Winton if you're after something "smaller". A friend used to use them for forestry clearance and was averaging one a year (he had it behind a 1220 like me for the small stuff), came to the annual let's buy another and got a shock when he picked it up. They'd upgraded from tin work to a minimum of about 4mm plate and up... They upgraded the gearbox as well and everything else. He hasn't broken it yet and that's 5 years later. Mine yet used for mowing down brash as well as small trees and then during the summer does regular lawn mowing duties around the mansion. It does a better job than the old John Deere ride on it replaced and is a damn sight faster.

But you didn't need one then. I suspect if you'd had the requirement it would have happened. I mean why make more work for yourself when you don't have to...