Ed Poore

And there in lies the point I was trying to get across - yes a Massey 165 might well tow 9 tonnes happily but will she hit 30mph let alone the 60mph that a B+E combination would with relative ease? Things go wrong fast at 60mph which is why I personally (and that's just a personal opinion) feel that the trailer test is still important.

If those physics are the fact that there's a tow vehicle and a trailer then yes I'd agree. One crucial difference you need to remember is that on a car + trailer the trailer is hitched to the sprung mass and has a sprung draw bar, on a tractor it's unsprung and usually directly coupled to the rear axle. That's one of the keypoints of a 3-point hitch / drawbar setup is that it transfers mass onto the rear wheels and thus directly increases traction of the tractor. With respects to bullying the trailer into order I'd argue it's the other way around. The two examples I gave - the L322 towing a 110 and the trailer + load weight were about the same (i.e. 2.7t for the L322 and ~2.7t for the trailer + 110). The tractor was a NH TM190 so ~7t, the excavator a Komatsu PC130-6 so a tad over 13t, I know he's operating at just under maximum cross combo so trailer is circa 5t. So you've got a 18t trailer behind a 7t tractor, a trailer that's 2.5x heavier compared to close to a 1:1 ratio. I'd argue it's the exact opposite in terms of the ability to bully with both the B+E having the advantage in terms of power and weight ratio between load and tow vehicle. The big difference is in the suspension / draw-bar setup - the tractor + trailer combo has no springs / dampers / vibrating stuff between it and the road and crucially operating at half the speed. Irrespective of all this I'd wager that the vast majority of the people on this forum have a sensible head and have had prior experience towing trailers off-road so the relaxtation in the law is a welcome bonus. Unfortunately we don't make up the vast majority of road users...

Down this way a lot of accidents also involve tractors. I think people these days don't adjust their driving to suit the conditions because the car will take care of things for them. I'm sorry but I don't care how good your crumple zone is, there's not a lot you can do when you hit 3 or 4 tonnes of steel backed up by another 10 to 12t of machine behind it and usually another 10 to 12t of trailer. Worse accident I've seen was a boy racer in a Saxo hit the front of a local contractor. Wasn't much the tractor could do as he was only doing a few miles an hour coming up the hill. Nothing above the engine block existed of the saxo and its rear bumper was in line with the front of the weight on the tractor.

I made the same point over on another forum but there's a massive difference between getting the loading right on a trailer behind a tractor doing ~30mph and getting the loading right on a vehicle doing 60mph. The single biggest butt clenching moment I've had driving was towing my 110 behind my old TDV8 L322, was absolutely fine until I got to Reading on the M4 and the trailer went into the ruts left by lorries, boy was that thing tail happy at 60mph 💩. Pulled over at the first opportunity and moved the 110 forward on the trailer literally 1" and then didn't notice it afterwards. Conversely you hardly notice loading my mate's 13t excavator several feet out on the trailer behind the tractor.

He must be undoing every nut and bolt he can find because they should have charged by now

If the gooseneck has any significant weight to it then I thought they were / should be designed to transfer a significant portion of the weight onto the tractor unit so that it actual gets some traction. You'd probably find that without a second axle that there'd be too much for a single axle to take weight wise.

You've only just realised?!

Simple he's a time traveller 🤷‍♂️

Right about here

Sump pickup points good enough for that?

I've snapped far less stuff using the hi torque compared to a 1/2" breaker. The crucial thing is the torque is delivered very quickly so serves to break any bonds. If you apply the same torque with a bar you tend to twist and apply it slowly so don't break any rust bonds etc.

The Hi Torque one is a monster both in capability and in size (relatively speaking). I've yet to meet a bolt on a Land Rover that it's failed to undo (or even struggle to be honest). The closest it came to failing was on some M24 bolts I think they were where it was hammering away and hammering away and eventually the bolt snapped (incidentally one of the few that it has snapped). Did the same on the other side. About half an hour later I realised I'd been tightening them rather than undoing them The downside is that it is physically quite long, so for example won't get in to tighten the radius or trailing arm bolts because there's not enough space to the next gusset.

Actually now I think about it there's a flatter route but it heads north into the badlands around Cardigan so a very very circuitous route if you wanted to head anywhere useful.

My 110 is fairly regularly towing 3.5t on steep gradients (the flattest exit from my house to the main roads has a 1 in 3 on it) running a 1.2 ratio on 265/75R16s. Apart from 1st I actually prefer the 1.2 box for towing. It may be subjective to UK roads but I've found the 1.2 on 32" tyres puts the gears in a more sensible place, 60mph in 4th is perfectly comfortable. I've found it sits in the power band on a Tdi far more effectively than with the 1.4 box where I was always chopping and changing between gears. But the very tall first is a pain in the backside but nothing a judicous amount of clutch slippage can handle. I've got a 130 clutch fitted to mine and when I rebuilt the engine a couple of years back the clutch which had 80k of hard towing and clutch slippage was absolutely fine.

I think you are more than justifying the use-case for a JCB or telehandler or forklift Stephen... My mate in Surrey wouldn't be without his forklift despite everytime he uses it swearing at it and wishing he hadn't sold the diesel one to replace with a propane one. I wouldn't be without my JCB, the back-actor I haven't used much but the front loader and pallet forks are invaluable.

Glad he was able to help out. Not a bad cookie overall.

There's a chap over on migwelding who's been (although stopped I think) selling off a load of lift counterbalance plates. 20mm thick.

Ask for Mark @ CLH Trailers, he's the chap who runs their big CNC plasma. Will do up to at least 20mm plate I think and at least full size sheets. They're quite happy to post stuff or palletise it. They'll have all thicknesses of milk steel in stock.

Attach a chain to it and take it for a drive down the road?

A mate of mine from the Welsh Shooting Team has a heavy involvement in Minis (started a business restoring them a year or two ago) based in Monmouthshire and may well have something suitable lying around. https://www.sjhartclassicprojects.com/ If they need workshop space / help / tools / assistance whatever and are heading down Pembrokeshire way then they're more than welcome to stop by. Don't have the lift installed yet but there are ways and means

It's alright @bishbosh there's a Bridgeport next door to the bench of 3 old Elliott pillar drills . It was more because I find myself stacking bits of steel under stuff to drill so having the XY table allows me to clamp stuff higher up as well as move it around without having to unclamp it.

I recently acquired a wee XY table with a roughly 250x500mm bed on it (260x330 travel), includes 4 slots in the base for bolting it down. Plan is to put it on the T slot table under the pillar drills since I normally need to pack things up to reach them, or turn it into a mini mill. Best thing was I managed to get it shipped from Essex to West Wales for free because someone owed me a favour.

@Anderzanderjust be wary of driving it if the alternator is on the way out - a friend had a regulator pack fail on his 200Tdi 90 and it failed in a way to over-voltage the battery and cause it to explode . Rare situation but still not very preferable.

Just read through the rules - appears they allow auctions just not links to auction sites.

No I think they mean that price, they used the buzzword "restomod" which I think means we modified it from original but reckon we can charge a bucket load because we used a buzzword for the yuppies. But it should be a misprint.