Ed Poore

To be honest the Arduino doesn't need much of a steer. There's plenty of code available, they've done a pretty good job at making it accessible for everyone (including kids). However, if you've got some prior experience of micro-controllers might I suggest the STM32 range of micros. The Arduino's have become quite expensive for what they are and there appears to be an ongoing battle between "Genuine" Arduinos and clones. For half the price of a genuine Arduino you can get an STM32 Nucleo that is of the same form-factor (a wonderful decision on their part) and are compatible with the Arduino shields, except that you get a full-blown ARM core with far more functionality. You can also program them using the same environment but should you want to move to something more advanced then that's easy enough (things like the mbed OS for example) or hard-core like myself and doing it all from bare-bones and at the command line.

What sort of cable run are you using? Not using hall effect but we've built and bought plenty of LCD based things from the likes of Farnell / RS and put them into the digger and tractor for checking the alternators etc., are working. We haven't bothered with hall effect sensors because you usually get plenty (read enough) of a voltage drop across the cable itself. So measure the resistance of the cable accurately and use that for calibrating the gauge and away you go. No need for extra shunts and/or hall effect sensors. I'm sure a man of your skills @FridgeFreezer can whip up something with a little micro-controller easily enough.

They're also usually better quality... I don't think I've seen a straight panel on a >300Tdi vehicle, they all seemed to be much thinner.

I like that alternative!

I took my L322 down on long trips to the south of France and up to the Highlands (the Highlands involved more off-road) and to be honest the only thing that's likely to cause issues are flat tyres and the battery. A decent service before hand and recovery and a decent spare tyre should see you through. An IID tool is invaluable thing to have regardless because you can read all the faults and clear them which might get you out of trouble. I can't quite remember but I seem to remember the fan belt on the 3.6TDV8 is a pig to do, I only did it when I was replacing the alternator so had to remove more stuff than normal. Fridge's recommendation of water is a good one because it's often those that while you can wait on recovery you often think if only I had some water then I could make it to the next service station. I used to carry a small (typically 1l) bottle of oil, maybe a 5l bottle of coolant and a couple of other items like that in the spare wheel well or the storage box to the right under the floor in the boot, the IID tool lived under the Venture cam in the dash. It's those things that will just make life easier if you do lose some coolant or oil that allow you to top it up enough to get to the nearest petrol station / garage rather than having to wait 4-5h for the recovery lorry. An extreme case was travelling up to Scotland a few years ago, the 110 had had a serious off-roading weekend before going up and there was some serious off-road up there. On the M6 north near Kendall a wheel bearing failed, it ended up delaying us 36h and costing about £600 (included finding a hotel that had a spare room that night and would take a dog) to carry on. On subsequent similar trips I've started carrying a pair of wheel bearings and the necessary tools because it'll only take me half an hour or so to swap one out rather than a day and a half delay and hassle of trying to find parts and a garage. But I would emphasise that this was on a trip where the vehicle spent a good deal of the time bogged over the top of the wheels...

Probably meant LT95 . The 4 speed fitted to the Stage 1 V8s which had the integrated transfer box. They've apparently got a much bigger PTO output flange.

Well by the time the cherry picker becomes available then the 6x6 will probably be available too. Which is far more sensible option... Particularly as I know someone (ironically the same someone) who might have in his collection of bits an elusive PTO adapter for an LT85 so PTO hydraulics is a definite possibility definitely happening.

Not the thread I'm thinking of but found this: https://www.defender2.net/forum/post12442.html

Going off topic... But didn't he do that on Dicky's at mine... Albeit rear wing.

Given it's always been like that then maybe a shim to the outside of the chassis between the wing might sort it.

Uncle - those folks over at Defender2 who are fastidious over things looking straight and flush (my wing isn't after today ) have a thread on this. Basically it requires a few "shims" (washers) on the bottom bolt that goes through to the sticky up bit on the chassis. Having said that you can probably just pick up the bottom corner and lift it back into shape. Not leant on it too heavily recently?

Nope, 450°C is upper limit but when you're soldering stuff that's 1 square millimeter or smaller then stuff tends to go poof at higher temperatures...

I guess one of these is not what you're after then?! (apologies for any injuries sustained from seeing the price, wait until you realise that the price for the tips is per tip not per pack). I've got an old Weller that I use for bigger stuff and on vehicle work. The JBC Nase re-work station is a little overkill (or maybe underkill?) for LR stuff. Although it does heat up the tip from ambient to 350°C in the time it takes you to remove it from the holder to the PCB.

They've not started selling them yet and somehow someone's managed to steal one

Might I suggest a threaded fitting rather than an eye. Dad had the same thought for moving milling machines into his new machine shop so found a scrap top-link from a 3 point linkage and embedded that in the concrete. Ended up not using it as the digger with a long steel pole machine to slide the 3 tonne machine in but now is constantly tripping over it, but being a 3 point linkage is hardened to kingdom come.

Nature, to be fair I'm not surprised I'm finding stuff given the place. After all confirmed there's a "secret" cellar.

Progressing faster than I am with my workshop build. Although in my defence I got distracted having discovered a cobbled driveway underneath the lawn outside the workshop so given it's turned into a quagmire I've decided to strip off the lawn bit and get down to the cobbles.

Digging up an oldish thread but I'm going to back James up with saying the Boom-slang is not the best of quality. I was driving over from Skye a couple of weeks ago when I lost the high beam (and thus all headlights in that position) due to a fuse for the passenger side high beam going. Luckily dropping back to normal headlights and there was light so carried on. Did some digging around before the drive south and high beam started working again without anything significant being done so thought chaffed wire that I'd relocated - anyway set off on the 13h drive south and half way through Wales fuse popped again. Just about finished dismantling the front of the vehicle chasing wires through and couldn't find a single dodgy wire. Bypassed the Boomslang wiring harness that's been in there for probably just over 3 years - back to the original wiring and everything appears to be working fine for the moment so I suspect something dodgy is going on with the relays in the harness. So will run that for a while to see whether it's rectified the problem and if so will go down the route of building my own loom. At the time the off-the-shelf loom was nice and quick to install but looks like it's a bit of a false economy.

The only "simple" option I see for that might be something cam based. If you have a frame the plastic sits in then you could have a cam that goes over-centre to push the plastic against the frame to hold it in. I suspect for any "removable" solution you're going to have more problems than it's worth trying to keep it watertight.

If you're thinking the latter then what about making something like a gull-wing setup? Hinged at the top and then a catch at the bottom. If you made it something like the original pop-top Tdi era sunroofs then you can slide them out easily enough.

Define quick - the Series method might be considered quick compared to bonded seals. Or are you thinking removal in the field with no tools in a few seconds?

Should be because I dropped off an injector pump for him a while back

And here I was going to suggest you don't need one to find you'd already bought one. I normally overheat when I have my heaters on:

You're lucky - I was going through 2 a year . Two years ago bit the bullet and stumped up for the kit from Gwyn and haven't touched it since, steering is also a hell of a lot tighter than it used to be, much nicer to drive as a consequence.

@David Sparkes whilst you are technically correct I think with the advent of solid state power electronics the two are typically lumped together in one unit and the terms are used more or less interchangeably now. The only practical way to do single phase to three phase conversion is to rectify the input mains (smoothing helps but modern techniques don't actually require this) and generate a DC bus. Once you've got the DC bus then you can feed that through multiple PWM stages to generate the three phase out. Given almost everything now is driven by a micro-controller to achieve as near unity power factor as is possible then changing output frequency is simply a case of changing a number in the software on the micro-controller.