Ed Poore

And that is why I had sourced a BridgePort initially, however now I'm thinking in the future more like >5kW machines...

Yeah only works up to a few hp though. I'm thinking bigger

Definitely noticed this. What's annoying is I bought a Bridgeport about 6 months ago with a load of tooling (included horizontal arbor, rotary indexers, collets, multiple vices, DRO and a bunch of other stuff I can't remember) but now I've moved down to Wales and I've got the space I could have (will go probably) much bigger given the opportunity. Don't have 3 phase but would be able to run a diesel generator no trouble at all. Not sure if my little tractor would be powerful enough off the PTO for biiig stuff but it claims 16hp at the PTO. Need to get some cash in the bank first before splashing out on more toys, would like a bigger lathe though.

Do you have a lathe and decent pillar drill? Depends on what you want to do with it but for a general purpose tool I find the lathe invaluable (although I do now want/need a bigger one than my ML7). I've got a Bridgeport sat in a barn at my parents a few miles away waiting for my machine shop to be finished and with the pillar drill for the most stuff I don't notice not having a mill. On the other hand I'd really regret not having the lathe. Depending on what size scale you're talking about you know you can do milling on a lathe (albeit limited in area)?

GEMS then, black rectangular head cover with 4.6 stamped in it.

Alas I think it is a GEMS engine if I remember correctly (P reg so a 1996). What's the definitive way of telling? Although I'm up in the Highlands at the moment so won't be able to check until late next week.

Make me an offer and it could be yours, maybe @Escape and @elbekko are interested in the rest of the bits for spares . I'm not that fussed on keeping the P38 in one piece it was a cheap runaround after I snapped crankshaft number 2. There was a consideration into fitting it into the 110 but then a block came up for sale here and I built up another 300Tdi, this one goes well after having been tweaked a little by the previous owner. Although I'm experienced in electronics a big part of me likes the mechanical simplicity of the 300Tdi and keeping it original, well at least that part of the vehicle. For £20k I'll deliver it to your door

I think the P38 is highly dependent on what condition the chassis / general condition of it is in. If it's not roadworthy then I'd probably just break it for parts at which point I might as well take the plasma cutter to it . Lower bumpers are trash as are most corners so remove body work and shove some stupid tyres on it. In fact I just remembered snapping the rear tailgate when we put some ladders on it to remove the current 300Tdi for the 110. Fuel tank is held in place with a ratchet strap too . Maybe if the weather clears up tomorrow I'll take a more appraising look at it. Mind you I'll have to stop playing with the new toy tool.

This one: https://arbtalk.co.uk/forums/topic/60782-project-6x6/page/3/#comments, don't think it's progressed much from there. Regarding the comment about offroadyness yes it would be highly preferable. My folks are 4 miles down the road on a farm so having the cherry picker available there might be handy. Bonus is we can probably ag register it if required. Even where I am around the garden (4 acres with lots of slopes) a 4x4 would be handy but possibly not required. One consideration might be to simply use a Honda generator and build a trailer / chassis for it so we can simply tow it around.

The one with a big HIAB on it? Looks like a supersized unimog winch drum about 18" diameter if I remember correctly? Yup along with many other awesome bits of kit. Would be good if he and I find the time to finish the 101 he forgot he had. Mobile work truck, mahoosive PTO air compressor, auxiliary hydraulic pump with generator attached if required, mahoosiv welder / generator set as well all PTO driven. Meant to be giving him a hand with a dashboard / engine governor to regulate engine speed based off which implement is chosen.

Well I think it'll be a race as to who finishes first. Probate on the Sandringham or Bob on the cherry picker. That man has everything, ideally it would be demountable off the Sandringham and to achieve that one needs an LT95 PTO adapter which are rare. Turns out Bob thinks he has one in one of his many containers . Finding it will be the challenge! Other things will take priority first but I need to have a decent look at the P38 to assess whether it's worth keeping it as a tidy runaround. All depends on what order things happen in really. There's: Converting stables into machine shop (downstairs) / electronics lab (upstairs). Garden shed / storage / pit (freebie shed that's 12ft wide and maybe 36ft long) but will have blockwork to raise it high enough for 110 and slab and pit probably. Double car garage to build, might make this one tall enough for a lift to go in... Freeing up current dumping ground in blacksmiths forge area for dirty (welding and grinding) workshop. Many plans!

Well first real job the press did in the new (temporary) workshop at the new house - replacing radius arm bushes on the Defender. Might have cheated slightly and simply knocked out the centre steel insert and then used the new bush to push the old one out in one go . With that job done before heading off to Scotland I got to play with the new toy tool and started grading the guest driveway.

I vaguely seem to remember them being both difficult to source and extortionate in cost. I think when Nige and I priced up a full set of bearings for the Salisbury it wasn't far off the cost of the diff itself . I think that that might have been a case of check the condition of the existing bearings and reuse where possible.

If you mean the Land Rover / Range Rover / Series hybrid then I think his intention is to put a hydraulic ram in the bed (since it's already got the hydraulics) and then put a tipping bed onto it. But probably using shipping twist-lock thingies so that it can have bodies changed over easily. He's done this on a DAF truck which has a HIAB on the back and it has a number of different bodies that it can lift on itself to use for different purposes. E.g. water bowser, tree "finger" trailer thingy, flatbed, wood chipper body, generator set etc.

I'm pretty sure it's got a 3l Mazda lump in it.

Don't know ATB side of things, Nige is probably best to weigh in but on the locker front he convinced me that swapping axles was a better choice. The main strength of the Salisbury diff is in the cross pin which you throw away with any conversion, ergo you don't have the main benefit anymore. The casing may be a bit stronger but is also a lot bigger and plough like. Then it came down to (for me) the locker and the various options were either rocking horse poo availability, had design faults, spares issues, or just downright expensive. The Ashcroft offering at the time hadn't been broken, was readily available and not too bad on price. My suspicion is that any ATB Salisbury component / diff is likely to have the same issues. So unless you're really wedded to keeping the axle a Salisbury then there are likely better and more cost effective options (based off very little research for ATBs).

They do just bolt up but if you transfer calipers from the Salisbury (as I did) then the discs themselves are different (SDB100980L I think is the part number). The Td5 / Tdci axle have the same bolt pattern for the calipers but they've got a slightly different offset on the axles which mean the standard Salisbury disc clashes with the caliper. So in summary swap the axle, change discs, change prop I can't remember what length is required or a part number, I simply phoned Gwyn (Gwyn Lewis 4x4) and told him what I'd done and he bunged the correct length prop in the post for me.

If you wanted an ATB in yours then it's probably easier to source a second hand axle off a Td5 or Tdci Defender which has the short nose diff in it then you can drop an Ashcroft ATB in there. I picked up an axle casing complete with hubs and discs for £100 and Nige (@Hybrid_from_Hell) sourced a donor diff for me and then built it up (although I went pegged Ashlocker rather than ATB). Probably worth pricing up the different options, I suspect using a new axle wouldn't be that expensive compared to finding an ATB for the Salisbury.

They did have the plys on the side wall but in plain black slightly raised lettering so it was on the tyres but not obvious to say the least.

It may be more than just local variables and driving style. My father and I have always been a fan of the BFGs because we've never had less than 60k out of a set - and that 60k I got out of KM2s were slashed to kingdom come from off-road and had worn down the tread significantly (OK I'll admit I've they've still got ~8mm of tread of them)... However when I got a new set and was at the local tyre place swapping them over we noticed that they'd quietly reduced the ply rating on the sidewalls. The first set I had must have been some of the very first KM2s in the country (they were of that age) and I got some of the last KM2s before the KM3s came out and they'd dropped from 10 to 8 ply on the sidewalls. So not every tyre is made equal shall we say...

Too much effort I suspect. Let's say it had a friendly MOT when I bought it so I'm not going to go out of my way to get it road legal again. The fuel tank is currently held up by a ratchet strap . It was a quick purchase to use as a runaround after I snapped the 2nd crank on the Defender. Although one the body has been cut in half it'll be easier to examine the state of things . Probably do minimal changes so that I feel so inclined it could be registered. Forgot about front driven off the crank, might look into that. Can ditch the air con radiators etc - hmm could be reused on the Defender

Right mad hat on. I may have just (yesterday evening) been offered a cherry picker (either free of charge or in exchange for helping with some electronic issues ). It is currently sat on a Defender / Range Rover / Series / Mazda hybrid (Defender gear train, RR chassis, Series body and Mazda power plant). As the bushes etc are worn its not worth the hassle of redoing it when there's another bigger cherry picker waiting to go on a bigger truck. So it's of no use to my mate but will be very handy around my new house (reaching first floor windows for example because a double ladder struggles, and there's another floor above that...). Now as the base vehicle is Ag / Forestry registered that's staying and being converted to a tipper. But I can take the vehicle back home to Wales, figure out plumbing etc and remove the cherry picker. It's pretty self contained (built in oil tank etc apart from the pump itself) and will just unbolt from the chassis and almost lift itself off with the feet. So onto the mad phase of the project, you may also remember I was offered a Sandringham 6x6 which is a perfect vehicle for this but its likely to be months if not years before the probate on that is sorted out. So muggins here realises he has a P38 with a 4.6 V8 which is not roadworthy anymore. I think you can see where this is going... So thoughts are, strip down the P38 to a pickup / flatbed setup (probably reuse or sell on some bits - with any luck I can actually recover a chunk of the £800 I spent on it but that's secondary) and drop on the cherry picker. Simples. Yes it would be simpler to get a pickup / flat bed to do this but where's the fun in that?! The P38 is effectively free in my eyes so why shouldn't I, there's no need for this to be road legal although there might be an option to Ag register it at my parents farm if we wanted to use it at the two places since they're only 4 miles apart. Immediate problem I see is driving the pump since as far as I know theres no easy way to get a PTO off the Borg Warner transfer case. I think the quickest solution would be a seperate small engine to drive the pump, if it's diesel then at least it can be run on red from the farm. Or I could put some form of splitter in the drive train at a later date. Unless anyone here has some bright ideas on running a decent size hydraulic pump off the P38 drive train. There does happen to be another scrap car with a 1l engine at my place so perhaps... But that's a dinky petrol so who knows. For the purposes of this project it shall be kept as cheap and cheerful as possible but my time is of course free. Anyway picture of the cherry picker And why it's going to be useful, even for cleaning windows @V8 Freak it means I might even be able to finish trimming the main drive to save your shiny panels

It's not the physical installation that's the problem - that could be easily standardised. Anything that's accessible by the driver has to conform with all sorts of legislation, the head units that are installed by manufacturers undergo years and years of testing which is why they're typically so far behind the curve of modern tablets. Things are different for the actual manufacturers compared to after market modifications. Land Rover will have to seek type approval and record all the testing that's been undertaken in order to take something to market, if you modify something else after the event then it's not their problem. Look at the hoops that JLR jumped through to create the V8 Works or whatever it was called - they had to get a subsidiary company to do all the work for them because if it was actually JLR that had built them then either they'd be non-road legal or they'd have to be type-approved, something they couldn't do for such a small number.

That's basically what Android Auto is doing - the problem is for a manufacturer to offer an in-vehicle mount for a tablet that's accessible to the driver is opening up a world of pain safety wise.

With regards to the touchscreen I think the main reason everyone has jumped on the bandwagon is it's flexible and allows cheap and easy (for the manufacturer) updates to refresh a vehicle's interior. Historically I seem to remember a lot more "refreshes" of a vehicle's design which were largely focused around the dashboard with some exterior changes as well so you could identify the differences. Nowaways I feel much less changes but the infotainment systems get updated to add more features which kind of has the same effect. I did like my "old" TDV8 (christ that would be12 years old now) which had the touch screen but for switching between screens (maps, phone, music, etc) there were hard buttons surrounding it. That meant I didn't often use the touch screen aspects of it while driving and I could just by feel switch the display if I wanted to check something. Perhaps what they should do is use some of these little buttons with OLEDs in them so that you can have reconfigurable tactile buttons on the dashboard.