Ed Poore

Another point worth noting for posterities sake is that in order to convert AC to DC it's usually desirable to put a large capacitor after the diodes to smooth out the ripple current. In the case of vehicle electrics the battery acts as a colossal capacitor so you don't need that. (Google AC/DC converters and you'll see what I mean).

Not quite true - it's when the current down the wire is running that the light goes on... they're usually wired in series with the field winding. Essentially one side of the light is connected to the battery whilst the other is connected to the field coil of the alternator. When the ignition is turned on (but the engine is not running) the coil is literally a short to chassis ground as the coil is just a wire at this point. Once the engine starts then all the electro-magnetism stuff kicks in and the field coil then becomes an inductor. Through induction the current flowing through this coil is amplified by the mechanical rotation of the alternator and thus a larger current is induced. As a consequence (and for all this to work) a potential difference (voltage) is generated across the smaller field coil and the end that is attached to the bulb rises towards 14V, i.e. the same as the battery voltage and thus no voltage is seen across the bulb and thus no current can flow which is why the bulb goes out when the engine starts. If the light goes on when the battery is running then it indicates that there's a short somewhere in that circuit meaning that the bulb is being pulled down to ground.

I haven't looked into their tipper trailers (we have small livestock ones) but I would very highly recommend CLH: http://clhtrailers.co.uk/. They're based in South West Wales but the quality of their trailers is outstanding compared to all other ones I have seen. I've used them to manufacture various bits of metalwork for me and various projects and their hand done work rivals most machined work. We looked at Ifor Williams and a few others before going on a whim to these guys on the word of a friend of a friend and drove away with a trailer straight away. Trailer was 2/3rds of the price of a comparable Ifor but in my opinion 3 or 4 times the quality. The small trailers (haven't tried their larger ones) tow superbly well on the road and off-road. BTW - if they don't have what you want they'll custom build you a trailer for an outstanding price from what I hear. Whilst I was there picking up some bolts for my Series and discussing some metalwork with Chris the owner a chap came in with a speedboat on a mates trailer and it was being measured up to have a new one fabricated, approximately 2 week of build time later he had a fully galvanised custom trailer for the boat. [edit]a shooting friend has a small tipping trailer for a quad that he overloads reasonably regularly and keeps bending the hinge pin on it, took it back to them and asked for a replacement (willing to pay) and Chris turned round made up a new one free of charge, thanked him for pointing out the flaw in the trailer and supplies him with free replacements. Since then they've beefed up the hinge-pin, he may have been overloading the trailer but they're the kind of company who take pride in their work and dealt with it as such.[/edit]

Kind of related to the subject in hand but came across this a couple of years ago and was quite a useful read: http://www.littelfuse.com/data/en/Application_Notes/an9312.pdf Note: take the graph with a pinch of salt, there's no scale on the x-axis and it's not linear so not as bad as it make out. It does however highlight the kind of s**t that automotive electronics have to put up with. Even worse I remember seeing some details for some of those Mercedes phone-home transmitters, they have to be able to find out where in the world they are so in certain areas the transmitter turns off because it interferes with local sites! God knows it must be fun shielding the electronics in those.

The two methods I've used are slowly drilling through it with a very very sharp drill and then just bolting it. In fact my winch came with a set of plastic nuts / bolts to put it through the number plate holder. The second method was some 3M Velcro - very useful when laning / off-roading as it was on the edge of the bumper and could just remove it rather than smash it. When the 110 went in to be repaired from being rear-ended the insurer's garage just used thick double sided tape to stick the front number plate back on. But no, haven't tried riveting them.

One thing to question is how often do you want to hold the door partially open? My father's Shogun has a similar system but simpler where it will only lock in the fully open position. That way you only need a bar and with a channel and notch cut it in to hold it open (if that makes sense). Essentially it's a similar design to the normal weak door stay on the back of many Defenders except that rather than have a spring-loaded catch it simply has a notch that means it locks into place. You then need to push the door back slightly and pull the bar out to unlock it and the door will shut.

Never had an issue with Makita keyless chucks but to be honest whenever I'm drilling metal tend to use a pillar drill if possible - otherwise drill is on very low speed so reaction time should be ample to stop the drill before things start getting ruined. I know my Makita has variable torque so you can always tweak it that way.

Been despatched today

Should be having two arriving in the next week or so

I'm disappointed. I would have thought you'd have investigated harder or created some wacky device to muffle it.

Probably (was given it as a present) - does the job though, people get a bit of a shock when they try and open it and it's a bit stiff but given I spent quite a lot of the summer with it parked sideways on a 1 in 3 loading logs in the back door it was quite handy that it could stay open even with the spare on (not massive but substantial being a 265x75R16).

I have a spare wheel carrier (Bearmach through paddocks or something like that) that bolts onto the door. If you don't grease everything up then it locks into place nicely - plus gets the spare wheel off the door hinges.

Hopefully you have some luck in tracking it down. Shame this weeks' so busy otherwise I'd pop over and give you a hand. Quite funny that my work is now designing complex electronic circuits and I don't have any on my 110

Just checked and apparently there's a battery backup for the sounder alarm. Are there any other symptoms other than the beeping (no lights on the dash etc)?

I don't know anything about Td5 alarms but do they have a separate internal battery? Just wondering whether it's something like the battery isn't holding its charge and trying to warn you, would make sense not to beep it when the engine isn't running as that would deplete a potentially dodgy battery. I seeing something about our Shogun's alarm that would warn the driver when the battery was causing issues.

I presume all the voltage levels and fuses are normal? It's not just tripping the alarm continuously?

Well yet another person with Academy now, pleasure dealing with them. Only danger is they said that they'd insure any mods so big V8 is sooo tempting now if it wasn't for the fuel cost...

If you've got access to a .ac.uk account then you can get a permanent (or at least 3 year license) from Autodesk for Inventor Professional (see students.autodesk.com I think). Not used Solidworks extensively but find Inventor a damn impressive package.

Ok to put it another way. These funky little creatures called electrons give off light when they get woken up. In order to wake them up you need to give them a good kick (potential difference aka voltage). The more often you can kick the more electrons wake up and therefore the more light you get. Now sometimes you find you have to kick them through lots of mud (this is a Land Rover after all) therefore there is some resistance against your boot which means that your kicks per second fall off but you can still kick with the same amount of force. This can be written down by the following equations Brightness ~= Kicks / Second ~= Force of kick / Mud thickness. (Or I = V / R).

Not quite correct. They will be affected by adding a resistor in series with them but because it's changing the flowing through the pn junction not the voltage. LEDs (like diodes because they are effectively the same thing) will always drop a constant voltage across them which relates to the wavelength of light that is output (see Wikipedia for a table) but typically ranges from ~1V to 3V. So you need to provide at least that voltage in order to "activate" the LED and provide enough of a potential difference for it to start emitting light. For a bog standard 5mm LED the forward current required is ~30mA. You should always limit the current somehow, usually with a resistor for simple stuff picking an appropriate sized resistor therefore controls how much current flows through the resistor and subsequently the diode. For examples sake say that for 100% brightness you require 40mA with an LED that has a diode drop of 2V. Therefore from a nominal 12V supply you have Vled = 12 - Vdrop = 10V and for 40mA you want I = V / R ==> 250R. If you want to dim the led (current is not directly proportional to perceived light output if I remember correctly) then say put 20mA through it so a 500R resistor would halve the current. Hope that helps

I'm more than happy to run it down to the Forest of Dean however if someone's able to get it a bit closer to Surrey then it would be most appreciated. I could run down to Ringwould and back but if someone else can save me the four hour round trip then I'm all for it.

I am definitely heading back to Wales on the weekend of the 29th of April (probably leave Friday night or Saturday morning) and usually go through the Forest of Dean so like James if it'll fit in / on a 110 CSW (I have no bench seats in at the moment but do have a gun cabinet which isn't a biggie to remove) then I can do Surrey to Forest of Dean (or further west if it's advantageous) since I'm heading to near the Pembrokeshire / Carmarthenshire border. Where abouts in Kent is it?

I suggest just having a look on Farnell (RS website is horrendous at finding stuff). You can just exclude anything that isn't IP67 and should have loads of choices then, depends on what you want to look for but I just searched for IP67 power connector and loads turned up. You may be able to source them from somewhere else that is cheaper but it'll at least give you an idea of what's out there.

I based my code on a control called GMaps.net (hosted on CodePlex). If you're interested in the code then could discuss it over pm so as not to pollute this discussion. Ed

Yep my one and only experience of them put me off completely. I ordered a set of push-rods along with various timing things for the Series and needed them 'like yesterday' and when I went through the process I selected everything and wrote where possible that I was willing to pay for next-day delivery. 7 weeks later they show up. Ironically I ended up phoning a local dealer and the one set of push-rods they had in stock were just the ticket so jumped in the 110 and picked them up. Ironically they were cheaper!