Turbocharger

To me it looks like the body isn't as stiff as the crossmember or vice versa - from the buckling of the panel there's been movement, and enough to crack the skin. You're getting a stress concentration at that body corner. Your options are to reduce the forces seen by the body (less weight on the roof!) or to better integrate the crossmember and body side. I'd suggest a spreader plate behind the panel (behind the number plate) with a number of rivets (1" pitch in a square matrix pattern?) and maybe the same to the wing skin too - that'll carry the forces up behind the panel and into the hardtop above, rather than using just the two bolts on the crossmember's tab as at present.

I've used the bonfire method before with success... I looked at the flap wheel and all the nooks and crannies and decided burning was the favourite option.

Silly question that doesn't apply to me - why have a bolted plate at all if you've built a trayback with no boot floor to bolt through? You could make it removable in a stronger way if you're not constrained to bolt in a parallel plane to the boot floor.

He's definately missed a trick.. The hardtop sides and rocker cover are begging for some more 5-bar

I've found the nasty rattle... #5 valve cap had gone missing, despite the clearances on all the others remaining at 0.2mm and the adjuster wasn't slack. Happily I rescued the cap from #6 pushrod hole so it can go back together BUT! How did it go walkies and how do I stop it happening again?

We could have a covert forum operation under cover of darkness to candy-cane Bish's truck? :)

My dad can usually lay his hands on some large ex-test diesel units. Drop me a PM if you're interested.

Hey, I can't even bolt a head on straight... and it's Turb O'Charger, my family goes back generations in County Donegal

Al, perhaps if you can't tell which side of a piece of metal you're stood and you can 'inadvertently' drill from the wrong side, you shouldn't be allowed metalworking tools?

The rules for new vehicles on additional obligatory tail and stop lights are changing, either from Europe or the UK, to stop people adding extra high-level tail lights, even from new. I'd check that the rules are retrospective, and that they are applied in your country. (I appreciate that's not much help)

Big bad rattly noises, deep resonating chugging and very heavy surging from the turbo under any load tells me that I wasn't worrying about nothing, and that it'll be coming apart again. Sadly work and weekends are mental for a bit - lucky I've got another car!

They've missed April 1st, which is when people are usually hawking this kind of shkite. Owl dear.

Good thought Streaky - I wove a red ribbon into the last 8ft of my rope to indicate that I should stop spooling. It doesn't work so well now the rope's muddy but the theory was good. In practice, it's been pretty obvious so far when the rope's on about 6 turns on the drum.

Right, it's back together and since all the tappets are set to 0.20mm instead a couple at 2mm, the nasty rattling noise has gone too . I wondered if the head gasket is venting into the pushrod holes, so I conducted a very scientific test of holding my hand over each. In an attempt to further quantify this, I held a rag over the rocker chest and ran the engine at tickover from cold. 10 secs of running gave the following two results: Showing slightly more oil splash from the front end of the engine? But when I warm the engine up a bit more, not so much fog from the breather pipe, and no pressure when I block it with my finger. Not conclusive, but I think I've been worrying over nothing?

Black's boring, I think a lurid shade of orange would look extremely good.

This is a complicated sentence. He meant "all the clutch covers I have seen have had some wear on them". There is usually a mark on the fingers, but they need lots of wear (halfway through) to fail completely.

C'mon, tell us more. What's the plan, what're you fitting it to, what boost are you expecting to run?

Whereabouts in Derby are you from? If the LR's not modified, I got good service from the NFU in Ashbourne - decent price and you can go in and stroke their spaniel(!) if you have any issues. They got silly when I started bolting too much stuff to my Ninety though, which I can understand.

Well, I checked the tappets and found they were all over the place. On closer inspection, I'm not sure how I missed number 1 screw adjuster being bent, so I've changed them all for good measure: One needed cutting out, it wouldn't unscrew despite not being visibly bent, and the third one is included for interest - the lubricating hole down the middle is completely blocked. Unfortunately I clumsily bent a pushrod when bolting the rocker shaft back in so I'm going back to the parts shop.

I found the synthetic rope would go stiff in very low temperatures, but I think that was more due to the water content than the polymer...

FWIW, my intention was to mount a roofrack and remove the upstands. I'd have a tube inside a tube under the rack which would slide out on each side - probably three or four along the length of the car. They'd slide out to take a plank lengthwise along each side of the car to extend the width of the platform - perhaps they could hinge 180 degrees to sit flat along each side of the roofrack when stowed. Some clever placement could put a hook at the end of each to take the corners of the groundsheet and you need to work out a ladder or orient the tent to open onto the bonnet. If I'd planned to keep the tent on the roof, it'd have a mattress in it permanently and half the baseboard would fold over to keep it from flapping in transit. Mine was just to sleep two though - I think you're pushing it at 4.8 metres long! As I said, I'd done all the thinking and got as far as picking up a roofrack but, when it came to it, I haven't needed to camp anywhere that 5 mins messing with poles and pegs wasn't too much trouble.

*Since there are no animals in the UK or Europe who have yet been willing to risk George's anger to get such a small amount of meat...

I tried this, bought a tent and got as far as pitching it on the ground. Since there are no animals to eat me in the UK or mainland Europe, and very little advantage in pitching the tent up high otherwise against several disadvantages (need a roofrack with hooks, need to stop the car swaying, need to prevent g/f falling off the roof as she stumbles round for the loo at 3am) I never got any further...

Yup, that's the one. He runs Tornado Motorsport and he's testing the prototype for his new Evo3. Was there much damage?

A 300Tdi should already see 1 bar at the turbo - you can ensure this is 1 bar at the manifold by piping the wastegate to the back of the manifold rather than direct from the turbo outlet. If you want more pressure you can also adjust the spring pressure on the turbo diaphragm - just wind out the adjuster nut by 2 turns or so to run more boost but be VERY careful to keep pressures and particularly your EGT at a sensible level, however you do it.