Turbocharger

We have to give them away at work. Pop down to your local bus depot...

SWMBO bought me a subscription for Christmas - the gift that keeps on giving. The new one landed on the doormat today and I have to say, I take it and no LR mags any more. I'll wait and see the fallout of the Scorpion demise before picking up an LR mag again to see the effect of no advertising revenue. On the fuel injector article, it's for electrically driven injectors only and of interest to the stuttering vapourwagons on here. Please be aware that diesel injectors are very nasty if you put yourself on the business end, and they'll inject diesel through skin and generally make you rather unwell.

Speaking as someone who deals with the results of Volvo's truck engines every day, I don't consider a sleeved 12-litre engine as an effective way to deliver a 9-litre unit.

Although there are obviously muddy bits to contend with, the lanes in the Peaks are mostly stony affairs so, unless we've had weeks of rain (which means it needs to stop now ) then you'll be fine. If a lane needs more than MTs then we shouldn't be driving it in the numbers we're discussing here.

Last time I went to Basingstoke I came away thinking there was rather too much of it... Nothing but thunder here in Bristol this afternoon - how come nobody has any photos?

Right - what little organising I intend to do, I have done. My group will be leaving Sainsbury's car park in Ashbourne at 9am on Saturday, and 9am on Sunday. I will be eating on Saturday night at the Knockerdown Inn for about 7pm. I expect the pub will be happy to feed a group of us if we want to turn up; I've not booked anything though. I will not be drinking and I'm happy to take as many people as can fit in my hardtop Ninety. After a meal in the pub I'll be enjoying a pint in the Green Man and Black's Head at the bottom of the Market Place in Ashbourne - chosen because it has the longest pub sign in England(?) so even Mo should be able to find it. I'm really looking forward to getting out on the lanes again and seeing a few friendly people from here - it should be a lot of fun. PS Still a few places for camping left - PM me if you want to book.

Impartially, sounds like you both need to grow up. I find a phone call is generally more mature than posting through an internet forum?

How much are we looking at for £not worth it? To my mind, even if they do the job then you're paying for someone's time to make them up, so your own time may be cheaper and you get EXACTLY what you want. On the other hand, if they're 90% of what you want then you avoid the Three Bears engineering. And if you don't make them yourself Nige, world steel prices might not rise in line with the weigh-in value of your car.

I think we need to define the user requirements before we can start speccing turbos and centre diffs. How many of them go offroad, tow 3500kg or carry a pallet? Are any of these mutually exclusive? Which are univerally important? I think there's a lot they could take from the Elise construction, especially if a strong box could form the chassis, (flat) load floor and seat box, and bring the base chassis weight down to sub 1000kg. Then there's no need for huge diesels and mega horsepower and plenty of room for batteries / supercapacitors for the hybrid bit that nobody's mentioned but we'll probably need if we're selling into a £1+/litre market.

Yes, exactly that. It's worse than the assistance 'going away', mine actually seemed to 'block' motion in the opposite direction. It might have just been the heavy feel of no assistance, but the 4-bolt is much less bad.

After a friend had an "incident" with a tree, he's looking for a car. He lives on a smallholding in the middle of some forestry commission land, and works in a city, so his daily journey is: -) about 2 miles of forestry tracks (which have just been 'graded', so a 2WD car has one wheel spinning most of the time to make progress) -) 8-10 miles of twisty fast tarmac -) 20 miles of motorway including a trip over the Severn Bridge. He's 6ft4 and wants some headroom in the cabin. He had a little diesel Citroen with an adjustable seat, which was good on everything but the forest track, where it eventually shook itself apart. He's looked at: Disco - bit tight on headroom Freelander - looks good but seat isn't height adjustable RangeRover - comfy tank but V8s burn too much fuel Defender - tight on elbow room, not great for the twisty bit and a 'van' on the Severn bridge BMW X3 - very attractive so far, pricey. Skoda Octavia 4x4 - not too bad, worried about ground clearance Mitsu EvoMCMXCVIII - good fun but thirsty and probably a bit heavy on insurance Budget's up to £10k if longevity will justify it. He's got a Series as well so it doesn't have to be a LR. Your thoughts please?

My thought was that a thermocouple-multimeter wouldn't be that much money. Indeed, here's one at Maplin for £19.99 - in fact I think it's the one I've got so I can certify it up to 70mph on a Defender wing...

Yes, you need one if you're going to play with your fuelling (and not with replacing pistons etc). However, there's a world of difference between 600deg and 700deg and it might not be easily visible with that gauge. You could fit a thermocouple and use a multimeter with a thermocouple option to view the temperature (I had one strapped to the wing for a while). Once you've set the fuelling and you're happy with a safety margin, you could take it off (and leave the thermocouple in place for future checks?)

One issue with the 3-bolt is that it shuttles from assisting one-way to assisting the other way so it seems to hydraulically "jam up" slightly if you saw at the wheel. I didn't like that, so went for a 4-bolt when my 3-bolt died... I think I needed new hoses too.

E85 has got some big benefits in performance cars because it'll run at very high compression ratios - and it's got the potential to be carbon neutral, which decouples us from the oil industry and gives energy security. However, as Chris says it doesn't have the same energy density so you need more of it. Incidentally, the same is true of biodiesel and we're all running 5% bio in our diesel. To convert a petrol engine to E85, I believe you just need to change any hoses and seals that could be attacked by the ethanol content. It's a very common conversion in South America where most of their transport economy is "off-oil".

If the rope's slack and drenched through, ice crystals will form and expand, then melt in the morning and all will be well. I guess if you try to use it while there's still ice within the fibres then they could form sharp edges and abrade the rope internally - although I don't know if that'd be significant compared to dragging it over a log or through mud. I guess a greater issue could be if you had the rope wet and under tension, and then it froze, the ice could have more chance to bite into the fibres without they having chance to move away - but if it's under tension, I reckon the water would squeeze out and resolve the problem before it occurred. This doesn't include any consideration of the change in chemical strength at different temperatures (ie the rope itself could be more brittle at low temperatures, regardless of any frozen moisture content) and none of this is proven by any more science than my finger stuck in the air, but it seems sensible to me and provokes debate.

LSx V8, a proprietary transmission and an off-the-shelf body on top, something silly like a Pontiac Firebird or a stretched Mini?

I shall be in this Ninety: I'm meeting Mike and Margaret en route so only Martin has to find me... but if you're in someone else's group, don't follow me if you think I look like I know where I'm going. You'll be wrong on two counts... Saturday night: Do we want to get three or four designated drivers and head out to a big country pub with a varied menu which can take us all, or look to two or three separate tables in restaurants in Ashbourne and then pub drinkies afterwards? I can't think of anywhere in Ashbourne that'll serve a large number of us with a varied menu to suit all.

I really think that light weight will come to dominate, if only because we don't need hundreds of horses, particularly for challenge events. Vapourdream (that's a hotter version of a wet dream - spaceframe 80" with a Audi 1.4Tdi. Or budget veresion - a SJ410 with a Perkins Prima 4x4 Panda with a Smart Roadster engine?

Because nobody's organising it...

If Chris is along the right lines then I reckon it's his mudflap guess so I'm punting there's some arch extensions or wheel arch lining that can't take the pace and is being bent down onto the tyre. Help us out - any accompanying noise (that you can hear over 200+ bhp being discharged through mud tyres)?

Cheers Jase - I'll get the VGT working properly before I start working out how to reduce the MPG again...

I'm putting my pennies on "something" in the engine bay being cooked by the encroaching heat of two exhaust manifolds trying to dissipate ~200kW by radiation alone. Or else you've got a digital speedo and the third column of numbers has a fault which is melting the insulation

Chris, breathe easy. I don't expect you to organise this, that's why we have publically available posts in the forum. Guys - sort it out and leave Chris alone to quietly not organise your lanes, hotel, food and entertainment. My group will be: Me, John (Turbocharger) Martin (Godlykepower) Mike & Margaret (mmgemini) My brother William (Miniturbo?) In the 50/50 chance that Miniturbo doesn't get an MOT on his car before the event I'll take a straggler on the day, so that's my group full for now. There's no great need to pick a group of people you know - I've not met anyone in my group except my brother but I'm sure by the end of the day we'll be firm friends. People with LRs tend to be like that.

Subsequent? You mean he's going on somewhere afterwards?