Turbocharger

Update: I have time, spanners and me in the same place so: Manifolds off: The turbo is passing a little oil, and this could be a contributor (no blue smoke though): The cartoon red manifold fits after a little tweaking with a round file: And the turbo isn't as comedically large as the mockup on the workshop floor suggested: The washer bottle will have to move and when the turbo is offered up to the flange the heater interferes with the diaphragm which I so lovingly drilled through modified last week. I'm going to try using the standard 300Tdi diaphragm on a custom mount instead, and it'll probably give greater movement for the pressures involved. For the spectators, this is a dull update because its just bolt-together stuff but this conversion has been in my mind since I chose a username, so this marks my move from vapour builder to real spanner swinging. Eat that, Will Warne

Oi! I heard that.

I have to say, for something where weight is so important, leaf springs make a lot of sense because they give you compliance and location. I'd suspect a single leaf from a small car could give the compliance if it was mounted in the right way, eg as a cantilever beam to the centre of the axle. Rubber is a good solution but you then need a linkage to support it all.

I was under the impression that axles with the deeper rubber centre caps that stick through the middle of an alloy were the incompatible ones with the interfering drive members. I appreciate in your case this isn't true but as an engineer I'd be reticent to file chunks off such an important assembly. Do your wheel studs have the straight line stamped into the end face to show the hub is suitable for alloys? Not teaching grannies about egg sucking here and I'm aware that some aftermarket wheels in the same pattern don't have these issues, but they're your wheels and all but I'd rather not see you dead...

I'd advise caution here. I think (often a problem) that the wheel might centre on the spigot, so removing it might give some balance issues or worse...

Public service announcement - the variable vane controller ring is loose and will fall out if you take the end off and turn the turbo over. Then it'll take you ages to get all the little bits back in line. Transmission ends.

[Quiet voice] I use a 5MP phone camera for all my website photos, and even then I have to reduce the size to get pics onto here. Granted, I can't get the contrast in low-light action situations or adjust my shutter speed to perfectly capture a housefly in motion, but for point and shoot snaps to go onto the web it's quite sufficient. Maybe I'm just a stills luddite? [/quiet voice]

What happens if I'm the first person in the thread to say 'crossply'?

Tonight my attention turned to boost control, and the plan is much as suggested above. I've found that the OEM diaphragm is sprung such that the vanes are naturally 'open', ie equivalent to a 'large' turbo (or 'wastegate open'). While nobody worries about wastegates sticking 'closed', it's nice to know it'll fail safe. I've drilled and tapped the other side of the diaphragm to turn it into a pressure-activated unit. I've learned a couple of things from this process: 1) The tapping drill for M10 fine is 8mm, not 9mm (and now I need chemical metal). 2) However careful you are, drilling towards a rubber diaphragm means you'll put a hole in it (and now I need some more silicone sealant) However, I now have this: and I've sealed the small tear in the rubber moderately well with silicone - we'll see how long that lasts. With the compressor turned down to 1 bar, it travels around 11mm which is around the total throw of the vane lever, so we'll see how that goes. Don't know about preloads and adjustment yet, but since this is what I've already got it's worth a go. There is an adjusting sleeve with opposite threads (and the LH thread is on the turbo end so it'll be easier to make up my own rod later if I need to). The manifold was made by a friend at work to return a favour, and he refused to take any money for it. He jigged a spare 300Tdi manifold and made the new one to the same pattern so it should mount to the existing exhaust too. However, I'd told him there was 'loads of room' in the area away from the block, and it looks like he took me at my word. (Standard 300Tdi on the left, my manifold on the right) Wandering round the engine bay with the tape measure, the washer bottle has got to go and I may have to rearrange the inner wing a little. I'm concerned about the cantilevered weight but not enough to go back and ask him to start again. As a favour I'm touched that he put so much effort in, and more so that it uses the standard exhaust. If it fails I'll have to chop about what I've got and move the exhaust too, but meanwhile it seems ungrateful to ask him to start again. I'll have to suck it and see with expansion joints - I'm not wild about slotting the studs; to my mind if they're slack enough to allow any slip then there won't be enough tension to hold up that weight. Maybe I'll get it hot and then tighten them.

Wood is actually a pretty sustainable energy source, since it can be grown and logged without major land use change (whereas veg oil from rape or sunflowers directly diverts or displaces food crops on the same arable land, hence the sustainability issues).

My only concern with water injection is that you're injecting water into a pipe which is at (up to) 1 bar, so you might find the pump stalls (and burns out eventually?). The good news is, no water = no difference, so your engine is safe from this effect, but if the pressure difference allows some water to pass, but not enough nozzle pressure to produce a spray, you could end up ingesting gobs of water through the inlet valves, and this would be bad. My conclusion - I'd try to visualise the water spray pattern against 1 bar first. My crude experiments suggest that a water cooler bottle will hold nearly 1 bar pressure(!) and lemonade bottles probably similar levels, so you could poke your nozzle through a bung in the bottom of one of these, use a workshop compressor to pressurise it to 1bar (or whatever max boost you're running) and visually inspect the spray pattern. That way you'll know that the washer pump is able to deliver into that environment. Otherwise, with the setup you've got, you might just find no difference on the road (except an annoying buzzer) and you've got plenty of water left when you get home. Either way, I applaud the experiment, it's an exciting idea. Are you using pure water? If you use the methanol-based screenwash you could see even greater performance benefits.

What they said above - don't weld your UJs back to back. Putting a DC joint at the axle end - you could do it, but with radius arms there's not a lot of movement between the diff and prop because the whole thing pivots at the chassis end at nearly the same point, so a UJ doesn't really cause any problems. With clever suspension links etc, it could be useful. Horses for courses...

My cantilever toolbox is getting rather full and it's seen better days (don't use one as a spontaneous axle stand) so I'm looking for something better. I've wandered around Machine Mart, Halfords etc and spoken to the mechanics at work. I know I'd like ball-bearing runners to support the weight of tools etc but they all seem BL**DY expensive for what they are. I had a search of the forum with little result except for Gromit's review but this box seems a little too small for what I want: Should I be looking at BB runners, or will slides be OK for DIY use? Should I consider a plastic toolbox rather than metal? I could just get another cantilever and spend the difference on some decent kit to go in it. Stop me if I'm barking up the wrong tree. Since I can't find a review of toolboxes and I've done the running around, I thought I'd write it up. Prices include VAT, obviously these are only my own thoughts and prices may vary, other listings magazines are available, see Ts & Cs. Ideal box: Halfords Professional 7-drawer box, ball bearings, supports 350kg and makes coffee. Halfords Professional 7 drawer toolchest, more like a top box though really. Pic won't link easily Unfortunately, they want £149 off me for it, so no. Quality compromise: Halfords do this cabinet for the same money as above, trading 'friction slides' for considerably extra space inside. Won't be as good and will irritate me in time, but considerable extra points for workshop bling. Halfords 7 drawer toolbox with castors... picture won't linky £149 Similar offering from Clarke at Machine Mart, loadsa space but friction slides: £158 Clarke 'Contractor' kit looks nicer, with ball bearings and a range of drawer depths for putting hammers etc in. I felt a little gypped that this picture says £140 next to it: But that's just for the top unit with 9 drawers. Grr. Hunting elsewhere on the internerd finds me these two units, ball bearings and all, for £130: I can't make this picture work either This last one looks like a ridiculous bargain compared to most of the above. Much as I'd like to kid myself that I'm in the garage every night, I'm only really a DIY user so Draper should be good enough. Should I snatch their Paypal arm off before the offer ends?

My turbo is off a 2003 Mitsubishi L200 Warrior, which is anywhere between a 110bhp 2.5 and a 170bhp 2.8 depending on which website I choose to misunderstand today. I've got no idea of part numbers etc, it was acquired for me and seemed suitable on paper. I'd thought about drilling the vacuum diaphragm but since I can produce some movement by sucking it with my mouth(!) I expect it'll work at a lower pressure than the 1bar boost or greater that I want to run, limiting my available power. The answer there would be to bleed some of the boosted air out before the diaphragm so it sees a proportion of the manifold pressure, but I don't know if I'd damage the unit by drilling into it. I guess the answer here is to try it, since it's scrap to me if it won't do what I want. Thinking aloud, I do need to make sure that it works the right way round for my application, eg more boost is a signal to produce less boost and not vice versa, or else it could just run away with itself. I'll have to pipe it up and see if it works...

I looked at such an option and decided a hinging baseboard with slide-out sideways rails and side 'flaps' to rest on them make it all wider would make the whole idea much more palatable for putting a tent up there. As Big John says, I looked at hooking the peg holes onto hooks but I think the guy ropes would need standoff brackets, or extending down to the floor. You'd need to stop the car moving on its suspension if you went for the latter. Most commercial tents are too wide for a standard roofrack. My thoughts were that I could leave an inflated mattress up there, dismantle the tent around it and sheet it or strap it all down to stop it becoming a windsock on the motorway. As with so many projects, the thinking is as far as I got...

'Freestyle' type nuts, as also used to hold on my 8-spokes (and in this case, my unpunctured spare on a standard rim):

What the above said (and with due deference to Mr Murphy) - there's a cone on the inner edge of the alloy nut so they fit both. This was so LR could sell the Disco with alloys and a steel spare, and I have the same setup on my Ninety. They look a little odd but quite safe for road use.

Agree wholly with your point about Martin's outlay for PI rooms from his own pocket - too risky to be fair to him. My knowledge of the lanes would move our base to somewhere near Buxton, but that's because I lived on the south side of the peak and it's a long way to get north of Edale before starting any laning - I'm sure there are some good lanes out that way so Edale could be a perfectly good base. I could certainly find two days of driving around Buxton.

Does anyone have video of the Shires arena spectacle? Stuff may have gone missing around the site, but there was a remote control floating around loose inside the Judge Dredd 101 that I chucked forward into the cab before someone could have it away. Did anyone see the hubs on the Shaun the Sheep LR? There were a number of bits on the car which had been tweaked to make it look like the cartoon, but it also had six-stud hubs on what looked like standard LR axles / swivels. Anyone know any more?

Thanks Si - have you got any pictures of your setup? I'm going to have a play with it on the workbench at the weekend and see if I can make the rod move through the full travel with 1bar. My concern is that my chosen boost will need lots of 'trial and error' calibration to get the rod length correct, or else it'll be at full / no boost all the time.

Here's mine - no fancy plastic consoles here, I wanted to keep my cubbybox and access to the fusebox etc:

It's a steady but slow project. I now have a manifold for my VG turbo, resplendent in cartoon red: and since I'm curious, I took the end off it to see how it all works. They've added mechanical cleverness here: Question is, how to control the vanes (and thus the boost)? The diaphragm on the unit needs vacuum to operate it. I could use the servo vacuum but I'd have to bleed this branch to generate a flow so I can modulate it, and I'm not keen to throw away my hard-worked vacuum when it's also working the brakes. The engineer in me would like to convert it to boost-sensing, so that the turbo always tries to achieve eg 1bar of boost. Any ideas (other than megasquirting the whole car, thank you FridgeFreezer)?

All I'm going to add is my own thoughts and feelings with Gresh and his family.

How did I miss Mouse? I had a good wander round - I rarely buy anything big but it's my annual enthusiasm injection to get on and do some of the bits that I've been meaning to for ages. Most impressive vehicle was a tube buggy from the Netherlands(?) with so much bespoke fabrication it made me simply walk round it twice slowly, looking. Enjoyable show and good to see a few familiar faces too.

Thanks Walfy - I'm glad it's not just me. If I pull the top pin then the swivel moves and I lose my house deposit as my landlord's driveway receives a healthy dollop of swivel grease, so I carefully zip tie the caliper to the spring while the hub's off - hence the concern about doing this too many times. I'll drop David a PM and ask him about flexi's. I guess then the problem is keeping them away from the tyre in all steering + suspension positions.