Turbocharger

Be aware that modulars / 8-spokes come in a range of offsets - have a look at where the disc lands on the hoop (on your wheel, if that makes any sense), and then you're into grappling with whether your measurement of offset is the same as everyone else uses...

I spend ten minutes last night with my compression ratio calcs, trying to work out why I'd got a five litre engine...

Coastal tour of the UK? I'd head out across France, Spain, Morocco I think, but that'd just be to make the languages easier... Whichever, take many photos and make us jealous!

No y'eejit, it's proportional to expansion ratio. The difference is, at a lower CR and higher boost pressure you'll only expand through the same ratio (hence poorer fuel consumption) but by working higher up the P-V curve you'll extract more energy (or the same energy with less stress on the engine) as I understand it.

Be aware that there shouldn't be a 'driving side' to the key; as mentioned earlier the force should be taken through the frictional contact but bear in mind that there's a big torsional damper in the pulley too, which will see BIG loads in both directions as the engine speeds up and slows down between firing strokes - so there's force both ways. Good luck!

Further to my musings on head gaskets I've done some numbers and I'll share here. Considering I want to do more tuning work on the LR in the future (especially on the turbo) I shall fit the thickest gasket. It's common practice in petrol engines to lower the compression ratio when supercharging or turbocharging to prevent knocking, and the same principle in a diesel will reduce the very highest pressures, at the slight expense of fuel consumption (when operating off-turbo). For engines which currently have the standard 19.5:1 compression ratio with a 2-hole gasket, the following applies: This means that compression will be down by 6% on all cylinders, or to look at that another way, the boost can be increased by 6% so that compression energy can come from the (free) exhaust gas instead. It will have more lag and use the turbocharger more, but that shouldn't be for too long.

Tony - do you recall how much you paid for your smaller probe?

You could measure it with your multimeter, but you generate additional thermocouple junctions where the +ve and -ve probes touch the dissimilar metals. So long as you use probes made of the same material and keep the junctions at the same temperature, this would cancel. However, the voltage from the thermocouple is very non-linear, so it might be the same (give or take 0.02mV) for two different types at room temperature, but that difference could be very different when you double the absolute temperature of the junction. The question I think you need to be asking is, are all K-type thermocouples the same? Me, I don't know...

Sorry - I don't buy that. There's no dividing membrane or boundary, so it's academic whether you determine a 'quantum' of charge is in the battery, terminal, connecting wire or elsewhere. I accept that parallel connection is bad, but this 'overshooting' business doesn't hold water for me as the reason behind it. ... but then nor does two chunky batteries really - I've got a hydraulic winch Being a skinflint, two Fiesta batteries in split charge does appeal though coz they're cheaper

Where does the electrical 'inertia' come from for this overshooting? If you connect two buckets of water together this doesn't happen, so obviously my mechy's analogy falls down here.

I've got a RR-style arm on my Ninety - some said there were clearance issues but I didn't find any. You have to relocate the damper though, either with a clamp kit or a RR track-rod (down behind the diff).

There's a ceiling crane at home () so the weight isn't too much of an issue but I'll pull the manifolds anyway and maybe tidy up how it all fits with some Dremel action You're a gent for posting the angle gauge, thank you kindly.

That's it then - if Mo's works with the steel tank then mine should. Do I just need a replacement (1,2,3 hole as applicable) head gasket and a bucket of coolant? I've got torque wrenches and sockets.

Will - I've got a spare thermostat that I'm quite happy to chuck in the post if you want to give it a try - 5 min job to fit.

I'd say the Wayfinder website is the best starting point for you - have a look down the threads in "Getting out there". I'll be going out around Buxton, probably on 28th December, if you'd like to join us? I can't guarantee they won't be scratchy though.

Has the heater always been cold, or is this a new feature? Sounds like a twin problem to mine!

You're very kind Mr Mud. Where had the gasket gone on yours? I'm reticent to pull the top off an engine that's got no other symptoms, it seems odd. Can you still get the litmus paper that shows up exhaust gas in the coolant?

I have a 300Tdi installed into a 2.5NAD engine bay, and I have always had 'concerns' about coolant. It runs the original pressed-tin header tank, and the engine is higher in the engine bay than standard so I'm not certain the header tank is high enough, or big enough for the job. I can fill the header tank right up, but the tank is empty again at the end of the next journey - presumably the water's gone out of the overflow pipe as it expands. However, opening the cap with the engine running always spits water out as you'd expect, so I presume it's full when the engine's up to temperature. I've run the engine with the header tank cap off and I can see a stream of bubbles in the coolant flow going across the tank (from the de-gas pipe) but it's not pressurising excessively and there's no oil in the water / water in the oil. Recently, the temperature gauge has been dropping back to 70deg during a run, although the heater's still warm, so I swapped the thermostat out with a known good one. As I removed the thermostat housing... it was empty of water entirely so the level in the block when cold must be pretty low. Do I just need more expansion volume or a 'higher' header tank? Thoughts / suggestions please.

Handy bit of maths there. If you fancied a project, could you verify this too with your pressure-reading bottle jack, by jacking one corner at a time through a known distance?

<Devil's advocate> I like the idea of road charging. The more expensive the roads become, the fewer people will use them. This will generate the need for alternatives which will drive their development, especially as the alternative to the car becomes cheaper than the car. It isn't at the moment, because everyone uses a car instead. The leadership for this change can only come from the government. Looking at the people I meet in the street, I wouldn't trust most to sit the right way round on a lavatory so how can they decide their own transport policy? We've seen what happens - we all sit stationary in cars stubbornly staring ahead and waiting for the numpty in front to get off the phone and start driving. Environmentally it makes sense, and it can have benefits too - imagine a personal weekly CO2 allowance. 5 commutes in a Fiesta crawling across town twice daily, or the same journey by integrated public transport and the remainder of the CO2 burned in an AC Cobra across a mountain pass for 2 hours on Sunday. No brainer. As I said, the impetus for this has to come from somewhere. It can't come from "the Government" - they don't have any money. It's our money, however they choose to split it up between education/healthcare/defence/public transport. If you want to make a difference, join the sector (and make some money out of it too!).

TroddenMasses also failed the MOT on a PAS pump if you're looking for a swift profit on your Ebay winnings? He doesn't need it quickly, he's still struggling with radius arm bolts...

So long as the handbrake's off, no problem. No load at the diff pinion means that (excluding the inertia of the prop and handbrake drum) there'll be no load seen at the undriven wheel. In practice, the inertia shouldn't be enough to let it climb out of the roller... although I wouldn't stand behind it!

Well, a bleed valve bleeds boost pressure out of the line to the wastegate, so when it sees 1bar the engine is running at 1.5bar, and you can adjust the bleed rate to determine your peak manifold pressure. However, the blurb says it's not a bleed valve, so... ??

Oi! Black smoke is excess fuel, hence the problems when you wind up the injector pump. It sounds to me like turbo seals, but it could equally be a (very bad) valve stem seal or even piston rings. Well done for stalling it when you did, hopefully there won't be too much damage.

Uh oh...