Turbocharger

It's a Sodbury £5 special, with an extra ladder he found on the farm, and then some gentle attention from the welder to allow the tailgate to open.

A TruTrac is a Torsen-type diff, and indeed is what I have in the back axle of my Ninety. If you want to see it in action, I might be able to cross-axle it for you somewhere around Bristol or Stroud on Sunday? Basically it keeps going when I don't expect it to. It got here without the centre diff locked...

Water has three four important properties with respect to this thread: 1) high specific heat capacity - so it can absorb a lot of the heat energy (of inefficient compression from the turbo, and normal combustion in the cylinder) without rising in temperature too much - giving lower cylinder temps and EGTs 2) when it turns to steam it expands considerably, taking up more space in the cylinder (which can push cyl pressures through the roof, care required) 3) it's incompressible, so if too much is injected (or ingested) it bends bits of your engine 4) it seems to render a V8 completely incapable of producing any power at all, even when waved around under the bonnet. Owners perform 'exorcisms' with strange aerosols and moaning sounds.

Except that he's wrong: Because the angle of the involute (worm) gear is quite steep, torque is transmissible back through the involute and it is this angle which gives the different torque-biasing ratios. Thus the wheels don't have to rotate at the same speed when the diff is biasing torque - it's not a locker. Nice pics though

Jez - do you have issues with the bean-tin reservoir leaking, especially through the breather in the lid? I can't get mine to seal properly, if it's not leaking it's empty.

Hmm. An evening of googling this project (which only exists on my e-truck at the moment) yields the following: 1) screenwash solution is better than water since it contains alcohol 2) some sites say you need a nozzle or injector, some don't 3) most are focussed on turbo-petrol applications 4) one scary, scary hillbilly in Am-ri-ca screwed down the lid on his screenwash and fed exhaust pressure into the top and the water outlet into the inlet manifold, letting the differential pressure drive his water injection I'm particularly paranoid about hydraulic'ing the engine, so I want to start really small and see if there's a marked benefit to be had. I'd go for manual control since I don't see a benefit in megasquirting the whole engine for just this project. I'm guessing stainless injectors might be expensive?

LSD or torque-biasing diff? There's a difference. If you can get your head around how a Torsen torque-biasing diff works it's a beautifully elegant piece of engineering. The effect on the vehicle handling depends on the bias ratio, but if you've got all your wheels in contact with the ground it's very predictable. Under heavy cornering when a wheel is on the point of slip, torque is transferred to the wheel with the most weight. With a high bias ratio this transfer would be quite pronounced, but with a moderate bias the effect is to shove the vehicle forwards, hard, from exactly where you want to push. With a wheel off the ground the diff behaves as if it was open, although you can use the inertia of the roadwheel or gentle dragging of the brakes to 'help' the mechanism work for you. Is there nothing that can't be done with Lego©? Limited slip diffs use friction plates between the halfshafts to transfer torque across the diff, and are like a half-locking diff. I don't have time for them because I don't like friction plates - I mean, who put a wearing component in the bellhousing anyway, stupid place for a clutch, you've got to take the engine out each time :rolleyes. To be honest, if you install them instead of lockers you'd probably be disappointed. I like the 'fit and forget' ability and the engineering theory. It also massively outperforms an open diff.

Hmm. My plan has almost imploded anyway. Since I'm about to hack about with the induction/exhaust side of my 300Tdi anyway, I was considering the benefits of adding a boss somewhere on the inlet to allow water injection using a petrol fuel injector with a 555 square wave, and turning it off/varying the mark-space ratio to control injection rate, but from a brief Googling (thanks guys) it seems they're lubricated by the fuel also (and water makes steel go rusty). This is a Bad Thing if I'm spraying it into the inlet.

Absolute numpty question from a beginner - how does a petrol fuel injector work? If I want to control a stream of fuel using electricity, can I plumb one of these up and supply 12v to spray fuel, or do I need a pump to generate pressure which is then 'released' by the injector?

A mate has a full length rack on a truckcab - mounted on the cab itself and two ladders at the back. Very handy for lightweight but bulky stuff.

Uprating the intercooler will increase the efficiency of the engine, you're rejecting heat from the turbocharger which would otherwise impinge on the density of the inducted air. You can see reasonable benefits on flowing 2.25 and NAD heads, but the Tdi heads are pretty well flowed already (potted history, the later 2.5NAD and 2.5TD had a different port arrangement following some development work by Ricardo. This work carried over to the 200Tdi). If you're fussy, spend some time of your own making sure that the manifolds are matched to the head, and buy a good quality intercooler. Get an EGT gauge to make sure you don't cook the lump, and wind up the fuel as described elsewhere. If you've got a GPS unit and you're interested in getting some before/after performance figures for torque and horsepower, drop me a PM.

Whereabouts in Derbyshire are you? Dave's workshop is just off the A50, my parents place is near Brailsford.

Pah - luxury. I get to do my maintenance in the gutter of a residential street, resting on the broken bottles of last night's drunks and bearing the inutterable jeering from local children who decry my chosen mode of transport. Eee, when I were I lad, we had... well, we had a fully equipped workshop with a ceiling crane, workbench and blown-air heating system, but that's by the by. Kids today, don't know they're born.

I've plugged his business before because he used to live nextdoor to me, but Dave at Tornado installed my cage, and since he got his own bender he seems to be able to create anything from tube.

I imagine the 240v flex that follows you everywhere has to be a considerable disadvantage... it's for a silent home compressor setup Jim; it charges overnight I think.

Autocar 15th November.

Two things occur about the full cage design: 1) it's a lot of weight up high - I can tell the difference in roll during corners with the cage I have, more would be bad news but not terrible. 2) you'll never be able to get the hardtop off again unless you put the bars higher on the roof than I have - you've got to clear the internal gutter when you lift the roof off (or turn it as I tried to describe above). The wing bars sound good though - want to do mine afterwards?

The second plastic tube on the back of my speedo has finally dropped off, so now I can't see the speedo at night. I've tried gluing it, it just drops off again. Any clever solutions with LEDs? Otherwise, where can I get one of these? :

I can't find any pictures but... It's a a Tomcat cage, installed by Dave at Tornado in Derbyshire. I have a normal hoop, bolted down to the chassis via two sandwich plates and 4x M14 bolts. The stays are welded to the cage and bolt through the floor in a similar way, down to the chassis rails by the rear crossmember. The front external section bolts through the roof in the same way through two sets of curved sandwich plates which were bolted to the roof and then welded up. Although I've not taken the roof off since, I reckon it's still possible if I rotate it (as viewed from above). Hope that makes sense...

A morning upstairs with the missus Nige?

Damn... could have been a prime opportunity to get rid of some of the existing deadwood, like all the V8 boys who spend their lives wailing about humid days and the price of petrol. Seriously guys, thanks for giving up your Sunday so I can while away my life on the web. (Actually I've done some laning in the Peak District today - yay! )

Blimey, maybe Mr Eales has got some special secret - 16mpg is more than most V8 owners see on an average day, or so I thought!

The headboard doesn't come off, and I didn't want to go too far back in case it tipped up (it's not our trailer ) Feeling dizzy?

Paul - Wayfinder is a fantastic site, and much credit to Ian. I didn't previously know it was a database of green lanes, but there's so much information was on there, and really well integrated too - maps etc available at a click. Thanks for posting up the link.

I did 2000 miles around western Europe this summer with breakdown recovery, a fist-sized first aid kit, a couple of spanners and wheel bearings / UJs, and a tolerable command of 'survival' French and German. All was well, advice ranged from 'take a spare vehicle for parts' to 'take only your credit and breakdown cards'.