Turbocharger

Aargh - this is the closest I can find to the Original And Best "Catzoyl" story. Please tell me we haven't lost the transcript of Nige's defining moment...?

Not that I've paid a deal of attention but I thought they were forged rather than cast?

NICK! I NEED A PIE NOW

Max unloaded speed is 4500rpm, 4200 sounds sensible for max power. Max speed? I can do some engineering calcu-maths if you like Les, but otherwise it sounds to me like you need a long stretch of private test track, or else some 'educated guesswork'...

I imagine it's hard enough scraping together enough marshals to run the event anyhow - faced with the threat of having to stand by a single punch all day would certainly put me off. Marshalling SS1 was fine because there was some action while we were there but it'd be rather dull if nobody even found your punch that day... PS Thanks to Adrian and Pigster for the highly comedic banter: "Why are you winching? Did I tell you to winch? Do as you're told. Stay there. Now drive. NOT BACKWARDS, DRIVE! Now stop. Stop now! When I tell you, not when you feel like it. Stop! Right, winch in. YOU'RE NOT WINCHING YET! That's better" etc.

If you've got PLENTY of time on your hands and a real lack of cash, the 2.5NAD pistons would go in the TD block, so long as one bore wasn't knacked by the passage of many outward-bound piston parts. The performance won't be quite right and you'd to well to watch the EGT, although there's no cheap way to do this - wind the fuel down until there's no black smoke and see if you've got more power than the NAD? As was said, perhaps better than the NAD on it's own but to be honest, it's a pretty sound engine in it's own right and, while not impressive, does exactly what it says on the tin and will do so in the face of considerable abuse.

If Bill runs it up to Salisbury Plain and leaves it at Chateau Watts in Trowbridge, I can swing by on my way to London at the beginning of September and leave it with a forumeer there?

I see what you're saying Jim, and I've heard about the intelligence agencies being able to retrieve information from hard disks which have been hammered, magnetted and subjected to nuclear attack, but for your common-or-garden scammer faced with a pile of disks in a skip somewhere, I'll bet you one of your finest fish'n'chip dinners they'd grab the unmolested one first...

Plenty of events on, ie Sodbury's at the end of October - surely the forum can turn this into a <20mile drive for you. Could we have a 'forum relay' thread?

Charlie - have you even heard of 'appropriate mesh density'? It's all automesh, automesh, automesh with you young upstarts...

Congrats to Mark90 on 3rd place on in standard class, and thanks to Adrian and Nick for their interpretations of 'street theatre with a winching theme'. Cracking weekend out for George and I, we really enjoyed it. It was nice to see the number of vehicles who stopped to help the butty van when they dropped a tyre just outside the site on the way home too, especially Orgasmic Farmer who volunteered his trailer spare wheel until it didn't fit Hopefully they're home by now.

Can't you do the swivel by just taking out the bolts which hold your (perfectly good) seals and swing your hubs around(!) while the seal 'hangs loose'. Actually, scrap this whole post, there's too much innuendo here.

It sounds like you're not totally disconnecting the earth, if you're getting any kind of noise at all when you try to start it while it's disconnected. Electrically, it doesn't matter which terminal you isolate but as was said earlier, it's easier to bypass (if you know what to do - how many thieves carry a multimeter?). The method I've seen for car stereos etc is to put a fuse in parallel with the isolator switch. It can still draw <1A for the radio etc but if you try to start the car with the switch off, you blow the fuse (and lose all your presets!) but turning the switch means the car will start again and you're not disabled permanently.

We've got one at work for when the brake tester packs up - we can't lose it either, it's really handy as a doorstop for the office...

I'm just playing with ideas for an active suspension with low(er) power consumption, which pretty much rules out anything holding the car up. Active damping and anti-roll appeal in this area, especially following mods which reduce the roll stiffness of the vehicle (3-link, slotted bushes, soft long springs etc). Active anti-roll could also be used on the road as the Disco does, but also to improve sideslope performance and perhaps give benefits in crossaxles too. SimonR had full air suspension on his Ninety and it did all of the above but used prodigious quantities of air along the way. As a fag packet idea it looks like you sacrifice the height adjustability but lose most of the complexity too, and build in redundance along the way. Tape measure - I was hoping someone would volunteer to measure the lengths and lever-arms on the Disco ACE system so I could put some numbers together. Everyone knows you can't use a tape measure to work out hydraulic pressure - you'd need a 'bar' for that

Summarising above, considered opinion is to separate the links vertically as far as possible, and ideally use a single link above the axle centreline if the engine wasn't in the way. Is there a good reason why nobody's suggested carrying this top link on an A-frame (in a similar way to the rear axle) or even as a gusseted J-bar down one side of the engine? With the A-frame you could even dispense with the panhard rod then if you were confident about the lateral stiffness; I guess it'd be a pretty 'open' frame though. I can see potential for such a system with removable (or active) anti-roll bars (hence my question about Discovery ACE elsewhere) too. Just playing with ideas really.

Hmm. I was trying to get some idea of the forces involved to see if the same thing could be done (crudely) at low(er) pressure with an air ram, but since the rams they use for ACE can't be more that 2" diameter, it seems not. Well, not without big travel and humongous leverage, anyway.

If you found yourself trying to sell the moulded mat thingy for an LT77 vehicle, you'd have no problem shifting it - I'd be interested.

I see what you're saying... but in today's risk-averse litigious world, people find it's easier just to say 'No' instead of doing the calcs. From what I've seen, VOSA etc take the better fitters from the pool and train them, but faced with something completely novel they're likely to run scared. Take three-link, for example - the links, brackets etc need to be big enough, but who defines 'big enough'? Does a shortened chassis need diamond plates across the join? What is sufficient? In their position, would you put your name to someone else's welding on such a critical place? It's 'safer' to just say no and tell our hard-working home DIY enthusiast to go home. There are no innovative, exciting and different vehicles on the road any more, but no homebrew hillbilly deathtraps either. - after all, where there's blame, there's a claim.

I understand that - for volume manufacture you need crash tests etc. When you modify the vehicle away from this approval, you need to undergo single vehicle approval to check the car is still safe, and if it meets the required standards then you get your SVA. If you make subsequent modifications it should be re-examined. My question is, since the nature of the mods aren't detailed when it's SVA'd for the first time, how can anyone prove that subsequent mods weren't there when it was SVA'd unless they clearly don't meet the safety requirements. For example - buy a classic Rangie, fit three-link suspension, SVA it. Then shorten it to 88". An 88" conversion has been around for years and is quite safe if done properly, but it wasn't in your SVA although they can't prove that unless it's demonstrably unsafe (ie if Will Warne has welded it up for you).

Chris - I'm going up on Saturday morning to marshal - PM Neil (or I have his number) I'm rather looking forward to watching Charlie when he's not in his air-con cabin, rolling the electric window down quarter of an inch and pointing through the inclement weather with an index finger at the next punch or bog I should run to...

Beware, once you pull all the bolts out which go backwards into the bulkhead pillar and then slide a tube down there too, they're remarkably hard to replace...

Does anyone know what pressure these systems run? Google tells me it's different for left / right corners (and I understand why) but doesn't mention psi/bar. Has anyone got one of these that they'd have a run round with a tape measure for me?

But the 'approved state' isn't recorded anywhere...

From all this it strikes me that, if one was considering building a spaceframe vehicle or similar, it'd be best to get the vehicle SVA'd first, while it's still reasonably standard...