Turbocharger

Dead tyres will fail your MOT, as will a non-permanent bulkhead betweek the fuel tank and passenger compartment. It depends how picky they are, you can find something to fail on any vehicle...

I've never been anything but impressed with Les's fabrication (and his workmanship - after some initial skepticism on my part...) Seriously, if I was in the market for a belt replacement he'd have my car and my money. Nuff said.

I got a puncture on the way to Sodbury three years ago. Got the jack out, picked the car up and went to get the spare wheel, then realised I had no wheelbrace. Bad luck Chris - that's why you pay your membership fees.

.. and like in the clip, my airbags didn't go off either. My impact was more central too.

Mine, as is the Disco in the clip, was a 300Tdi Disco1.

^^ what he said. Your big hole has only got one edge to disrupt the flow, so you need rather more smaller holes. Although I wouldn't normally consider mentioning it, the thickness of the plate will also have an effect on the formation of the boundary layer

I've got a plate and pin one, bought for £15 or so but with <2ft pins, it's just an exercise machine.

If it's a 1.2 box, take the input gear out first through the little cover in the back - it'll only complicate matters if you don't.

The bottom-entry mushroom ones have angled vents so the air goes round and round inside them first. Anything heavy is centrifuged out and you can often see a trail of dust running from the side vents. It sounds like Safari have managed a similar thing with their forward-facing design. Any filtration will cause a pressure loss - I'd imagine there's even lower pressure drawing from the centre of the mushroom type when all the air's spinning. At the end of the day, your choice. Has anyone heard of an engine hydraulicking through a snorkel with any kind of top on?

You need something with pulleys and flailing knives, like a design hybrid between the machines that sort good coins from bad ones at really high speed and something out of Wallace and Gromit. It shall be named 'The Cat-o-Matic' and painted in gaudy colours like a fairground ride.

Can members of the public turn up, pay and play?

Are you SURE it's not working? I seem to remember only one went round on my Disco most of the time, maybe you need high ambient temperatures to make both whirl about. I'd say it's worth checking that it's receiving voltage before you shell out your hard-earned.

Mr Trodden and I have driven most of the lanes around Bath, Bristol, Warminster and up towards Cirencester. We're basically looking for a private site somewhere where we can slip them £15-£20, go into a corner on our own and get properly stuck for the day. I'll bear you in mind for the next time I fancy some laning though!

If you're playing with the wire brush thingy, get two or three. They're not expensive, and they moult. As people said, hand and eye protection, and prepare to find little twists of wire in all your clothes (including underwear ) for weeks afterwards.

Sorry, just found the mag again. Because I'm too stupid to put the date in the same post as the details, location and cost: IT'S ON THE SIXTH OF JULY.

Chris, If you're seriously interested in making your own biodiesel, there's a one-day workshop in Bath as part of the Bath Fringe Festival(!) on that very subject: "Make your own bio-diesel" Bring along your own chip fat and turn it into useful, friendly bio-diesel. Members of the Oxford collective Goldenfuels will demonstrate the conversion of vegetable oil to fuel suitable for most diesel engines. A day long practical workshopin which all safety, legal, economic and environmental aspects of using bio-diesel will be explored. This workshop is designed to be accessible to anyone interested whether you're just mildly alarmed by the effects of global warming, or seriously considering setting up in production yourself. Diesel fuel made today will be ready for use at Walcot Independence Day. Location: Godwin and Godwin Wine Warehouse, Kensington, Bath. Registration at 11am, workshop 12 - 5pm. www.littlefiets.com for more info (although I can't see anything on there!). Enrolment £10.

Be careful with your standardish setup though, I've seen 740 degrees on the EGT just by winding up the fuel to silly-o'clock. Went well though.

There's a bus in Hong Kong in flip-paint, looks about the same colour and it showed every spot weld, rivet and ripple...

It is indeed the (all-round better, quieter and prettier) 300Tdi unit, but still uses the 2.5NAD engine loom. I've splashed the cash and bought a new loom. Looking at the old one I've had to repair the fuel solenoid spur, the oil pressure switch spur, extend the water temperature spur and put new connectors on the alternator bit - it looks like a mess of crimp connectors, and I'd rather buy a new one so I don't have a big bunch of more crimps just below the 6-way connector on the bulkhead. They've even put a chunkier bit of cable in for the alternator for me.

It's unplugged already Looks like I'll be giving £50 to Autosparks then, VOR until it arrives but it looks like they'll do the bigger alternator wiring and put the right connector on for my Racetech water gauge.

While changing the speedo cable this evening I leaned on an air pipe and the mud behind it made a crackling sound, kind of like an electrical short. Very much like an electrical short, in fact. Removing the hose gave: Outstandingly the engine ran fine, started fine and didn't misbehave or flatten the battery. It was chafing on the wiring support(!) around the back of the engine. Can I buy a new engine wiring loom? Will I have to mortgage a house? Can I get looms with upgraded alternator wiring, or just bridge the standard wiring and run a welding cable around the engine in parallel?

Can we have a spelling charter?

Helmet bitch cam .. lol You could stream three or four cameras, car or bitch mounted, and record them in 4 quadrants of the screen as an MP4. Then, replay the whole event on your laptop afterwards - it's all gone 'Challenge Anneka' :D

I looked at doing this myself but there seem to be so many standards for video cameras - I had horrible visions of being left with two cameras which didn't plug into my screen, and ebay receipts for £100 or more. Once I get a laptop in the LR permanently I'd like to do the same with USB webcams, but that's a very neat solution Si! "LRE - we're watching you"

As said before, thanks immensely to James and Tony for some excellent punches, including some impossible punches which needed wheel spinning, winches and body damage to discover that there was an easier route and it was possible to just drive there and one 'just a quickie' which took over an hour and made us late for lunch. The site is excellent, although all the woodland has 2ft of wood mulch on the surface which made traction (especially lateral traction on sideslopes!) a huge issue for us. Then there were the boggy bits, which often looked innocuous but swallowed tyres. My snaps: ^^ We looked at this punch and decided to go elsewhere... ^^ Getting a tree exactly where you wanted one wasn't always easy. ^^ From attempting the unreachable punch that we just drove to from a different direction ^^ That's funny, everyone's fixing Charlie's car but he's nowhere to be seen Seriously, it was fantastic to see everyone pull together and produce from nowhere tools, parts, consumables and aid. The cable tie was supposed to set off that 'I'm sure there's something wrong' hypersensitity to strange noises that field repairs bring but, as Charlie has shown, if there's no lights on the dashboard there isn't anything wrong. Finally, respect to Jim (Pugwash) for going everywhere in his chip van. How about it Jim, 185/75R13 MTs and a little 6000lb winch on the front?