NoHummer-Ed

Thank you for your many helps. I have talked to many people about what to decide - and in conclusion I have bought an X-Flex setup from X-Eng. There is details here: www.x-eng.co.uk/x-flex.asp. It has arrived on Friday and it looks beautiful. The Aluminium metal is anodised blue and the arms are gold. They look too nice to get dirty my father thinks. I imagined the Joints after seeing on X-Eng web site as being smaller and insubstantial. In real life, they are strong and full of metal. They give me no void of doubt. I have now fitted the arms. It was a really easy were it not for the heavy rain. This is described clearly in the instructions. In fact, the directions are very good. Sometimes my English is wonky and they were clear. When we fitted, we removed the dampers. I jack vehicle with hiLift and the climber reached the top of the ladder rack before 90's wheel lifted. The movement is amazing compared to Friday. If it is not raining this week, Father and I will fit the X-Springs. X-Eng man says that I may try the springs at standard height because there is benefit in a lower center of gravity. Only lift your springs if your tyres demand it. My existing tyres are 285/85/16 BFG and are working OK with standard springs - so I will see how it goes. Maybe 2" lift is just exhibitionist? I am going to go to a Play Day at Slindon next. I will take some photographs and report on how well X-Flex function. This is my first big modification - and it is pleasing for it to go well immediately. My handbrake is insubstantial - even on Fathers gentle drive slope. Many have said to buy x-Eng handbrake. I am presuming it works well? If it is as good as X-Flex - I definitely buy when monies allow. Thanks again - Ed

Thankyou for your many responses. My reply is slow because I am using a phone-up in the outer world at the moment and the internet via is very slow. I cannot log in very often too. My 90 is used 80% on the road though there are many poor roads in Crawley which make like off road! The 20% is play days and 'green lane' but I have no routes today. When I am returned home I will maybe join a club for communal routes. At the moment my 90 has standard springs and dampers. It has Bearmack side bars, Mud Terrain Tires on black wheels. It has several recovery points but the bumper is ordinary. I do not want to massive the suspension and in preference I would keep these springs for the ride and handleing on road is not bad. Even when the back is filled with stones it has good behavior. I would like a setup which gives me much more suspension travel and flexibility with long dampers and flexible drag links but keeping my bump travel similar. The centre of gravity is to be use as low as possible for good handling and stability on mountain sides. My budget is maybe £2000, maybe as much as it needs but as less as it can be. I would be liking to have a cage from North Off Road in the future year maybe also from same pot. Magazines cover many winch competitions. They look fun and hard muddy work too. I like to keep the option of entering these in future when I am more ready. In the past, I have driven many hundreds of miles in mountains and technical driving for real life. My off road skills should be reasonable - but I never used a winch. Father and I once utilised a cow with a yoke to help us out of the mud but the cow did not respond to instruction as a winch does - so I may like to buy one of these too in the future year. Ed

I have been looking at a different options for improving the suspension on my 90 for mud travelling and mountaining. Unfortunately, I do not know any other close people with Land Rovers - Father has a Land Cruiser and is often an enemy in discussions! I humbly ask the forums opinion on the different options. I have tools or places to work so whatever I buy has to be easy to fit. I can execute welding and cutting but it must be on a weekend in the road - so I prefer bolting and nutting in place if possible. The options I am seeing advertised are: Scorpio Racing, QT Services and Xeng. I see the forum has a bad breath for Scorpio - but I pray you ignore it for a moment. I see many trucks with orange springs which are Scorpio - so I see it is common, but does not make the opinion always good! QT and Xeng you do not see coloured so I cannot tell if they are travelling. QT Hi Flex has many components for the price - but it uses open rose joints which are worrying to me. Even in India they only last until the rainy season then the mud makes them loose. England has mud every day! Xeng is promising a new XFlex system http://www.x-eng.co.uk/ which is being clever. It makes use of a ball in a socket joint that I have not seen before. The ball lies on a Polyurethane bed with grease - so it should slide well. It has double springs that are like a telescope to have more extension. This kit has no dampers or brake pipes which must be sourced seperately. Scorpio Racing Extreme Kit has more traditional parts with no unusual technology. It does have impressive photographs of trucks sporting the suspension. The kit comes with long dampers and orange springs - but the other parts look common. There is no idea of price either. I phone them and they ask to see my 90 before discussing price for safety. Asside from bad humours, is this kit as good as the photographs? Are there other kits that I may want to scrutinise? Much help the merrier all. Ed

Ah ha - i see I have written a funny. Sorry my spelling is often as it sounds. I have asked one of the guys in stores where we get it from and he says it is the same as goodrich hose. He says go to Exact Engineering 01803 866464. They are in Devon because they do not have a web site. I don't know if that's actually where we buy it, but it was who he suggested.

Can you catch a spare Dog in your street? Wipe the dog on some ATF for example. Take the dog to the sample you want to identify and if the dog is unimpressed you will know it is ATF if not, it is something else. Dogs have much bigger inside noses than humans and can tell the difference easily. Ed

Kind of - it's a PTFE hose covered in stainless bread. The hose is fairly thin walled and the whole thing is very flexible. I think it's similar to the used for flexible brake pipes. Where electrical shorts are possible, the bread is covered with a plastic sheath. Ed

That's very funny yes. I laughed and died when I read about "Cooooooo Coooded". Some of us here have D1.9 coding for balistic Ti - but I think some of my workmates must have one of these for welding Steel! I have read a few threads on here where coding is held up like an idol - but really coding is so specific that for most things, particularly cars, where you don't really know the spec of the material the weld produced by a general fabricator with experience will be better in the real world. One lad here got a job welding Aluminium window frames on the back of being coded. He was sacked the same day cos his welding was so terrible. But with Ti, he is one of the best. Don't be fooled easily. Ed

It's not totally OT, but, at work we have big problems if components become contamination with hydraulic oil from forklifts etc. All the lifts have had all the hoses replaced with stainless, breaded hoses and we have not had a single leak since. A lot of the problem with 'rubber' hoses is the swaged end cutting in to the rubber. The outer of the braided hose is muc tougher and a lot more flexible too. Might be worth sourcing breaded hoses for this too?

I've noticed in a couple of posts, people talking about using hot glue in placed that usually welded would be used? We (at work) do use glue to hold bits of airframes together, but It's not really my area. I wondered if there was a special type of hot glue - maybe something like chemical metal that I've not seen? If so, can someone post a link? It would be great if I could use it to stick my outriggers back on and fix my sills. Ta - Ed

Following on from that.... You need a sine wave inverter if you are running a CRT. A modified sine wave one will work OK with LCD monitors. True sine wave inverters are expensive. Maplin used to sell some not too bad. A sine wave is like a smooth wave you would get throwing a rock in a pond. A modified sine wave looks like a series of steps - two steps up two steps down two steps up and so on. It is the roughness of being dragged up and down the steps that upsets TV's Motors and things. The difference in roughness between a smooth wave and the steps is known as the Total Harmonic Distortion or THD. The better a piece of equipment, including inverters, the lower the THD figure will be. For either, 350W will probably do. I base this on running a similar setup with an APC 350w UPS. The UPS only cost £80 from PC world in Crawley. It contains 2 x 10Ah 12v batteries in series to give 24v. The UPS will run happily from a pair of 12v car batteries though. Before we lived in Crawley, the mains electricity was intermittent. We used a UPS there and connected loads of old truck batteries to make 24v The batteries were charged by a big transformer when the mains was on and the UPS ran the house when it was not. We didn't have a computer then but it did the TV, radio and a couple of lights. Ed

My 300 did something fairly similar (amongst it's many other badnesses) and it turned out to be dirt in one of the injectors. They are almost impossible to test properly (for reasons which you are probably not interested in) outside the engine, but they are easy to strip down, clean & put back together. Alternatively, swap one injector at a time with one from another engine. If you have to be buying four it is a big bank-ache but one is OK. It made mine sound like really bad bubbly. Ed

At work, we have bought a couple of the Speedglass and a couple of ESAB 5/13's - to replace an ageing collection of (mostly speedglass) helmets. So I've had a chance to use both. The Speedglass feels lighter weight and is better balanced which you notice big time when it's flipped up. The strap works better if you are taking it off & putting it on frequently. However, the ESAB seems to me to give a clearer view. When it's 'clear' the shade is very very low, making it good for grinding without removing fingers etc. The controls IMHO are better thought out and easier to operate in gloves. The range of shades makes the ESAB useful for plasma cutting, gas cutting & welding - right up to MMA with half inch rods! They are both similar money, but (and it surprised me) I would buy the ESAB. Ed

It's 55A Have a look here: WoodAuto they list most alternators. Ed

I tried a petrol leaf blower on a moped. It had an effect - that the thing would run at a slow speed. It idled a bit lumpy and as soon as you opened the throttle a bit it went full open, wheelied and you land on your bum. Never found if it made it go any faster cos my bum hurt too much to ride it & dad wanted his leaf blower back. Ed