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Tanuki

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Tanuki last won the day on June 2 2019

Tanuki had the most liked content!

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    tanuki@canismajor.demon.co.uk

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    Wiltshire

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    Wolves, Land-Rovers, Military radio, home-made wine, forestry, amateur radio.

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  1. Stainless is the obvious answer. The tank on my classic-car is known to rust-out after 20 years or so; there are a couple of suppliers who produce stainless-steel tanks with proper roller-welded construction [and proper internal baffles to stop fuel-slosh: 15 gallons of fuel slopping from side to side during 11/10ths cornering can be a bit of a problem on-track] and they will never be a rust-problem. Surely there must be someone out there who makes stainless-steel 'series' tanks as a £250 fit-and-forget option?
  2. I've got a 110AmpHour Yuasa in my Defender; it's been there three years and has been worked hard powering a couple of hundred Watts of HF radio-gear while parked-up with the engine off. Yuasa aren't cheap - but a good battery is a hell of a lot cheaper than having to pay to get a recovery-company out on a sunday evening!
  3. Of relevance: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/11/05/sir-jim-ratcliffe-pumps-90m-grenadier-4x4/ "Chemicals billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Grenadier 4x4, a “spiritual successor” to Jaguar Land Rover’s original Defender, cost his company another €106m (£90m) in development last year. The company’s loss narrowed in 2020 from €137m in 2019 as research and development investment slowed. Ineos Automotive Ltd, controlled by Sir Jim, has been set back by intellectual property disputes with JLR because of similarities between the Grenadier and the Defender. There has been speculation that drawn-out litigation could set back the launch of the car, planned for summer 2022, although the company’s statement suggests next year is still the target for production.".
  4. There's currently a consultaqtion by the UK government on proposals which include "anti-tampering" laws which potentially outlaw a whole range of things - to quote: "a specific offence for supplying, installing and/or advertising, a ‘tampering product’ for a vehicle or NRMM – this would apply where a principal effect of the product is to bypass, defeat, reduce the effectiveness of or render inoperative a system, part or component (the product may be a physical part or component, hardware and/or software) a specific offence for removing, reducing the effectiveness of, or rendering inoperative a system, part or component for a vehicle/NRMM and advertising such services a specific offence for allowing for use or providing a vehicle or NRMM that has had the operations described in the previous 2 points performed on it a new power to require economic operators to provide information, where a service/product they have supplied amounts to or enables ‘tampering’ with a vehicle or NRMM – this would apply in any of the above senses and include requirements to provide relevant information on the quantities of products sold or modified" This is seemingly aimed at stopping people doing chip-tuning, decats, EGR-bypass or similar, but regulatory-overreach could also mean it extends to include things like Megasquirt or changing the final-drive ratio if it could increase emissions. Motorcyclists are already worried because it would - seemingly - apply to non-road-registered vehicles, https://www.britishmotorcyclists.co.uk/anti-tampering-threat/ and see See https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/future-of-transport-regulatory-review-modernising-vehicle-standards for the proposals.
  5. At one time I considered the possibility of buying a Grenadier. But the absence of any solid revelations on the dealers/sales-support-network put me off the idea. I don't want to have to drive 100 miles to get it serviced! [so I put down a deposit on a LWB Toyota LandCruiser 'Commercial' - but when Toyota couldn't deliver because of microchip-supply-issues I got the dealer to refund my deposit]. So recently I added a really rather nice 15,000-mile Freelander-2 "Metropolis" to my fleet! Plush-tastic, 0-60 in 9 seconds and it has a heated steering-wheel!
  6. I'd suggest as a first step checking the running-gear: a while back a friend had a 300TDi which was truly, horribly noisy at speed. You could feel the vibrations theough the seat-base and I knew something was deeply wrong. I investigated and found two propshaft UJs to be essentilly solid; one had a cup whose needle-rollers had seized to the spider and so the cup was 'articulating' by rotating in the yoke. I condemned both propshafts! New ones [genuine GKN Driveline] made things a lot nicer - and safer too [nothing good has ever been reported about the disintegration of a UJ at speed and wntering the passenger-compartment]. Fitting modern "road biased" tyres cut the Decibels too: if most of your driving is at 60-75MPH on open roads you don't need knobblies.
  7. Looking at your rotted shock-absorbers, I'd say you'd be stupid not to replace them. If only to make life easier at MoT time. If you present a vehicle for MoT with such obviously-scabby parts, the tester will likely think the vehicle is likely suffering a 'historical maintenance deficit' in other areas and so will apply extra scrutiny during the rest of the test, picking out anything marginal that, had his spidey-senses not been alerted he might otherwise have passed. A vehicle that looks tatty will be scrutinised: a vehicle that's showing a bunch of recently-replaced parts and is clearly cared-for can have minor infractions [like windscreen chips] downgraded from fails to advisories.
  8. When I've been "out and about" it's generally been on missions which involved some significantly-powerful radio-transmitter-stuff, so i've been carrying a little Honda 4-stroke generator and a 1Kw 12V-to-240V inverter. A small modern 'inverter' 600-Watt microwave-oven has always done to boil water for tea and cook things A typical toaster only takes 750 Watts.... and everyone knows that when you're freezing-cold after a night on the moor there's no finer mood-booster than freshly-made crunchy toast.
  9. First - simple - things I'd be doing is looking at the tyre wear/tread-depth and checking the pressures. The Haldex is told to activate due to different rotational speeds between the front and rear axles/wheels (as detected by the ABS trigger-wheels) - if your tyres are worn differently front to rear or you've got a tyre that's down on pressure and so has a lower effective radius it can confuse the electronics into thinking the front wheels are slipping and you get inappropriate Haldex engagement.
  10. I'd be checking the air/fuel ratio. A rich mixture will wash oil from the bores and increase oil consumption as well as causing increased bore-wear. [in practice, matching a non standard carb setup and camshaft _properly_ along with getting the ignition-timing/advance-curve correct will involve a good bit of rolling-road time]
  11. The only non-oriiginal bits on my 90TD5 are the exhaust [rotted at the flange between the front and rear boxes - both replaced with standard-spec parts], the brake calipers [pistons seized after about 10 years; new genuine Delphi parts were cheap] and the front bumper [got bent; replaced by a standard-pattern one, albeit galvanized]. Tyres - now running road-pattern 235/85 in place of the no-longer-available 750-16 Avon Rangemasters it came with. Oh yes, the shock-absorbers too; the originals got swapped for Bilsteins about 10 years ago. The rest is entirely unmolested. I like my vehicles to be unobtrusive and reliable.
  12. If you're shelling-out for a respray, how about getting it done in Vantablack™ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack Vantablack is the blackest-black yet created: it uses carbon nanotubes to capture 99.96% of all visible light falling on it - to the extent that it makes 3-dimensional objects take on a 2D aspect. For me, that would be the ultimate "reverse-bling" stealth paint-job.... driving round in what amounts to a visual black-hole.
  13. I've used ATF to re-fill hydraulic jacks. But equally - if your jack has lost oil - most jacks will 'recycle' any seepage-past-the-seals into the thing's sump so even if the seals are leaky you should not need to add oil. If it's leaking badly enough to require adding fresh oil - I'd not be trusting it! New non-leaky jacks are cheap, from the likes of Machine-Mart. Why risk using a jack that's needing oil adding?
  14. To avoid the punitive fines of the ULEZ your vehicle needs to be Euro6 emissions-compliant. While it is possible to retro-fit an Euro6-compliant engine into a 20-year-old Defender, the cost of doing so - and moreso the cost of getting the resultant vehicle tested and certified as being Euro6 compliant - will well exceed what you paid for your vehicle in the first place. My suggestion: sell it, and use the proceeds to buy something Euro6-compliant. Why, honestly, do you want to drive an old Defender in an inner-city anyway?
  15. The injector harness [wiring under the cam-cover] is a favourite thing - mine went at about 70,000 miles and caused misfiring when warm. It can't be cleaned/repaired, replacement is quick and easy though. Hard starting/cutting-out: I'd be looking at getting the injector copper-washers replaced - these have needed doing twice on my TD5 - if you continue to drive with failing injector-washers then you can get a buildup of 'black sludge' in the fuel tank [it's a mixture of soot, condensation and diesel - which can breed a fungus!] and this can block the fuel-pickup filter causing your in-tank fuel-pump to burn itself out. Yes, this happened to me...
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