Tanuki

Running a petrol engine on E85 (or higher concentrations of Ethanol) is thermally not very efficient: a good petrol-engine may get 45% efficiency, the rest gets wasted as heat. I know they used Ethanol as a fuel in Brazil in the 1970s/1980s (fermented sugar-cane waste...) but it had some significant water-absorption and fuel-system-corrosion issues. I'd have hoped an Ethanol fuel-cell would get higher efficiency than that. My ideal Ethanol approach would be a fuel-cell backed-up by a battery (or a supercapacitor) so the fuel-cell keeps the battery/supercap charged and ready to provide serious urge for short duration acceleration. I like the idea of electric all-wheel-drive: a flat 'pancake' motor in each hub, with some decent electronics to provide slip-sensing and torque-vectoring would be rather fun. And remember the big advantage of electric-motors: full torque available from zero RPM!

Fuel-cells are a good idea: there are some that use Ethanol as their fuel [make it by fermenting pretty much anything with cellulose in it: wood-pulp, grass cuttings, seaweed...] so there are none of the 'issues' with Hydrogen transport/storage. For me the big downside of electric vehicles is the battery life and the recharge-time. While something like a Tesla might get 150 miles battery-life in freely-moving traffic (even with the lights and heating on..???.) I'd like to see it achieve 50 miles to a charge when towing a 3.5-ton flatbed over hilly/twisty-road terrain. Then there's the recharge time: in my Diesel Defender we can do a 400-mile trip towing said flatbed, and only need to stop once for a 5-minute refuel/pee/driver-swap. The 'energy bandwidth' of a rubber pipe carrying Diesel at 50 litres/minute is brilliant - until I can get the same effect (and range) from electric it's not going to be on my radar. The solution to the slowness of electric recharging is surely a modular-battery system: at the recharge-station you park over an automated 'pit' where a robot drops-out your discharged battery and slots-in a newly-charged one, then you drive off, leaving your dead battery to be recharged in its own time. Whole thing could be done in 30 seconds! You would, of course, need standardisation of the batteries and charge-monitoring across all vehicles using the system, which could prove an issue.

When I had this problem on my Defender, I replaced the cam-cover wiring harness and cleaned the connectors with brake-cleaner then to allow the oil in the main loom to drain away freely without there being any risk of it going into the ECU, I temporarily removed the Neoprene gasket from the loom-to-ECU plug, so any oil migrating down would be able to escape freely rather than being held against the ECU connector's pins. After a couple of weeks no more oil was appearing so I refitted the gasket. It's been OK for the last three years/20,000 miles.

I may do some filter-experiments like you say.... just gotta find a suitable bottle to use as a funnel.

OK, the final teardown - this time of the old Allmakes filter. Stripping the pleated paper filter-element itself out and measuring it gave 64 inches un-concertina'd length. That's within the margin-of-error compared to the blue-box one [but remember that the 'core' of the Allmakes one was 5mm taller...] Without the ability to measure the permeability of the paper used in the two filters, I can't say one way or another whether the pressure-loss difference between the two is related to the area of filter-material. But I suspect it isn't. Ripping off the spiral core-support tube (same construction as the blue-box filter) revealed a similar _style_ of centre outlet-fitting, but implemented differently. This one had a *much* larger hole in the middle for the oil to flow through - 14mm diameter! Since area of a circle = pi times the diameter of the circle, if we give the blue-box one's centre hole the benefit of the doubt and call it 6mm we get: 6 x 3.142 = 18.852 square millimetres of cross-sectional area for the oil to flow Whereas the Allmakes one's 14mm centre hole gives 14 x 3.142 = 43.988 square millimetres of flow-area. I know which one I prefer. Finally, here's a photo of the centres of the two filters side by side... draw your own conclusions. Happiness is a Big Hole!

The autopsy continues: all this section refers to the 'blue box' filter; the Allmakes details are to follow. I cut off the paper by running a Stanley-knife around each end, pulling the end-cap off to release the paper, then slitting it along one plleat and un-concertina-ing: the effective length stretched-out is 65 inches. Then I looked at the rest of the filter. The pleated paper concertina is supported by a spirally-fabricated perforated metal tube up its centre; that's to be expected. Into the middle of the perforated metal tube is a tubular protrusion which connects to the centre outlet of the filter flange. The only way for filtered oil to pass from the void between the perforated tube and the filter-outlet is by way of the hole in the centre of the protrusion. This hole is *tiny* - I couldn't put a 6mm rod through it; what you see sticking out of it in the third photo is a 7/32" twist-drill. To make this hole's oil-flow prospects even worse, on its inner side is an anti-drain valve - a 'top hat' shaped rubber thing pressed against the inside of the hole by a spring. So, we have the entire engine's oil-flow having to go through a hole that's less than 1/4 inch diameter, with a further restriction once the oil's made it through the hole! I think that's where the pressure-drop is coming from.

OK, I've sliced off the pleated parts and unfolded them so I can measure the lengths - but for the life of me I can't find my measuring-tape. The spring-bit shown in the photos lives in the bottom of the canister - where it pushes the filter-element up against the rubber sealing-washer, which itself also forms the anti-drain valve when pressed against the mounting flange of the filter-case. Both filters use the same approach. Looking at the construction of the bits in the centre of the filter-element, there is a difference between the two: the Allmakes one has a large-diameter hole up the central tube, with a spring-loaded assembly visible; the blue-box one has the same diameter of main central tube, but with a smaller-bore device in the centre (blocked-filter bypass?) - the hole in this through which the oil must flow is only about 8mm diameter - could this be the cause of the pressure-drop? Photos to come later today, when I've found my measuring tape! Does anyone know the design flow-rate of oil (Litres per minute) in a TD5? With that, and the viscosity of the oil known, the pressure-drop across the small-hole-device could readily be calculated from Bernoulli's equations.

LPG etc is fine in theory - but remember that unless you go through a recertification program your LPG-ized vehicle will still be classed for emissions-purposes (London LEZ, driving-into-Paris etc) as having the same emissions as when it was originally made. This was a big thing a while back with London Taxis [many of which had Land-Rover engines] - there was an expensive retro-fit kit and subsequent emissions-conformance test to make them compliant with the then London emissions regs [STT Emtec Clean Cab or Van Aaken EGR system] : but it wasn't enough long-term and these taxis then generally got refitted with a Nissan 2.7 engine - which in time aldo became unacceptable emissions-wise! Amateur retro-fitting of emissions stuff is all very well, but you'll still need to submit the modified vehicle to an approved testing-centre [not just a MoT place] to get the thing certified as conforming to the current particulates/CO2/NOx standards - and that ain't gonna be cheap.

True, but I hope JLR have decent quality-control and require that whoever actually makes their filters has certain standards to meet as part of the contract. Even if the manufacturer is in China, Eastern Europe, South America or similar.

Autopsy Report part 1: The filters came apart easily - I just angle-ground round the 'can' as close to the mounting-flange as possible, and the insides were then revealed in all their slimy glory. First impressions: construction is similar though the internal filtration-module of the Allmakes one was slightly taller (75mm) than the blue-box one (70mm). They were both the same diameter. The depth of the pleating is essentially the same in both cases though the blue-box one appears to have slightly fewer pleats. See photos. The old Allmakes one is the more-discoloured of the two, on the right of the photo in each case. Tomorrow, after I've left them to stand and let some more of the oil drain off, I'm going to cut the paper part off and unfold it so I can measure it and then we'll be able to compare the effective filtration-areas between the two. But first - it's Beer-hundred-hours here!

MTF is interesting - it's a "modified friction" oil which means that under some conditions its lubricating-properties are designed to *decrease*. Think about it - the working of synchros depends on there being friction between the components! A spectacularly-slippery oil disrupts this necessary friction and means the synchros must take longer to bring the gears up to matching-speed before they engage. (This is also why stuff like Molyslip can mess-up synchro operation - it ruins the controlled friction in the synchros). I don't find problems getting hold of MTF94 for my R380, and it's cheaper (buying in bulk) than any of the 'trick' oils sold to motorsport-types-with-more-money-than-sense.

I made the mistake recently of doing an oil-change on my TD5 and using an oil-filter canister that came in a blue box. It was all I could get in a hurry. In the past I've used Mahle, Mann&Hummel, or Allmakes without problems. After the oil-change I had about 25PSI pressure with a hot engine at normal driving-speeds. Aiee!! Scheiss! Sapristi! Zut Alors! Merde! or other international words to that effect. Before the oil-change, running with 12,000-mile-old oil and the Allmakes filter that had been in there for a year I was getting nearer 50PSI. I drove home slowly and borrowed another car to visit a genuine Land-Rover dealership who sold me a "LR Genuine Parts" filter, which when fitted restored my oil-pressure back to what it should have been. Big sighs of relief and time for a bottle or two of Fursty Ferret. Now I'm going to take my angel-grinder to both the old Allmakes filter and the new blue-box one to do a 'compare and contrast' on the insides.

What are you trying to receive? MW/LW AM broadcast stations? FM? DAB? Shortwave? CB? First thing I'd check is that the antenna is properly grounded to the body at the antenna-base itself: corrosion, paint or insufficient clamping tightness here can cause all sorts of reception issues.

What fault-codes is it showing? Don't waste more money randomly replacing parts - get it on a reader and it will tell you what the problem is!

A while back, what I thought was a transmission oil-leak on my TD5 90 actually turned out to be a leaking fuel-pressure-regulator: the Diesel was running down from the regulator, over the bellhousing and then getting blown back along the gearbox/transfer-box casing. When it evaporated it left behind a rather-more-oily residue which I mistook for gearbox-oil.

The Wobble-of-Death on my 90TD5 was due to the shock-absorbers: replacing the original factory-fitted ones with yellow Bilstein gas-pressurised ones (not cheap, but quality always costs...) solved the problem totally. The originals I replaced had done 70,000 miles. The Bilsteins have now done over 100,000 miles without problems - the handling is still better on the used Bilsteins than it was from new with the original factory-fits. And the Bilsteins have a little diagram of the Nürburgring on them, which must be helping the handling...!

What fault-codes are showing?

Make sure the metal case of the gauge is properly earthed - a poor (or missing) connection to earth can mean the gauge tries to 'earth' itself back through the gauge-illumination bulb, causing all the voltages to be wrong and the gauge to either play-dead or give spooky readings like your car is the second coming of "Christine".

You can achieve the same effect as the blanking-plate by simply disconnecting the two little vacuum-lines from the two vacuum-capsules on the 'nose' of the intake manifold. The unit on the manifold has two flaps, one - normally wide-open - allows air from the intercooler into the manifold. The other - normally closed - allows cooled exhaust-gases into the manifold. When the EGR is activated by the 2 solenoids inside the front wing, controlled vacuum is fed to the two valves - partially closing the 'air' flap and partially opening the 'exhaust' one, so the engine then gets a mix of air and recirculated, cooled exhaust. Pulling the 2 vacuum-lines off and plugging the ends of the rubber pipes means that though the ECU will be signalling the solenoids to feed vacuum to the valves, it never gets there so you get uninterrupted fresh-air going into the engine. Quick, simple, instantly reversible (in case future MoT tests start requiring a visual check-for-tampering/removal of emissions-control systems) and, above all, entirely free! What's not to like?

I'll use Britpart stuff in some places: I recently needed to replace a door-mirror head and a Britpart one seems to have done the job OK (not really sure how you could get a mirror wrong). I also used a Britpart cam-case gasket when replacing the injector wiring-harness. No leaks after 15,000 miles. But if it comes to parts that go round and round or up and down, or things like belts/filters/brake-parts, I'd prefer to spend a little bit more for better quality, and know the parts will fit and have some chance of lasting. If I'm spending an afternoon replacing a part, that's at least a £50 'opportunity cost' to me, I'd rather not have to 'spend' another £50 of my time in six months redoing the job.

Presumably you're talking about the inside of the engine-bay. In which case I'd say you really need the reflective-surfaced stuff - and make sure whatever you buy is graded fire-proof! The exhaust downpipe on a well-exercised turbodiesel often glows a nice dull red and you don't want flammable foam anywhere near that!

There was an 'issue' with defective welding on some Defender axles which potentially could result in the front wheel, hub, stub-axle, swivel etc. separating itself from the main axle-tube. "MY2011/2012 Recall Action P047/048 Front Axle Case" - http://www.defender2.net/gallery/albums/userpics/11689/P047a3~0.pdf Rather than properly fixing the problem the recall involves a bracket to keep the stub-axle/swivel in place if the welds do fail!

Back in the days when I played with rally-cars, some scrutineers were really rather obsessive about any holes in the 'firewalls' between the engine/boot-compartments and the driver-space. "In a crash, burning petrol /hot oil/boiling coolant could run through...." Significant gaps, process-holes etc. had to be plated over [25-gauge steel sheet and pop-rivets] and sealed, usually by sandwiching fireproof-resin-impregnated fibreglass mat behind the plate before the pop-rivets went in. But sometimes gaps remained. It was quite normal therefore to take a packet of Blu-Tack along to scrutineering so if the scroot found a hole/crack/gap he disliked you could easily bung it up.

There were 2 kinds of dim-dip: one used the gold-coloured resistor under the front wing coupled to a relay; the other kind used the module shown, with 'pulse width modulation' to reduce the power to the headlamps. The need for dim-dip was removed some time in the late-1990s. Best thing to do with either the resistor or PWM-module versions is to disable them. If there's a need for headlamps then turn them on properly! "Dim-dip" led to plenty of losers driving around at night with only the dim-dip active rather than the proper headlights.

I had an assistant to do the stuff like jacking, loosening/removing/refitting wheels. And a rattle-gun to undo the 12-point caliper-to-axle bolts.