BogMonster

Wasn't somebody (I'm thinking RogueVogue or Paul Wightman?) offering SS hoses that you could make up yourself at one point?

Duh If I was out with somebody else I wouldn't be arsing around carting half a ton of ground anchor 50 yards, I'd chuck on a tow rope and be out of there in 45 seconds Done what you suggest, on the odd occasions the freespool on the old 8274 was being really pig headed -- usually goes something like this: Cart ground anchor out to suitable bit of ground and set it (3 trips if using the military ground anchor) Walk back to vehicle Winch out estimated amount of cable reqd Walk out to end of cable Find cable is 2 feet shorter than distance to ground anchor... Utter a word beginning with F, another beginning with C and possibly another beginning with B, jump up and down a bit Walk back again Power out another couple of feet Walk out to ground anchor again Hook on Walk back again Winch out Walk out again Unhook Walk back again Drive to anchor to pick up because too F tired of walking.... Too much walking I think is the answer

Unfortunately I think it's highly likely (unfortunately) Its still a **** idea though..... D3 is a fine car, and will crack the target market (who rarely if ever take it off road but probably will tow stuff quite a lot), but it ain't a Defender by any stretch of the imagination. From my time in one, I thought its limits weren't all that much greater than the Freelander I used to have in terms of ground clearance and stupid crossaxle wavy-wheels-in-the-air-bacon-only-saved-by-ETC moments. But that was just me being a grumpy old git

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Maybe I'm being thick here but the reason I used to use the freespool on my 8274 (which had the same problem) is cos I can't operate the winch controller and pull the rope out to 50-100ft away at the same time... Or are we all running wireless remotes these days? (I have one on the MM and, reliability issues aside, it is a huge improvement) Obviously if you have a passenger to do all the hard work it makes sense

Ooo I just discovered the second page of the review... I have to say I don't agree with the "excellent ride quality over any surface" bit. It was good, but not as good as I'd expect for something weighing that much and riding on independent suspension. I was also interested to note having driven a coil sprung vehicle on 17" wheels (235/70R17) and an air spring vehicle on 18" (255/60R18) very shortly afterwards on the same roads, that the extra inch of metal seemed to cancel out the benefits of the air suspension and then some; I thought the coil spring vehicle had a noticeably better ride, the air suspension vehicle seemed quite fidgety on a jiggly road surface (most of the roads here somewhere between jiggly and #kin awful). More to the point, I didn't think it was a great deal better than my Discovery 2 riding on 255/70R16s. I guess if you could get sensible wheels to put on a D3 and not these silly low profile things with tyres made of concrete, there would be no contest, but I'd rather have a set of 16" wheels, slightly less precise handling and a much nicer ride, personally. But I doubt you can fit 16" wheels to a D3 because of the brakes etc. As for the comments on the interior ... well I am biased I suppose but I've always really like the "old" Discovery interior - though the new one is undeniably much, much more spacious and very nice in its own right. But the whole debate is a bit like a comment I once heard made about computers - just because the Pentium 47 280000Mhz has just been released, it doesn't actually make your old computer any less capable just because there's now something better on the market, if you only want to do the same things with it. That's kind of how I feel about the Discovery 2 which is why I'm keeping mine for the moment

Well two of those are definitely "off road tyres" Jon - they're nowhere near it

Nige There are quite big differences between different brands of tyre Sit a 7.50R16 Michelin XS against a 7.50R16 Avon Rangemaster to see what I mean.... ....probably about an inch difference in the height! maybe a bit more (don't have them handy to check but side by side you would never believe they were the "same size") so a lot of the measurement depends on what sort of tyre you are using - and I think 7.50R16 is a "particularly variable size" - the metric sizes are more accurately specified - 205R16 is actually 205/80R16 and they shouldn't vary quite so much

Coo eck I'm on number 3 and I thought I should be expecting the men in white coats any day Anyway I like my "ages old overhead valve V8" so

Is your middle name Nigel?

I suppose it might help a bit... about as much as wearing a pair of underpants on your head when you come off a motorbike, instead of a helmet.... (this is a hypothetical example BTW )

I think the amount of cooling generated by an a/c compressor would be insignificant in terms of the air reqd by the engine - in fact it would almost certainly make things worse as if you fitted a huge a/c compressor then it would drag a lot of power out of the engine. A LOx bottle in the back would do the trick though

And for comparison here are some of mine taken last Christmas with completely std suspension: Not quite "hanging wheels" but definitely "no weight on them at the time" Note the lovely straight KittyGripper on the roof

Kittywasher... Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm Is that what you had to use together with lemon washing up liquid, to repair the cat after you had that "little accident" with 20 litres of Waxoyl?

What sort of snorkel is it?

I'd be interested to see some test results too I would think a faster acting TC would be better suited to an analogue temp gauge with a needle on it - with the digital one it would be a bit like a digital rev counter on a race engine - above a certain rate of change it just ends up looking like garbage. I just like the digital one because it has the max/min function which gives peace of mind that you haven't missed anything! That was my only concern with a smaller TC was the mechanical strength and possible effects of half a TC going through a turbine doing 100,000rpm - but I have no experience of what the failure rate of these things are, just the general feeling that twice the size probably meant twice as strong

Also agree - I used a Discovery Td5 battery in mine when I had an electric winch, not the cheapest but 110 amp hours meant loads of oomph. No idea about elsewhere but they cost about £80 odd here; if I got an Optima it would be somewhere the wrong side of twice that price by the time I shipped it here (I looked into it once and just about died of fright!!). Since I got the MM I don't need lots of capacity but the same battery will go in the 90 when the standard one dies in a couple of years.

Think of how you put in a standard bayonet light bulb into a fitting - push it into the socket and twist it part of a turn to lock it in. Same sort of principle with the cable - push it in (locating the drive bit in the middle) then turn to lock it.

My observations seem to indicate that while there is a lag time it does level off fairly quickly with the t/c supplied. Peak change rate seems to be about 20 degrees per second with the 6mm, maybe a little more. I have managed to hold absolutely full throttle up a steep hill in 4th gear for slightly over a minute on two occasions while testing, and in the last 30 seconds of that the temp only increased by about 50 degrees or so IIRC, and the last 15 seconds probably only changed by 3 or 4 degrees, peaking at 609 (standard unmodified 300Tdi engine) on one run, the second run I think got to about 585 but again hardly moving towards the end, if I had held it for another 30 seconds I doubt I would have got more than +10 degrees as a peak. I guess what you mean though, is that a quick "blast past" somebody might have a short sharp and very high EGT which you never see? One thing I had not thought of and I don't know how relevant it is, would the main components not also have a "thermal lag" i.e. the time the pistons/valves take to actually heat up to the EGT will also be delayed, as the thermocouple is? I guess this wouldn't really apply to the turbo impeller though, as it is so lightweight, so would change temp quickly? What I am thinking is that if a melted piston melts at 800 degrees (say) then if it takes 2 minutes for the temp of the piston's metal to get past 700 even with an EGT of 800 then the thermocouple is probably telling you the "dangerous temperature" which is the temp of the components? Just a few thoughts - interested in comments! I am not going to push the limits too much with mine anyway - it's just to have some idea of what is going on instead of none at all which is what I had last time.

I got my plate with the Thermoguard from Ian

[pedant] I think you'll find it's Sandglow LRC361 actually, and sand is yellow not orange [/pedant] What were you saying the other day about people making silly posts Les? I already have a coat, ta

That seems very cheap for a UK spec vehicle - not quite as cheap as mine was but a very good deal! How did you manage to wangle that?! Definitely crying out for some modifications (planned ones not unplanned ones!)

Looking at the ground clearance etc its probably still better offroad than a [scrape] <bang> thud <crunch> "where's my exhaust gone?" Freelander anyway.... when I had my Td4 I was unimpressed by the fact I couldn't drive along well-beaten tracks that a 4x4 Panda could have tackled without hearing stuff underneath!

One thing I am still unclear on is whether a "Type K" will always have the same calibration curve i.e. you could plug any K into my display unit and get a pretty accurate reading? The one I have at the moment is fairly accurate, 99 deg for a freshly boiled kettle (before I got it all sooty!) However like you Tony my main interest is in peak temps when flogging it up hills etc or towing, fast response time isn't the main thing I need. If mine breaks like yours did I'll probably get a 3mm but until then the one I have is OK I think.

Richard, I have had similar things happening loads of times in the past on our three (one now sold) 2.5P vehicles, the 90 I used to run and the 90 & 110 on Dad's farm, and in every case it was sh** in the carb/fuel system and a good clean out solved it temporarily. It drove me up the wall and was one reason I eventually sold the 90 I used and got a Tdi because it seemed to last about 2-3 months at most and then mysteriously got muck in it and started playing up - but on my 90 the fuel filter was rarely dirty, the tank was drained more times than I care to remember and it was always filled with clean fuel from the pumps. I think it must have been the fuel lines breaking up inside or something like that - never got to the bottom of it all I knew was that dismantling and cleaning out the carb seemed to cure it for a while. It was often as you describe, idle was fine but any amount of throttle and it spluttered and died. One trip I did once I drove the damn thing about 10 miles home (off road) and it would only run at all by pumping the throttle frantically because the main jets in the carb were completely blocked and the only fuel going in was from the "accelerator pump" in the carb so every pump of the pedal you got some fuel, then it died again. Made for "rather jerky" progress but I got home in the end - probably knocked about 10 years off the life of the transmission though! Have you changed the fuel filter? restricted flow through the filter can cause problems like this if it is completely blocked up with gunge. We used to have this problem on the farm vehicles when filling out of 205L drums, because a lot of the drums had water and muck in the bottom and the silly little filter element on a 2.5P only takes about an eggcupful of muck to block it up.... Something else I would check - does yours have a "vapour seperator" this is a metal can screwed on the bulkhead at the back of the engine bay? - two fuel pipes going in the top (feed and return to tank) and one out the bottom which goes to the carb? If so take this off and blow it out with compressed air - one problem I had on one of the farm ones at one stage was paint coming off the inside of this unit and blocking the outlet hole in the bottom - giving fuel starvation. At least I think it was paint - I took it off and it rattled inside, whatever it was wouldn't come out, so I banged it on the bench a few times in a rage, blew 150psi through it and whatever was inside shot out through one of the pipes, bounced off the garage wall 20 feet away and I never saw it again. The vehicle ran fine when I put the separator back on Once you have checked the separator I would also take the fuel line into the carb off, blow that out, and check the very fine gauze filter which is inside the pipe fitting where the fuel line feeds into the carb. I think you undo the fitting and take it out and the filter mesh is inside - I have also had problems with that blocking up in the past. Other than that I suggest you buy the Haynes manual on Weber carbs and enjoy your weekend wondering which jet was which - I can vouch for the endless fun of stripping these units having done it far too many times