BogMonster

Sorry guys maybe I wasn't clear in the above post What we need to know if you came here via the demise of LRE (which is most people at the moment I guess) is "how you first found LRE" i.e. through the pages of the mag, through another forum, through a website etc. Thanks

Got some stuff to enter into a spreadsheet and I thought I might do it on the laptop this afternoon while the Grand Prix is on (the TV here isn't "live" it's "live + 4 hours" to make sure Coronation Street is on at the right time of day for the troops....doesn't do much for live sporting events as now I have to avoid all live news feeds until this afternoon!) So, fine idea but the laptop doesn't have a number keypad which will be a PITA .....thinks .... I am sure I still have a keyboard off the old PC that blew up somewhere, that should fit..... bit of rummaging around .... found it .... however my office, ahem, "doesn't get hoovered very often" so it's nestling under a not inconsiderable amount of dust .......hmmmm....... keyboards have always been a pain to clean properly, how am I going to do this? .....Light bulb comes on above head....... March boldly to where the hoover is stored ......you just know what's coming don't you? fire up hoover... rrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR thinks "this is working really well....." nice clean keyboard appearing from under the dust....... RRRRRRRRrrattleclattersqueakclattercrunchclatterclatterclatterrattleclatter ........erm ......... **** ...... suddenly realise that was the sound of a random assortment of keys disappearing up the hoover pipe...... B*****s!!! Without going into unnecessary detail I don't recommend trying to locate keys in a near-full hoover bag in the house either.... Numbers are OK as I can count to 10 but does R go between E and T or U and O ..... Nice clean keyboard though I think next time I'll use the compressor

We need to promote this forum for new members so we would like to know how you first came across this forum, or if you were one of the many that migrated from LRE following its closure, what first led you to find the LRE forum? (if you came here from the LRE forum don't say "followed link from another forum" as this will distort the results, please vote for how you first found the LRE forum) We will be able to use this info to decide how best to promote the forum for new members. Could a mod make this sticky for a few days please as I don't think I can stickify things for the Intl forum

I'm not sure how many of the readers find it through the magazine, I didn't despite having had an LRE sub for about 2 years when I found the forum, I had never noticed the two or three lines on the page of rubbish about the mag staff (who reads that bit?) and at that stage it wasn't mentioned anywhere else (the Web Watch page is a new thing) I found LRE through a Google search for 300Tdi tuning info, it came up with the thread in the tech archive as one of the returns and after reading that I had a look at the rest of the site. I think "how did you first find the LRE forum" would be a good subject for a poll and I will do that in a minute in a separate post once I think of what needs to be included in the options. You're right about some banner advertising though - looking at the Difflock ones you see in various places that is the sort of thing that is instantly recognisable.

Can't comment on MIG as I have only done it briefly on an agricultural welding course about 12 years ago (and been meaning to buy one ever since....) but certainly with Arc welding the comments about getting the biggest you can manage and running it at lower power are bang on. Modern welders are a bit like electric winches in their rating: if it says 150 amps on the tin it'll do 150 amps but not for very long before it needs a rest.... When I did the above mentioned welding course we had two arc welders: an old 110 amp one from the farm workshop and a shiny Clarke one that was supposedly 180 amps or something. The 110 dated from about 1950, was built like a brick ****house and though it was only about a foot square, weighed about 50kg (you could barely pick it up) while the new one weighed about 15kg. The 110 would weld continuously at its rated output and barely get warm; the other one welding at the same output (which was well below its "max") would last about 5 min of fairly continuous welding and then trip out and need a rest (and that was after the owner had fitted an extra cooling fan into it). Two lessons from that: They don't make 'em like they used to and you get what you pay for! I'd love to learn oxy acetylene and I think that is the "purest" form of welding but I'm not sure what my insurance company would say about having enough explosive power in my garage to level the garage and several adjacent houses, especially since it's a wooden garage which isn't ideal for welding in anyway.... What are the regulations elsewhere for keeping flammable gases in domestic garages? I have a propane bottle for the heater and the insurers seemed to think that was OK (thought I had better check as I didn't want to find the fire insurance on 10 grand's worth of new garage and 30 grand's worth of vehicles suddenly became invalid because I had a gas heater in there )

Now I'm really getting ****ed off with these stupid shockers Been using the 90 the last couple of days as it's been a bit snowy (middle of winter at this end...) and the carpets are a PITFA to take out of the Discovery if they get wet (and go mouldy/smelly if you don't) The clonk has been getting worse and worse and by the end of this afternoon every time I hit a pothole - which is quite a lot on our roads - it sounded like the back axle was going to fall off so I decided I had better investigate ... a bit of bouncing my "slender frame" up and down on the bumper and then the NATO hitch confirmed it was the back that was making the racket. So half an hour ago I fired up the heater in the garage, armed myself with a beer and a torch (essentials for modern maintenance) and crawled under the back to see what was falling off.... Uh oh.... Would you believe it? I always knew that non-genuine suspension bushes were junk - I just couldn't get any genuine ones the other day otherwise I would have fitted genuine the first time but... Left to right: - Original (genuine) bush fitted from new, removed one week ago after about 10,000 miles and a fair bit of off road use, a bit worn but not too bad - One of the "brand new ones" fitted last week done about 150 miles about 15 of which have been off road, totally shot away - One of the others, the other way up, starting to split around the edge as well Moral of the story: DO NOT waste your time and your money on non-genuine suspension bushes it is NOT worth it and you WILL end up doing it again. Got to be an all time record - the previous best (worst) I know of was a set of radius arm bushes which lasted three weeks (not mine I am glad to say) Four new genuine bushes in there and they'd better last more than 150 miles or I shall be really really really ****ed off! As they say you get what you pay for.........

Don't worry, I saved the whole thread and also the brake fluid/scampi one, it's on the PC at work so if required I will post it up so Nigel's prowess with a Schutz gun is recorded for all time

I suspect you'll find all mail to that address is automatically deleted But in case not, I'll have a pop at it later once I've had a couple more beers and a bottle of wine

I see the chronic(le) place has 7000 posts in six months while we have clocked up nearly 4000 posts in about 2 weeks, obvious which way most people jumped when the rug disappeared from under them And 5500 of those seem to be about what shape the roof is on the Discovery 3 and whether or not a RR sport looks nice in white... Oh well each to their own, not really my sort of thing though

P.S. We also didn't go much on the fact that sound technical advice on the LRE forum was usually received in about 15 minutes and was inevitably spot on in accuracy and detailed in content, unlike that in just about any magazine pages you can think of which took 3 months to get (and so was F all use to the majority of letter writers who wanted to fix their vehicle this weekend not the other side of Christmas) and was generally only about 1 paragraph telling them to do what they had probably already thought of while they were waiting anyway. P.P.S. We can't spell "administrator"..... "Harsh but fair"!! I see we seem to be attracting some "guests" now I wonder how many of them we know?

'Kin hope they last longer..... .....took me longer to change them than it did to wear them out!!!!!

A last love letter from Mr Green I think the swear filter on here would go into overtime if I expressed an opinion on that bit of text

Biggest width, biggest height or both? I have a set of 33x12.50R15 which are good if you want a "fat boy" look, or for flotation in very soft ground, which is when I use them. They rub on the wheelarch extensions on articulation but I have had them on 3 90s now and not damaged anything, the extensions just bend out of the way. Might be a problem if the vehicle is laden but can be easily cured with an inch or two suspension lift. Photo... Not sure about if you can get 35x10.50R15s on if it is height you want, without a suspension lift.

No, its ok, I'm going to get it anyway ... and I can always switch it off when not required, it'll mainly be for use before/after the intercooler upgrade and the odd occasions when I'm towing something heavy. I got your e-mail by the way, thanks

It's much quicker off the hard drive too Not that I'd know of course

I'm beginning to see why Dell is reckoned to be far and away the largest PC manufacturer in the world We're an unimaginative bunch aren't we But as they say, if it ain't broke.... I also unchecked the warranty cover on mine, as I figured if I phoned them and asked for an "on site repair" I'd get told to * Off! Saved £99 IIRC

On my old 300Tdi a previous owner had fitted a beepy thing which just activated off the std oil pressure switch so when warning light was on, bleeper was on. It was good if some nosey b&gger looking in your vehicle turned the ignition on, because it made them jump and they usually turned it off again quick Mind you having had my oil pressure sender in the new one replaced under warranty earlier this week (10,000 miles) because the light didn't come on with the engine not running, then did come on when you started it, flickered a few times, and went off again, the reliability of 300Tdi oil pressure senders is a bit questionable I think I may get a bleeper or buzzer for mine at some stage as I always thought it was a good idea - if you are driving into a setting sun (particularly the Gas Mark 9 just under the ozone hole southern hemisphere setting sun) it would be very easy to miss an ickle red light on the dash and I'd rather not have an "audible warning" from big end bearings etc

I'm going to get the plate with it as I don't have a BSP tap handy. Having measured the dash I think I will put it in under the radio in the centre dash assy, though I had vaguely earmarked that spot for air-locker switches at a later date... still time to think about it though. My 2m VHF microphone lives where White90's one is mounted so that's a no-go. The other place is maybe in that plastic box Ian supplies but stuck on to the 45* sloped bit on the bottom of the 02> centre dash panel, I think that would be out of the way as well. Is the display brightness adjustable? It looks a bit lurid in the photos, seems to me it could be a bit irritating at night? No answer from Ian yet maybe he is negotiating his way through the "help" line of a courier services as I asked him to check shipping costs

Fridge, I have mentioned that facility on the "secret moderators forum" and I think geoffbeaumont said he thought it could be added in but wanted to leave hacking the forum software until everything had settled down a bit. I find it very useful when saving long threads to the PC to view offline, such as if I happened to want to preserve some information from another well known forum that was in imminent danger of being canned

We used to have them for sale too, I think they were called "ferrules" IIRC, convert a TR13 tube to be used in a Defender or similar TR15 rim. I seem to remember mostly they were used on 205R16 tubes as we couldn't get 205R16TR15s or they were stupidly expensive or something.

I have had bad experiences with "professional" plumbers which is why I now do my own, I am cr&p at it but at least it is free instead of being cr&p and expensive! I had two floods in my new house in the first 18 months after it was built, one was a poorly fitted radiator pipe and the other was a bodge up in the power shower plumbing, it was all put in as the walls were being put up so I had to cut a hole in the wall to fix it I'm still surprised it collapsed the tank with just gravity feeding the water out though - I would have thought the water would have just stopped running but I suppose it depends on how much head there is between the tank and the tap, my tank is in the kitchen with only the header tank up in the loft so it wouldn't happen with mine. The force exerted with a pressure drop is huge if you think about it - a perfect vacuum would be 14.7psi and over a couple of square feet of tank side that is up to 4200lb of pressure or nearly two tonnes! a bit of copper isn't going to get in the way of that even if there was only a few PSI pressure difference the force is still quite a lot on a weedy bit of copper plate - which is why there is a vent pipe in there I guess. What you need is a Hybrid_from_Hell spec hot water cylinder made of 18mm titanium

No roundabouts in this country so it doesn't matter so much Not for me, as indicated the road manners are the problem, as in there aren't any road manners think I'll stick with BFG AT's on mine I have another picture somewhere of a Merc G-wagen on 11.5" tractor tyres, will have to scan it and put it up some time but lets say that it proves nothing is infallible even with those and all-round difflocks

The designation on size is TRxx The thin valve are TR13 and the thick ones are TR15 so a tube with a valve to fit a typical "tubeless" wheel hole would be a 7.50R16TR13, a tube to fit a Defender tube-type wheel with a fat valve would be a 7.50R16TR15 As Jon said you can buy tubeless valves as TR13 and TR15 though the TR13 ones are the "normal" size.

I can vouch for Dells as well. Our company buys all Dells through our UK office and ships them down to us, we have 2 in our office, I have one at home, one of the guys in the workshop also has one at home and several other people over in the other office use them at work, no problems with any of them AFAIK, seem to be good machines and very reliable (famous last words.... ) My previous PC was a "built to order in an AT case" by a local computer store in Worthing and I thought it was great when I got it, fast and quite a bit cheaper than the "brand name" ones, then it blew up (power supply) then it blew up again (hard drive) then it blew up again (total motherboard failure) all in the space of about 18 months, and now I think I understand why the "proper branded PCs" are a bit more expensive - you get what you pay for! I'll be getting another Dell when the one I have at home starts to feel like a 100,000 mile 2.25 diesel, but having just doubled the memory in it, it feels like a new computer again so I reckon there are a few years life in it yet I probably would have bought a Dell laptop but as I was in the UK recently I did some scouting around and found a nice Toshiba one which had all the stuff I wanted on it, also having seen Dell laptops I thought they felt a bit flimsy compared to a Tosh.

I reckon a Disco looks quite "businesslike" shod with 7.50x16 tractor tyres B) VeryDisco will have some on order before the next Slindon I reckon