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Davey1000

Getting Comfortable
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  1. Please could someone mention Salisbury axles as used on the Defender 110? I read that these are stronger as they will carry more weight. Discovery axles are disgusting as the diff case is very thin and is apt to become porous (guess how I know?) The previous owner tried some kind of resin or body-filler but this didn't work. My temporary fix has been grease and so far so good (oil is in there as well but the grease thickens it up so that it doesn't run out) At such times one wishes that one had a Salisbury axle as on those the diff-pan can be unbolted. Of course the good news is that on a Disco the rear axle only handles about half of the power. Removing the axle so that a new diff-pan can be welded on is not a five minute job and one needs quite a bit of space to do it (private space of course so that ones neighbours cannot moan to the Council about "lowering the tone of the neighbourhood") GRRR!
  2. So where does one get the pan with the lowest price? (including post and packing) It looks like £21 + VAT is the starting point but one firm charges £38.50!
  3. I heard about an engineer who had recycled his tax-exempt Ford Escort with a kit car kit. The engine and all the running gear was as made by Uncle Henry. Even the number plates were recycled and the bloke described the car as a Ford Escort. All was OK for several years but eventually a stroppy MOT tester upset the apple cart. AFAIK the vehicle had to be VOSA checked and re-registered and road tax had to be paid! I believe that it all depends on whether the car had a chassis. In the 1960s a lot of cars did have a chassis so putting a fibreglass sports body on a sit-up-and-beg Ford Popular was allowed.
  4. A year late I know. As to Ifor Williams trailer wheels that have the 5 stud 6.5" PCD there are several types, There is a 12" wheel with a 4.5J rim designed for 155/70 R12C tyres. These wheels are fairly flat. Tyre load rating is supposed to be 104 but IMHO this wheel and tyre is "entry level". There are also 13" wheels at 5 stud 6.5" PCD. For the latest 195/50 R13C tyres a 6J rim is used. Load Rating is again 104. These wheels will most likely need spacers to go onto an LR. Another variation is the 13" wheel with the 5.5J rim. AFAIK this is the optimum rim width for the 185/70 R13C which has a Load Rating of 106. Spacers will be needed I expect. One tyre that is used on this type of trailer is the 185/60 R12C but just what rim width it goes on is anyone's guess. Presumably 5J would be needed. Some pre 1988 IW trailers used 6.00-R9 tyres with 140mm (5.5") PCD. In 1988 they changed to 6.5" PCD and "divided wheels" (still with 6.00-R9 tyres) The "divided wheel" which is centre disc has the flange inset by almost two inches unlike the split rim type that had three inches of out-set and only 1" of rim behind the mounting flange. Some fork lift truck wheels and tyres may fit. Good luck!
  5. IMHO Graham Edwards are the best. I have a little Graham Edwards 8 x 4 trailer and the build quality is excellent. OEM tyres were 165 x 13 but I've upgraded to 175 x 13 8 ply and it really is a very handy trailer that can be towed through streets where cars are double-parked. The previous owner, a builder, used to carry a mini digger on it with the brakes not even connected up but eventually the police caught up with him and his 3.5 tonne licence; whoops! My first trip with it empty (in UK law an empty trailer that one has just bought is not being "used") was to the Graham Edwards factory where it was put right and declared to be a good trailer. No point going looking for a bunch of "Green Shield" stamps is there? My biggest trailer is an antique 3.5 tonner with Avonride running gear and Michelin 6.00 R9 XTA tyres which need 116 psi (getting that pressure is a real pain as it is way beyond the capability of supermarket airlines). It has leaf springs. Unfortunately the manufacturers were not very good at predicting the future. After all who would have expected roads to get WORSE in the future? I am of course referring to speed humps which throw the bulk of the weight onto one axle at a time. Nowadays IMHO the makers of twin axle trailers that use leaf springs ought to consider fitting military type rocking beam compensators to enable the axles to share the load as with the antique trailer the axles each get hit with almost double the weight.
  6. You haven't been getting rid of high resistance connections have you? I've been down that road. After buying a Discovery with charging problems one unscrews the battery earths, power brushes the chassis down to shiny metal and remakes the connection using petroleum jelly. Afterwards the joint is painted over with red oxide to protect it from corrosion. This is a tremendous help but next one notices that the alternator output cable is getting hot. It turns out that the strands of copper wire in the cable lug have oxidised and turned black. It is difficult to clean the wire but a good method is to use a wire brush in a power drill. One gets the brush brushing against a metal block and feeds in the wire between the two. Some wise-guys use ammonia but this is a bad idea as corrosion will recur repeatedly unless ALL traces of the ammonia are got rid of down to forensic levels (lots of boiling water?) Once the strands are clean they can be lightly tinned. They are then crimped into a new lug and soldered. Ideally the lug-to-wire joint should be sleeved with heat shrink tubing but tape will do OK. The problem then arises that because the alternator can now belt out 100 amps, the belt slips, - duh! Spurious pattern part belts will shred within minutes and even the Gates Micro-V on a brand new pulley is only just good enough. Well I've had a gutful and plan B is to ditch the 48.5mm pulley and revert to the 61mm pulley that the original Discovery had. This does need a longer belt, the 7PK1595 instead of the 7PK1580. With any luck it will no longer sound as if one has a flock of birds under the bonnet. Good luck!
  7. Hi Mark, I've got some bad news for you as according to the official Land Rover service manual the 300TDi head must not be skimmed. They state that if the head is warped by more than 0.08 of a millimetre (3.14 thou) it must be discarded! I have replaced the gasket on a 300TDi whose head presumably has been skimmed and the surprising thing was that when the head was lifted the pistons of cylinders 1 and 4 both had dents caused by being hit by the exhaust valves. Presumably if one is going to skim the head one must also re-cut the valve seats to sink the valves lower. Often aluminium castings are vacuum impregnated with resin as otherwise they can be porous. Possibly these heads are resin-sealed and machining removes the resin-sealed surface. The Land Rover specialists near where I live used to say that with the 300TDi a lot of people would replace the head gasket but unless the radiator is as-new or uprated, the gasket will soon blow again. The 300TDi in the Defender is less trouble than the one in the Discovery as the header tank is higher. Good luck. The good news is that the 300TDi engine is still being made overseas and a brand new head (bare) is not as expensive as might be expected. IMHO however the high mounted water pump on these engines and the cross-flow radiator are a recipe for disaster.
  8. You don't say whether the problem vehicle is a Discovery or a Defender. I'd guess its a Disco as owing to the shape of the bonnet, the header tank is mounted lower than what it (IMHO) ought to be. The nett result is that unless the head, block and gasket all make a 100% perfect hermetic seal, gas will get into the cooling system and create air locks. In actual fact on this design once the engine block temperature exceeds about 110 degrees water will be expelled from it and it will run dry! The high mounted water pump also exacerbates the problem. This is the reason why old Discoveries are so cheap. The viscous coupled fan and in particular the oil cooler in the radiator is IMHO a disaster as this puts all ones eggs in one basket. An oil-to-air heat exchanger is on the other hand invincible and it will continue to remove a good percentage of the engines heat even when the water has gone. One other snag with the 300TDi engine is its petrol ancestry. The middle two exhaust ports are next to one another. With a petrol engine this was done to provide heat for the "hot spot" that was used with down-draught carburettors. Unfortunately having two exhaust ports side by side also creates a hot spot in the cylinder head and it is here where the head gaskets usually fail. At the time of writing the "going rate" for a bare cylinder head made in South Africa is about £230 and the consensus of opinion is that Discoveries with "cooked" heads usually need a new one. When one considers the cost of skimming the old head and ending up having to do the job twice it is probably better to bite-the-bullet and pay the money. On my Discovery I hope to raise the header tank even though this will entail creating a bulge in the bonnet. Good luck!
  9. I have a Discovery 300TDi (now a "project car") and before the head gasket blew, I noticed a problem with the transmission. In 5th gear with a trailer at 60mph there was terrible "lash" or jerkiness and it was very unpleasant to drive. In 4th gear it was OK. One school of thought is that the gearboxes are worn out. Where should I begin in searching for the play in the transmission, or could it be the clutch plate buffer springs? I do have a Range Rover gearbox available but will this fit? Best regards from David.
  10. The 2.4 VM was excellent in the Rover SD1. The 2.5 VM was excellent in the Rover 800, however the consensus of opinion is that VMs are no good in Range Rovers. As the cranks, pistons, cylinders and heads are virtually identical it must be something else. OK the Range Rover is heavier than a Rover 800, about 2 tons compared to 1.6 tons and it is not so streamlined but the actual problem is nothing to do with that as a Rover 800 VM will tow trailers that cause Rangies and 300TDis to boil over and break down! Strange but true! (been there done that got the T shirt) In my honest opinion several problems rear their ugly head in the Rangie (1) is the viscous coupled fan. I have known these to be stiff when cold and loose (free-wheeling) when hot! Bad news. (2) is the oil cooler combined with the radiator, this puts all ones eggs in one basket. (3) the engine is much taller than the petrol V8 and unless one has a late 2.5 the radiator header tank is too low. (4) A Rangie has its engine north-south so on steep hills the water pump gets to be almost the highest thing in the cooling circuit. (5) on a Rangie classic the temperature sensor is in the radiator input pipe. This is a poor design as once the water and steam have gone, the temperature gauge will show that the engine is cooling. At this point there will also be no oil cooling. One possible modification is to get the over-engine header tank from a Ford Scorpio VM. As far as I know all the successful VM installations use a separate oil cooler. Anyway I have done thousands and thousands of miles in Rover 800s and the chief problems have been breakage of serpentine belts and a shattered alternator front bearing, also an aircon clutch pulley spitting out iron filings. The engines just go on for ever. The Range Rover VM I regret to say has been very disappointing although fitting a solid fan donated by a rusted out Ford Granada did make a considerable improvement. The plumbing does need to be altered and it is noteworthy that LR eventually fitted an extra tank that fitted onto the top of the radiator header tank. This raises the water level to what the engine needs. In my honest opinion temperature sensors need to be mounted on a cylinder head. Alas on the 300TDi the sensor is moulded in thermoplastic which melts. This lets the sensing element fall out and measure the temperature an inch away from the head! If only they had used thermoSETTING plastic such as Bakelite. There are a good many design faults that need to be remedied if reliability is sought but most of the problems can be re-engineered. Good luck! PS There is an American people carrier that uses a VM engine and to look at it one would think that the engine came straight out of a Range Rover. Like the RR it has the horrendous viscous coupled fan and like the RR it often overheats and gets cracked heads. For homework please learn-up "Steam Trapping & Air Venting" - old technology but still relevant today and NOT understood by a lot of engine and car designers. (note that when engines are on "Hot Test" at the factory they are coupled up to an invincible cooling system that can probably handle 1000HP - or more!).
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