TSD

So rarely in fact, that you may have forgotten it's been living in my shed for at least a year

I'm not in the slightest worried by the electronics (though I've never looked into what's actually being done presently) - it's mostly the legal, financial and commercial concerns that made me wonder how much monitoring and/or authentication was done, now and in the future. If I owned a carpark full of expensive electric hosepipes, I'd be a little concerned about knowing what they were being plugged into (especially old land rovers held together by gaffer tape and wishful thinking!). If I ran a government, I'd be looking at public chargers as a likely place to recover the lost fuel duty from the infernal combustion engines. While doing that, why not refuse to charge untaxed, uninsured, stolen or scrapped vehicles? Not strictly ralated to charging, but Tesla (and others) talk about removing options that weren't paid for by the current vehicle owner. John Deere wants to prevent owners repairing their own machinery. It seems to me that the whole market is moving toward a rental type model, rather than ownership, and keeping the charging networks close to the manufacturers would be an obvious step on that path. Just because you're paranoid...

I'm curious to know - If I took one or two scrap Nissan Leafs and electrified my Ibex, would Instavolt (or anyone else) allow me to connect to their chargers? Between the complications of smart chargers, competing networks, and the pretty small diy market, it seems a question worth asking. I have no idea of the situation now, or how it will pan out in the future, but while a simple ev conversion Land Rover might be useful, even with lowish maxium speed and low range, it would be drastically much less useful if it could only be charged at home. e.g. drop the internals of a Leaf into my Ibex (which one? ). Very roughly, there's enough power to get Series equivalent performance. There's a load of unnecessary weight, so maybe the range is less than 100 miles. That's still enough to be a useful utility truck, for trips to the dump, parts getter etc. For me at least,that's potentially enough to be a useable greenlaning toy - 100 miles nominal range would get me to the far side of Salisbury Plain with a fair margin, but not if I can't charge up before heading home again.

A little more thought would lead to the conclusion it should be fused at both ends?

I've not bought from them yet, but I bookmarked these guys a while ago as they sell Inconel sheathed k-type sensors at very reasonable prices. Note the compression clamp mounts are sold seperately.

Clamp meters are handy for tracking current drains of course, because you can avoid disturbing the circuit to make a quick check. Cheap ones can be useful because you don't need accuracy or stability, which both cost. It doesn't matter if the drain is 20mA or 30mA, as long as you can tell if it goes up or down by 5mA, or if it drifts a few mA over a day. It's more money than you want to spend, but the DiLog DL6506 is an excellent clamp meter for hunting low current drains. It's got a useable 1mA resolution, and it's pretty stable in the short term (though you have to zero it every time you use it). It's upper range limit is only 80A, so don't go measuring starter current with it! Beware that it's *only* a clamp meter, so you'll still want a traditional multimeter alongside it. I paid about £75 for mine a few years back, though it seems to have risen in price from a quick search just now. I've got other dc clamp meters, and more Fluke and HP DMMs than any sane person should, but the DiLog is always a useful tool. Edit: And if you *are* going to drop it or drive over it, save your money and get a regular (non clamp) Fluke now - it's more likely to survive, and because of it's price, you're less likely to do it

I don't think they changed the design, more likely a batch of casings not made to drawing? The 'fix' bracket mounts on the hockey stick bolts, and looks like it tries to stop the swivel housing from snapping off Good luck getting the lower swivel housing bolts out in 10 years time!

Completely off-the-wall thought, but there was a recall on 2011-12 Defender for a weakness in the front axle casing. The wording of the recall didn't seem very reassuring, nor did a photo I saw of the added brackets. Worth checking if this one is in the affected range? Other than that I'd be looking at all the things already covered. If in doubt, tighten the swivels, and while the wheels are off swap them front to back (and stick the spacers on ebay).

I knew I should have added a smiley for the hard of thinking

I'm certain it would fit out of the box, but finding one is likely to be difficult. I think it would only have been sold in South America, and probably not very common even there. I don't know what vehicle it was fitted into, probably not a Sprinter though?

That intake manifold was redesigned to suit the Ford installation, where the turbo outlet to the intercooler would clash with the LR intake position. TGV had some head rework though, larger intake and exhaust valves, and I think bigger ports. You can see in Daans photo the outer head bolts are smaller diameter than the 300tdi ones (they are M8 instead of M12). So the manifold would have got some rework in any case. International produced several different intake manifold designs for the HS2.5 (300tdi) at the same time, according to the parts catalogue. The one of the left looks pretty bad, but the one on the right would be ideal for confusing people who think my Ibex is a GWagen...

I just noticed you have the usual NAS lights in the front bumper. Recurring problem with mine on 33" was that if you get crossed up off-road with a lot of steering angle, the tyre can rip apart the back of the old style incandescent bulb lights. On 33" it depended on the wheel offset, but on 35" it would be a constant problem, at least on my vehicle. The easy fix was to swap to LED lights - there's plenty to choose from, most of them truly ghastly in my opinion The flat faced ones that Miketomcat used are nice, I used the L E Perei ones which look close to standard until switched on. LEP don't make a front sidelight LED, so I used reversing lights. Not strictly legal, but I have sidelights in the headlamp bowl, so I don't have to light them, and they aren't as bright or annoying as many DRL lamps. Looking back at Miketomcats build thread, his rear wheelboxes are a slightly different profile to my SWB as I thought. Then again I noticed today they are both different to my LWB Not drastic though, the extended bumpstops will be what makes the difference.

Hi Mike. Nice to see another Ibex round here in the correct colour scheme I suspect FridgeFreezer was peering over at me when he made that comment. I have a very low mileage Cosworth V6 BOA in the back of the shed that was going into my 88" Hybrid many (many many) moons ago. I even have an adapter plate to an LT77 gearbox, flywheel and clutch to suit. It's not entirely a straightforward swap, but it's certainly do-able. I think your car originally had a Ford Explorer auto box behind the Cossie lump? I remember Roy (?) telling a story about losing drive having driven halfway up a ski slope when the TC overheated The V6 wasn't really for sale, but if it was going into an Ibex I'd be open to persuasion... On the question of 35s, obviously as you've seen, they will fit, but the back of my mind I have a feeling that the rear wheel boxes are a different shape on Mikes LWB. On mine, I can get my 33" to rub the top of the box on hard cornering on road. Not enough to worry about, but it does *just* kiss the paint. You would probably need to extend the bump stops for 35" if your wheelboxes are the same as mine - which is likely as I think yours was the next one built after mine.

I haven't looked at your spreadsheet, but I agree that 0xEF looks to be the right checksum value, it's what I get returned from my original code.

CCA is a usefull way to compare batteries, but doesn't have much meaning in terms of 'real' amps unless your engine takes exactly 30 seconds to start. Can't put my hand on the 'on engine' measurements I have right now, is this 'non-rolling road' curve of any interest ? This is a typical 2.2kW tdi starter motor - data supplied by the motor rewinder. Maximum stalled current was 730A (but the wiring and battery should be sized to limit the current below this).

Absolutely not what you need, but if you want a really high quality, seriously beefy battery, then look at the Hawker Armasafe? Should satisfy the urge for the next ultimate upgrade...

There is an official installation manual with cad drawings of flywheel housing etc., so you can work out your own adapters. It looked to me like the turbo position might be a PITA for a RHD land rover but I never got further than a coffee time project. ISTR it was developed by Cummins for a Nissan research project for a small diesel for US market pick up trucks. I only found it in one production vehicle, a chinese pickup that was available in Australia. At one time the engines were listed on Alibaba, even before Cummins released the Re-Power kits.

When production of the 300tdi engine stopped here, the design was sold or licenced to International / MWM, who continued production in (I think) Brazil, then later in Argentina. They were available in several versions, 2.8 and 2.5, with conventional or variable nozzle turbo. In that market, they were used in Ford Rangers and Merc Sprinters, and there were generator set and marinised versions as well. I think engines were supplied back either to LR or MOD as service units, as well as to LR for RoW vehicles. The last rework programme of the Wolf 110s fitted 2.8 engines. I think those had wastegate turbos from the couple of pictures I've seen. LR will probably have had service lifetime supply contracts for MOD vehicles, so the only options would have been fill a warehouse with spare engines, maintain a full facility to build small production runs, or do a deal to get someone else to undertake the manufacture. The 2.8 engine had some head rework to improve cooling, but I don't think that carried over to the 2.5 units. The most obvious external difference is that the head bolts alongside the manifolds are smaller diameter than on 300tdi. I have the HS2500 parts catalogue if you need it, but as far as I know all parts are direct crossover from the 300tdi. Motor& Diesel used to sell both 2.8 and 2.5 engines and conversions and still supply parts last time I looked.

Following Escapes suggestion, likely sticking brushes, especially if the car has been offroad/wading in the past. I don't know the td5 at all (or what style alternator is fitted to it), but often the brush pack can be removed as an assembly without even taking the alternator out. Clean it up and make sure the brushes move freely - or just change it while you're in there.

With Webers, you'll probably find better info if you look for the four letter model code for the carb, rather than the throttle size. Probably the best book on Weber carbs is John Passini - Weber Carburettors, Theory Tuning & Maintenance. Not easy or cheap to obtain though unless you're very lucky. (I was, about 20 years back) There is a Haynes manual solely on Webers, which is probably quite useful - I only have a PDF of the section on DGAS carbs, but that part is pretty good. EDIT: Looking around for a PDF of Passini, found this instead which might be useful.

If you really need to join it in the middle, there's no major problem, but cutting the connection at one end or the other and feeding the cable through is always better. Most cb antenna bases will allow you to remove the coax, or accept the same PL259 plug as the radio, which is cheap and easy to fit. F connector is a poor choice for lots of reasons. It's the wrong impedance and it's designed for solid conductor coax.

I have a couple of the aftermarket VDO 6k units, works just fine on a 300tdi. I needed to do some adjustment with the TGV engine because the alternator has an unusual number of poles, but with standard tdi alternator it was nearly spot on straight out of the box. (Second unit was already fitted on the 200tdi when I got it).

This is called a 'gumption trap'... ... named by the author in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"

I don't have much/any more info than you, I simply had already read the doc I linked as part of the canbus reverse engineering that I was doing. The doc I linked before says 'The control module will exit stand-by mode if there is any LIN bus activity. When the control module exits stand-by mode it must verify the 'System Enable Status' in order to recognise when it should respond to a switch request.' So a normal LIN wakeup should bring the seat out of standby, but then it probably still won't respond until it's been told to. It's not clear to me if the LIN bus master is the seat memory module or the CJB. If it's the CJB then it's probably not too hard to spoof the required message, once it's been sniffed from a working vehicle. I have almost no experience of LIN bus, but it looks fairly slow and simple to work with. Somewhere round here I have a usb to k-line converter I built about 5 years back that might be useable, but I haven't really thought about it. I was/am considering putting a D3 instrument pack into the 300tdi Ibex I'm building, which is the only reason I'd looked into the various D3 busses at all.

You don't have to tighten down the spring compressors, just snug them up on the spring before you jack the car up. That way the spring can't extend when unloaded, and you know exactly the maximum force applied to the compressors - the corner weight of the vehicle. And you know before you start that you'll get the spring out easily without jumping on the hub, letting the brake line go etc..