Eightpot

70 mph in a Defender on big MT tyres with an exterior cage in a chipped TD5 will not be economical on fuel. You've built a rock crawler not a long-distance tourer.

Range Rover classic mirrors give a full width rear view - you can pop the mirror head off the ball mount and swap them onto a Defender mirror arm.

Yes, I've travelled that route a few times - I put a photo up of my Range Rover ambulance on the same track a few pages ago. Have covered the route in a Defender and series also. For South Africans it's got a rep as tough terrain, but compared to the Alps, Pyreneese or Black Mountains it's pretty tame to be fair. Beautiful country, stunning scenery and quite remote, but not hardcore offroading.

If you're going to attach 1/2" rubber hose to the aluminium pipes, why are you adding copper sections in at all? Use heater hoses from a V8 or Defender which have the correct I.D and tight bends to clear the box - join them directly to the matrix. I wouldn't trust any kind of soldered connection between copper and aluminium.

An old school Defender/disco wouldn't have the wheels off the floor in the first place is the point. You need to cross a ditch to do that, not drive slowly over a stone.

Unfortunately I did it in the desert in the far south of Morocco - after hiding the mess in a tea towel I drove 2 hours to a small settlement and got the local doctor to open up his blood stained 'surgery', when he saw my hand he actually wretched up and said to go to Zagora hospital 2 hours further on as he didn't want to touch it! When I got there there was a national hospital staff strike but a volunteer trainee offered to fix it in return for a carton of fags! Got a nice big shot of morphine and to be fair the guy did a tidy job of attaching everything back together considering - his stitching's better than my welding.

You are allowed to drive it directly home from an mot.

I knocked myself out recently and woke up with a 3" gash that had to be stitched after simply walking out of my pit under a Range Rover and not noticing the tow bar drop plate. Another silly injury was jumping down from a roof rack, getting my ring stuck on a bolt and pulling most of my finger off 🤮 Yep, it's time to be cautious...

There's some really good stuff in the roll on skip next to my workshop - trying to resist the normal urge to climb in as it looks much like the Star Wars waste compactor .. 😬

Rubber hose and hose clips?

It may not prove to be that bad - a few months of disruption for some and back to work. If you're in food, pharma or bog roll life's about to get good. The environment and our practices may improve as a result. The first & second world wars were incredibly costly and will make this look like a round of drinks but life went on afterwards. And like the last war there's a good opportunity for some to come out of this with advantage if cards are played right.

Well I started the month and by looking forward to a slow reduction in customers and day to day small jobs so I could focus on a couple of restorations I'm working on, plus maybe make a start on one or two of the projects in the yard, building a new compressor housing, some maintenance etc. Then my short trip to South Africa to buy stock, sort out some imports ended in a frantic dash to exit the country before the S hit the F, a sudden exit of income, all my money sat in a container going nowhere in Durban and the marvelous news that the guy chasing me for bills gets his wages paid while I can apply for and get rejected for £95 per week. Such is the life of the sole trader, not the first knock or the last- got a few bottles of red stashed, clocks change soon and half a tank of diesel so bring it on 👊😎

Yeah ta, it's obviously been looked after, think the last owner had it pretty much from new, needs a bit of repair on the bulkhead but otherwise pretty tip top - lovely straight panels. Was surprised how well the 6 cylinder does on fuel v the 4 cylinder. It's quite a nice refined engine though with lots of torque, so gearchanges are nowhere near as frequent. There was a later R6 version ( https://www.landyonline.co.za/specs/series3.htm) that had the same power/torque as a Tdi (and a nice 3.8 diesel) Just managed to scrape a flight home through the corona madness in the nick of time - few more pics...

What a lovely weekend I've had - Had to nip back to South Africa last week to do some work shipping classic cars back from Durban, and decided to do a little more work on my rolling restoration S2a and drive it back the 640Km to Johannesburg. I'm going to have a go at getting it up to a national park in Zimbabwe later in the year, so made some sense to have a stab at some jobs that need doing and give it a decent road test - as I bought it blind on the 'net & only used it once.. First thing that became apparant from the savage clunking I'd forgotten about was every leaf spring bush was shot to bits & the rubber was gone. Happened to drive past a leaf spring repair workshop who changed every bush for.. £45. Bonus. Had a new rad & alternator fitted last year, so aside from fixing a few oil leaks and topping up, fitting a dual battery system, adjusting some door hinges, fitting seatbelts and a swapping a couple of bits of delaminated glass courtesy of a great local landy specialist, I was off. Great engine the 2.6 straight six petrol - made light work of the steep hills through Kwa Zulu Natal, chugged uphill happily holding 50mph and a little quieter than a diesel. Turned in 24mpg overall, not bad for a 50 year old engine. Passed through some of the old Boer war battlefields, Blood River the most famous, before stopping for the night at a game ranch at Vrede (breeds game and lions etc for farming & hunting) - got in some great off-roading on the ranch and enjoyed spectacular scenery with herds of game running through the open landscape. After a morning spent playing with lion cubs, hit the road again through the wide open countryside of the Free State and on to Johannesburg. The old S2a never missing a beat all the way and getting lots of attention from other drivers - sadly a rare sight on the roads now.

Hmm. Pretty sure whatever bacteria has survived living on diesel and EP90 soaked rusty junk dragged out of ten years hibernation in nettles under a wet tarp could kick seven bells out of corona virus. More likely to get hurt by the hamburger wagon.

I presume the new Defenders driven in the press photos in Namibia are driven by journalists who may not be very experienced in off road driving, hence the tentative driving and lots of braking and lurching - can't imagine it would be confidence inspiring if you keep balancing on two wheels every time it goes over a stone. Van Zyl's is a bit more than a bumpy mild track, but I wouldn't call it tough - I went out looking for it and realised I'd already gone up it on the way..

As a mildly interesting contrast in perspective, I'm just about to fly out to Joburg to prep a car for a car for a long trip into one of the national parks in Zimbabwe - I'd shipped my old 110 back to the UK so rather than use my 50 year old S2a 109 station wagon I arranged to buy a 25 year old 110, was set to fly out in a couple of days with a huge and very heavy bag of spares to give it a quick overhaul of the essentials and replace the usual broken/worn items. The deal fell through, so now I've decided to have a classic safari in the 109 instead and enjoy the slower pace, noise and smells. So now I don't need to take: An air filter, power steering belt, lift pump, drop arm ball joint, hub flanges, trailing arm bushes, heater matrix, a box of plastic lock buttons, latches, handles, throttle cable, master/slave cylinders, turbo hoses and a host of other things that you need to solve the rattles, clonks and electrical gremlins on a Defender, that were engineered in after the rugged simplicity of the series models. The spares bag is reduced to a few sets of seals and a fan belt 😆

Yeah not very sensible - its rainy season there now and the roads get swept away by these storm torrents, pulling up and depositing boulders and roadstone - good chance of smashing into a rock or a cavity. But if it aint your car and there's a photographer present...

The vid makes it look like the Defenders are doing some extreme terrain what with all the slow rock crawling and tottering on two wheels and getting loads of air under the tyres - but to me it doesn't look very safe or stable off road. A coil sprung Defender wouldn't do that. That track is hard work (though much harder going uphill 😛) , one of my favourite places in Namibia & done the same stretch a couple of times - the rangie ambulance cruised up it no bother with all four wheels on the floor (half ton of beer & sausage probably helped). Don't think my wife would have got back in the car if it was doing all that see-sawing..🙂 Old is definitely gold.

I converted a customers 2a lwb station wagon into a soft top once and converted the old one-piece second row doors to two piece. After careful measuring it was a fairly straightforward bit of slicing and fabrication.

Take it out, bend the arm up a tad, refit. Repeat till you get it how you like it.

I'd imagine as said it's an entirely automated process generated from a camera van. You can't/shouldn't pay the fine as you haven't commited the offence, so you need to wait for summons papers to appear which will have a section for you to state your case and return it. It will then be looked at by a person, usually a dvla employee, and should get cancelled. The photo is thier evidence, so if it shows your car parked on private ground they can't proceed.

Great, an easy win 😎👍

Yeah, you can bypass the centre as well, not crazy loud but I've found it's a bit intrusive for a daily driver.

Yup - modern low profile 4x4 tyres shred nicely on gravel tracks - that's why they're carrying two per car I guess.