Eightpot

We were chatting via pm so I think he's ok for now and trying to get it ready for an mot for the first time in decades.. 😄

Yep be real careful as above - I've had to do the same a few time on imports/exports and it's real easy to start removing the edge of the stamp and making it worse. I normally use a brass brush to scrub the loose rusty stuff, muck and paint from the number, then go over it lightly with a bit of spray paint till its uniform colour and your eye isn't distracted by the mottled surface, then usually with an angled torch shone across you'll start to pick out the number. Even if you still can't quite make it out, take a photo with your phone and mess about with the contrast/light settings and you may find it starts to pop out just enough.

How come dvla want photos? You should normally be able to send off a V62 with a £25 cheque and get your V5 - they only normally ask for additional info if it's stolen, imported or on a write off category.

It pays to get the bead just right so you dont have much metal to file back and only do one spline at a time, or you end up in a hell of a mess trying to figure where the high spots are!

I have on a couple of occasions, where the gearbox has been otherwise fine, built the mainshaft splines back up in situ using a mig welder, and grinding and filing till a new input gear will just slide back over. Boring days work but cheaper than a rebuild. It's been surprisingly successful, particularly with the slightly longer cross drilled input gears which sit on a bit of unworn spline. Did one last year and still 100% despite driving all round europe and down to mauritania and back, giving it a jolly good thrashing.

The troublesome 10as I worked on previously ended up with it being deleted - just pulled the plug out of the ecu and put a ring terminal on the earth cable between fuel solenoid and spider so it could be earthed and did without the alarm/fob altogether.

A 98 300tdi with 10as will have a sealed solenoid won't it? Unless someone has already smashed the top off it.. If I recall correctly, after trying to repair a particularly manky old example with rotten wiring, the 10as operates the spider which controls earth paths rather than lives via little relays inside. I couldn't get it to run even with a spider delete plug in as the terminals were corroded so just cut short the solenoid earth wire and grounded it.

It maybe didn't help that I went on monday and the weather was poor, don't know if a few people ducked out early, but it felt very souless and not much to see. Seems the major part of the stuff to see was the visitors car park display section. Really didn't like the venue - the museum car park surrounded by chain link fencing with displays parked on the grass verges is a bit miserable looking. No traders to speak of other than the obligatory cheap tool stall - if it weren't for the excellent museum I'd have been very miffed about wasting half a tank of diesel getting there and back.

It might be your new joint to blame if it was a 'budget" part -the shaft splines don't tend to wear in my experience. Make sure you've got no movement in the splines though as that will accelerate wear with horrible results..

It will still work without power steering, they are lower ratio than power steering and you only need a little road wheel movement so no need to go round the clock with the wheel - just fairly quick side to side rocking making sure all the slack is taken up and the wheels move a tad The steering is carried out by obviously rotating the steering wheel which turns the column through UJs into the steering box, that translates as a side to side movement of the drag link, which turns the n/s swivel, which is connected to the o/s swivel through the track rod and its joints, and the whole axle is located on the car using radius arms for fore/aft and the panhard rod for side/side. What you are looking for is slack in any of those components anywhere along the line - enough movement on the steering wheel to get a little movement on the front wheels should be fine, thats the final product of all the movements. A hand on each part including the swivel housings, without getting fingers trapped, will usually find the wear quite easily combined with looking and listening for clicks clonks or possibly bangs 🙂. A good rock on top of the front wheels in/out and you should feel any wear in the wheel bearings also.

Yes, you will absolutely feel or even see wear movement in radius arm axle bushes if the steering wheel is rocked - not just a bit of a move but rocked between 10-2 oclock.

If you get someone to rock the steering wheel side to side while you watch and put a finger on the various bushes, hubs, track rod ends under the front end, the culprit/s should make themselves known.

From memory, the VDO vision speedos are usually quite simple to install and take a pulse wave from most electronic sensors to generate the input. They used them on the South African BMW powered 2.8i Defenders and NAS models. Cheaper to get your td5 one clocked I'd guess, but if you want to match your instruments it's probably an option. The installation sheet and wiring instructions are downloadable from vdo so you can check.

Yep I'll be going over. Really wanted to take the rangie ambulance but giving some mates a lift so will have to be the 110 instead. Looking forward to a mooch round the museum.

Unless its a budget pvc jobbie, a lot of them use long inflatable bladders inside a protective nylon skin, so it's ideal to go fairly slow and adjust the bladder as you go after its been stored folded up to get a good hull shape. If you blew it up rapidly it would likely twist up like a pigs doodah and they tend to go a bit banana shaped 😄 A tyre fitters bead blaster would be fun to watch though 😆 Oh the other useful thing with manual pumps is they also work in reverse, great for drawing the last air out after deflating and getting them packed down small 👍 makes a huge difference

I would stick to a manual pump to be honest though not the standard cheap pumps you get with most kayaks- it would be very easy to overinflate and burst the seams with an electric pump. I used to use a big Coleman dual action manual pump (inflates on upstroke & downstroke) and it only took a couple of minutes to inflate a big Sevylour Colorado. The benefit is you can feel when you're at the right pressure - the guage on an electric won't acurately measure the 1.5 bar and you'll waste more time connecting/disconnecting inflating and deflating or possibly nail the kayak. Also a good warmup for the arms 🙂 Ps, you can take the hand pump with you, not ideal finding you didn't screw the inflator valve back properly when you're half an hour downstream or in the middle of a lake 😉

For centre brackets I normally fabricate a little hanger to utilise one of the bolts on the back of the transfer box cover plate - you'd need to shift the hanger on the pipe forward a bit by the looks though. In the meantime, Halfords sell a very useful universal hanger strap for a few quid which are useful for short term or to properly position the exhaust while you measure and fit.

Just casting my mind back to the last time I shipped a car to Italy - pretty sure I used shipley or one of the similar sites - got quotes, picked a likely candidate who did regular runs then booked a short local job with them which meant we could contact each other, then we arranged lengthening the trip privately which cut shipleys hefty commission out.

There used to be guys doing regular trips with beavertails towing trailers, doing back and forth trips to europe picking and dropping cars as they go in a big circuit at very good rates - don't know if its still a thing post brexit though. A lot of one man bands advertise transporr on ebay and facebook marketplace, you might find some info on facebook expat groups as well.

I just passed through Rouen last week on the way back to Abbeville/ calais using the main autoroute, no signs or notifications that I noticed so if you're just motoring through it may not apply on the autoroute

Make sure to get a VDO pump, the cheap copies don't generally last very long.

Push button doors can be opened easily from the inside without removing trim if you use a thin flat blade screwdriver to push the latch release plate up, just over the latch post. Use a thin blade screwdriver, place on top of latch post and use it as a pivot, winkle the tip upwards till you find the small metal tab in the latch which springs the door open.

It may just be a failed fuel pump. Try turning the ignition on, then pressing the throttle pedal down five times in succession - this should start the fuel pumps priming process and you should hear the pump operate several times while it purges air from the system. If you hear nothing, or very loud pump noises you probably have a bad pump. Try it first and report back..

I used to use Martrim kits for all my Defender & Range Rover restorations- very nice quality and they send ample material, wasn't worth me going elsewhere to save a couple of sheckles. The pvc factory style is a little tricky to do nicely as there are some tight deep corners on a 110, it's hard to make it stretch enough even on a hot day, I never managed it without wrinkles, the material is great and looks just right though. I had better results with the brushed nylon style cloth on Range Rover roofs, stretches to shape much easier. Worth spending time scrubbing all of the old foam off and 'painting' the roof liners with pva or ideally resin gel before trimming it.

You might get away with it, but I would just use a sling to lift the engine in and fit the bracket next time you have to take the head off.