Eightpot

"Inside, there’s a “twin zoned” 2+2 seating configuration with carbon fiber racing seats upholstered in hand-stitched Bridge of Weird leather and sheepskin inserts in a nod to the Chinook’s seating configuration." Err.. not same 🤔

Popped in there the other day to grab a quick bite after fuelling up Salad - chicken - chips? says the waiter - I said yes some chips would be great. No, we sell salad, chicken & chips he says. Came out on seven plates and we were there for an hour 😆 very nice though 🐷

Been crossing paths with a nice group of Dutch overland trucks while out wild camping in the south of Morocco this week - quite a varied group, all very smart. Nice to see them out actually giving it some beans on the pistes and dunes around chigaga/Foum Zguid - caught up with them this morning tackling a big steep soft sand berm on a remote piste that gave my rangie some trouble yesterday - most of them breezed up like it was nothing. Pity the next fellow that tries to get up with the depth of tracks they left 😬 Look very cool thundering past.

I've used POR15 tank sealer on a 30 yr old fiat panda 4x4 tank that was badly rusted with a leaking seam and hundreds of pinholes as replacement tanks weren't available. I followed the instructions and used the excess to paint additional layers on over the worst bits - four years on it's still leak free and looking good.

You need to start from a point of testing and diagnosis first, buying new bits wont necessarily fix this. From your description I'd say you probably need to do the head gasket again, starting with a pressure tested and skimmed head. If the force a previous failure was as severe as you say I would also be concerned about hydraulic damage to conrods/bearings which could cause knocking - piston crown heights can be measured with the head off. There are a few causes of knocking aside from this from a badly adjusted timing belt to a manifold leak or badly adjusted rockers. Sometimes it's cheaper to find a good garage and get a proper diagnosis rather than guess and make worse. You could start some basic diagnosis by listening to various parts of the engine through a short length of hose to help identify the region the noise comes from, testing temps with an infrared thermometer and checking the timing is set correctly.

We'll either carry on to South Africa or turn round at Gambia I guess, no firm plan other than not be in UK this winter 🙂 Haven't got blogs or anything, most of the time I'm just shopping, fixing, washing pants or eating, and I don't have a face for instagram 😄

I've used a lot of thier retrim kits in the past and found them to be ok with good quality cloth. Have used a few of thier complete seat base units which were fine too - haven't used a whole seat frame though. The one thing I have noticed is the foam, while well moulded doesn't last as long as the Exmoor foam which seems to stay firm for much longer - not so noticeable on the backrest but the seat foam goes flat before long.

I'm south of Zagora for the time being, heading south to senegal next month.

I was queing for diesel behind a van with sheep on the roof a few days ago - the inside was also full of sheep. Also passed a guy carrying one on his lap on a scooter! (Must have been a Lambretta 😄)

Yeah it does look like a standard 2 pin PC fan of a decent quality, so should be easy to find another - however after a day of traipsing round the backstreets, souks and malls of Marrakesh I've only managed to turn up a cheapo chinese fan with tiny motor that literally wouldn't blow a candle out. Seriously missing Amazon. Might have to just stick another fan on the vents to get more pull through - surprising amount of heat generated, casing very hot without a good fan clearing it.

Parked in the shade, its 37 degrees! Nice problem to have 🙂

First proper tooltime in months so cant complain - ripped the ally lid off anyway while I was pulling things to bits, and it was considerably warmer than the fridge lid, so I'll have to have a think on that..

Yeah, having a more thorough drains up it turns out the cooling fan has packed in - nice little job tomorrow trawling round marrakesh for a new fan 😞 not bad going on a 12 month old £1000 fridge which is now in bits spread across a dusty campsite 🤨

Slightly OT question here for anyone with a metallurgy bent.. I've fitted the lid of my National Luna fridge freezer with a 3mm aluminium plate on top using double sided tape, so there's roughly a 1mm air gap, so I can use it as a worktop in the camper. It's still in the high 30s here in Morocco and the fridge is struggling to keep to low temps without high run times - not a massive shock as its 37 degrees in the truck, but its occurred to me I may have strapped a big heat sink to the top 🤔 The lid has a shiny stainless surface naturally, not sure if I'm better off ripping the ally off - any thoughts?

As a starter, drop my agents a message with the cargo details, they're pretty helpful and if they can't oblige they may be able to suggest something : https://www.mercatorcargo.co.uk/

You can send sea freight which is cheaper but slooow or air freight which is quick - have a look on transglobal express as an example to start weighing up prices. If it can be properly paletised on a standard size pallet life gets easier and there are lots of online pricing websites for global pallet shipping. Also have a search for freight forwarding agents offering LCL (less than container load) and get some quotes, and have a cruise through some of the overland groups & forums on FB etc - plenty folk ship thier cars for travel or even expats sending personal effects that might be glad of using some container space to recover some costs. I would also search for UK-Oz specialist shipping agents (a lot of agents specialise in certain routes) and see if they can arrange some space - when I was bringing containers back from Africa I'd have been happy to sell a bit of floor space.

An oztent RV1 is pretty compact, especially if you don't bother rolling the awning out. They dont need pegging out either which can be handy & very weatherproof. They just fit in the back of a 110 packed away. They are discontinued now but pop up regularly on ebay.

What size parts - whole tub or just cappings etc?

You will need a gearbox adaptor plate, probably a modified spigot bearing, suitable engine mountings, suitable water hoses, wiring for the fuel solenoids on the injection pump.

I used to use these guys for my steering boxes - https://www.dasteeringltd.co.uk/services/steering-boxes/ In central Birmingham, most of the reconditioned boxes you get from the main resellers come from them. If you can take your old box in they will sort you a replacement out at a good price. Used thier boxes in my own cars for a couple of years with no problems.

Here's my leveller - dig a bit out from under the offending wheel 🙂

My Rangie ambance used to handle like a mini but springs were way too harsh even sat with full weight at 3 ton - stiffest ones OME made. I put softer, but still HD OMEs on this time round - way nicer off road but has me clenching my backside round most bends - I tried everything to move CoG, repacked, shifted weight, even got rid of heavy clothes! Oddly the best improvement I've found is to run with full fuel tanks, really counterbalances the weight and sits much nicer in a bend. Just makes me weep everytime I have to fill it 😭

There's barely a straight bit of road here in Portugal, some of the bends are savage - I've been struggling with my ambulance camper on the corners to the extent of limiting the bottles of wine on board and jettisoning anything non essential. I think if I was driving that 110 I'd just give up and push it over 😄 Good place to be in an electrical storm though!

Spotted this interesting camper build today. Bet that thing just wants to flip like a pancake on a bend. On skinny steels as well 😬

Police don't spend time on chasing motoring paperwork anymore since the internet came along and DVLA are able to directly control everything end to end and there's an insurance database. Unless there is some evidence it's a stolen car or someones commiting fraud then maybe, but looking at an ebay ad won't make it past the round file in the corner of the front office. These shonky cars should be getting picked up by the eyes-on section of dvla, MoT inspectors, but doesn't seem to be a process and if you put historic plates on you don't need to go for mot anyway. It's a big loophole, but its also one that in a way stops us having the strict rules of many EU countries that stop most modifications, so maybe we shouldn't poke too hard..