Eightpot

Smart meter I had just showed the useage and cost you were racking up day by day - useful until I changed energy companies then the cost bit didn't work properly. I did some sums on how best to keep my costs down this winter, the result is I'm in Portugal heading south to Africa, when the UK gets warm again I'll turn round and come back 😄

Old V8s can run rough for many reasons, sometimes several at once. Some things off the top of my head - faulty fuel pump or pump power supply. Fuel evaporation due to poor return flow to tank. Bad plugs/ wrong temp. Dirt in carbs. Air leak on manifold. Dirt/object in tank blocking pick up pipe. Stuck advance mechanism on dizzy, bad module. The list goes on, but thorough testing of each element of air/fuel/ignition, particularly when it won't start is the key. Is fuel getting to carbs, is fuel getting into cylinders, is power getting to plugs, are plugs sparking, is mixture good, is compression good. Find the area at fault & work backwards.

I wrote to DVLA asking what the process was for reporting these invented identities - there isn't one and they didn't much care. Just advised me to tell the police if I see one. Police won't care much either unless it's got no insurance and a body in the boot, so if you want to save a few bob on tax just screw some old number plates on 😕

I was struggling to get my trade parts from Bearmach for the last couple of years - the quality of parts declined massively as well to the point I had to stop using them - a lot of Britpart stuff is superior. I have only just narrowly avoided a destroyed engine after a brand new bearmach coolant overflow Y piece on my 300tdi split and lost a lot of water, unfortunately as I was going up a mountain in the pyreneese and it boiled dry. It's a pity as thier stuff used to be decent and I liked dealing with thier trade tream - it seems sourcing thier stuff from china became an issue with covid and the subsequent global supply & shipping problems.

Thermostats along with many other parts are rubbish these days - I no longer use anything but waxstat in the workshop and even then they can be faulty out of the box. Think I went through four new stats before getting a good one in my own 200tdi.

Sorry if I'm teaching you to suck eggs, I don't know if you have a pressure guage or are relying on a blinking oil pressure warning lamp? My old safari truck in africa started flashing the oil pressure warning lamp very convincingly for a while which had me thinking the worst - turned out to be a bad sender thankfully - always nice when its the cheap fix 🙂

Virtually all bodyshop paint suppliers will be able to take a scan of your bodywork and mix something up. You will find your local one with a google search. The difficulty with matching old paint is deciding to replicate the weathered & oxidised current colour or polish it up to bring it back closer to the shade it went on as - the new paint will stay bright far longer than the old panels which will revert to thier dull state.

If you're getting a new seal, I would avoid bearmach - last one I fitted was like a lot of thier stuff now, utterly useless cheap chinese rubbish that ruined the job and very nearly a windscreen.

Terms & conditions seem to vary depending on which agent you use, ebay, parcel2go etc, as they seem to make thier own standardised rules but if you check directly with the couriers most will accept a tyre if its within weight or dimension parameters as long as they are wrapped & labelled. I've sent a few recently, I think using Parcelforce and TNT.

After one of the bearmach sourced inner tubes blew its guts out on the motorway at the weekend, I think I might find some heavier duty ones for the Rangie - anyone know of a good supplier? The only place I can find michelins online are £43 each 😲 at which price I'm better off sourcing tubed rims..

That's a good buy and early standard cars are becoming hard to find. If it were mine I'd resist the urge to modify it and just keep on top of maintenance.

as an aside, I'm a ludite and techophobe for the most part, haven't owned a modern car for 15 years, but have to hand it to my wifes 14 year old 'modern' Saab though which does a 170 mile commute three times a week for several years, refuses to break down, I've changed the oil twice which is the extent of the spanner jobs I've had to do, its quick, comfortable and refuses to do less than 45mpg and yet to grow a spot of rust. Still on it's original shocks & exhaust at 160,000 miles while my Land rovers sit there like screaming baby birds waiting for feeding & fixing daily. I'm trying to clean up the aerodynamics on my Range Rover ambulance at the moment while preppng it for another big trip, as every mpg counts over a few thousand miles, and while trying to figure out if a smooth steering guard will help airflow under the axle to any extent or if I should stop buying shiny things, came across this interesting technical paper written by a guy from LR and a professor on SUV aerodynamics - it confirms the defender is equivalent aerodynamicaly to a Spanish galleon compared to other models, took some useful tips to clean up the flow and reduce high pressure areas. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330412255_Improving_SUV_Aerodynamics

That's just badly fitted - They're an easy screen to fit if you do it right using the string method, pulling from inside the car using plenty of lube and gentle pressure and thumps from outside. As there's no filler strip to pack the seal out its a tighter seal than most and its important to do the thumps, lube and manipulation constantly or the glass doesn't sit fully in the seal groove nor seal sit in the frame, and when you get to the last corner there's not enough gap and you either have to give up and start again or force the seal till either it or the glass gives way. I've never found issues with any brand of seal or glass, in fact my preference over the years has been britpart seals which always go in very nicely so should be no excuse with a genuine one.

Think you're right, they're more like a tie fighter - still remember driving to Libya in a soft top 90 on G90s and that howl drove me nuts!

G90s aren't brilliant in mud, but then aside from mucking about on Salisbury plain, and possibly a bit of gloop in the Falklands, the military has needed good sand & gravel tyres for the last three decades, G90s are very good on that in their defence. They air down very well and that tread pattern grips into stone or rocky ground where other tyres can tend to slide over the top. And if you go fast enough they sound like a star wars x-fighter 😄

The belt doesn't look ragged on the edge on the pics though I can't quite tell. Are you sure its the belt catching and not say the timing cover oil seal dragging on the belt or bottom pulley? Are there any rub marks on the cover other dust?

The belt in my 200tdi snapped recently after starting to squeal on a 40 mile drive. The belt was fitted two years previously and had done two trips to the south of France. Failure was down to slight misalignment of the tensioner, and as I mentioned previously, was down to the tensioner backplate not being sat flat on the case when the nut was tightened down. Had similar happen with vehicles at work over the years, 200 & 300tdi , doesnt take much to walk the belt off. The way the dust is collecting in your cover I'd be surprised if it were anything other than an out of square tensioner.

It's quite easy to fit the idler pulley so it's not sitting square in the backplate - you offer it up ok and by the time youve got the bolt in it shifts slightly and sits skewed but not noticeably so. Done it a couple of times myself.

I guess it uses the later m12x1.25 thread sender from discovery V8 rather than the older 5/8 UNF thread sender from older v8 defenders. The resistance range may be different so the newer gauge may not work with older sender types. As already mentioned, probably better to get a matched VDO sender/gauge if you can't find something, or use an alternative sender with the same resistance range and modify the thread/use an adaptor.

Apparantly not - they weren't in bad nick either considering - still held air. The spare didn't look like it had been used. I got a lot more out of my old 1275 tyres, though they were all bald and three different sizes 😆 I used to have a mini van which used to go through headlamps at an alarming rate - I fitted a one piece fibreglass flip front by simply chopping the front of the car off and bolting two door hinges to the front subframe. It was secured at the A panel with a pair of cheap overcentre latches which always came undone if I braked hard at the lights 🤡

Had a few minis many years ago - the last was a 1275GT with Webasto roof - stupidly I weighed it in for scrap in a rush to cobble the cash together for a ticket to a rave at Donington park 😆 Had a lucky stroke a couple of years ago buying an old '64 mini pretty much blind in South Africa - didn't look great flat on its hydrolastic in the blurry photo covered in dust - turns out it was pulled out of an old ladies garage who had passed away - she owned it from new, it had 36000 miles on the clock, hadn't used it for over 30 years and was still on it's original tyres! Luckily someone had shellaced the entire underside, brakes, suspension etc and underneath the crust it was like it had just rolled out of the factory. One 2p size piece of rust on the whole car. Pumped the suspension up, new exhaust and couple of bulbs and it passed an MoT! Did not want to sell that one 🙁

It's worth keeping an eye on ebay/facebook marketplace etc for phenolic/buffalo/hexaboard, excess, old stock or damaged sheets come up quite often.

I set mine in the middle, was still stiff enough to punch a hole through the axle mount on the serrengeti access road, though after twidling with them I can't say I really noticed much difference between one setting and another. I'd be tempted to go softest with a twin shock setup anyway though, they damp very well.

I wouldn't think it abnormal to get some cracking at that age, and I guess with specialist tyres like these with tall tread blocks there's always going to be some compromises - the cracking might be prevented if they used a softer compound, but then wear would accelerate and they'd be squirmy going round corners. At least the UV isn't so strong where you are, I have to keep the tyres on my african Defender covered up with thick uv resistant tarpaulin which turns to dust and has to be replaced every 6 months!

You might have damaged the old seals in the master when bleeding, and now you may have an airlock in the new master. Some masters need to be primed. Also you may need to do a full 4 wheel bleed if you haven't already.