pugwash

HI All, Last time i looked at roof tents, probably a decade ago, there were probably 4 worth having- James Baroud, Maggiolina, Hannibal and maybe thule or ARB Nowadays their seem to be hundreds of suppliers- mostly Chinese presumably? Whats worth buying? do you need to shell out £3k for something that is easy to use, long lasting and waterproof, or is there a sweet spot where you can save some money, but still find quality? Looking for views on both hard shell and soft cover tents! Thanks All, Puggy

Thanks All, Mike thank you, might take you up on that if i can't find anyone closer. Will drop Jon a line and see if he is willing to help!

Hi All, Just wondered if anyone with a home lathe would be able to help with a small project? i have 8 body mount pucks that i had made for a body lift- not sure what they are made of, but it looks to be the same material that after market suspension bushes are made of!). I've had them made too large at 50mm and need hem cutting down to 30mm and i can't get hold of the supplying company. Is there anyone not a million miles from Basingstoke/Newbury that would be willing to help? beer tokens/forum donations available of course. Many thanks, James

Thanks Old Chap Good to hear from you Thanks everyone else for your feedback too- really useful, glad i'm not the only one thinking that there might be a different option to KM3. I ran STT pros years ago and wasn't impressed (same as goodyear wrangler MT/R) - felt more like an AT than a true MT! But it looked liked the STT pattern had changed.... Thanks luvvers for the Wildpeak suggestion, i'll throw that into the ring too- i suspect it might come down to availability!

Thanks Luvvers- i'd discounted the wildpeaks as having an old school tread but maybe they need relooking at. Currently quite taken by Geolander G003 or Maxxis Bighorn 764 but can't find too many people using them......

Hi Peeps- first post in a while! been without a 4x4 for 8 years, but just bought one..... and it needs tyres Looking at Mud terrains- will be 60% road 40% off road (mainly because i hardly drive it anywhere on the road....) So which would you choose between: Cooper STT Pro BFG KM3 MT Maxxis Mt764 Grabber X3 Geolander G003 Ideally it would be relatively quiet on road, great in mud, rought sidewalls, great wear pattern Cost is a factor- i would normally go with the BFG KM3s, but they are VERY expensive compared to everything else. Also the really recent patters like the geolander also look great!

DirtyD's about right- the diff casings between cruisers and landrovers are about the same, but cruiser have hypoid diffs with the diff nose at the top of the case. the front half shafts and CVs in an 80 series are definitely stronger than rover stuff- there's not many rover CVs that will take a 2 tonne vehicle, nose down in a rocky ravine, on full lock, with 35" MTs, with the locker in, and a huge bootful of power in reverse- the cruiser has done it time and time again (and don'tforget the engine is a 4.2tdi so not exactly underpowered). And these are standard axles straight out of the factory. In the states you can also source all sorts of different ratios without trouble. They are in my opinion a better design than the rover axle in terms of layout of seals, size of stub axle, and strength of drive member- certainly they tend to have far fewer seized bolts, or rusty internals. Having said that, the locker isn't as positive as an air locker, the fronts of 80s don't like running in reverse (being hypoid and all that- hence they are weaker than the frankly mahoosive rear- not uncommon to have a set of diffs with the front diff with tripped teeth) and when parts do break you either end up with very very very cheap stuff which is only marginally better than the rover stuff or you end up having to buy longfields. To boot the cruiser axles seem to wear quicker than the rover stuff- certainly most cruisers will star to get clicking cvs at the 130-140k point (althouh they often go on to do 200k miles without breaking). having said all that, on a pound/strength analysis they are good value- with lockers, good strength, 4.11 ratios as standard and value for money parts (CVs and shafts excepted) they certainly aren't a bad choice. Oh and i just happen to have a spare pair of cruiser CVs if anyone needs a pair - as mentioned the front has a stripped crownwheel!

yo don't need a GPS Camera what you need is: that can record track data at a per second level One GPS unit One Camera with EXIF info One Laptop One clever piece of software basically you plug the GPS unit and the Camera into the laptop, and the laptop syncs the time of each of the three pieces of hardware to the nearest 1/10th of a second or so. you then just start the GPS unit to create a track. Then every time you take a photo, the camera records the exact time you took it. When you've finised for the day you re-sync the camera, GPS and laptop. The software pulls the GPS track along with the time stamped photos and compares the time to the GPS track to work out exactly where you were- it can then write the GPS data to the EXIF info. Its amamzingly simple in practice, and works really really well and is no more work then just normally downloading your photos from your camera. I used it with an in -car PC wihlst travelling and used the car GPS as the track recorder, but you can happily just a handheld portable GPS device in a pocket! once i get home i will see if i can find the piece of software!

will cost you a huge amount of money to keep one of these in fine fettle. has 6 injectors- at 10 years old they will all need replacing at some point (at least every person i know, including me, who has owned a 330d has had to do this), and this costs at least £190/injector. They should be considered consumable parts- and considering the pressure they run under thats not surprising! the turbo isn't lke an old 300tdi turbo, but a modern turbo under very high performance- mine lasted 80k miles over 160k miles and cost getting on to £700 to replace on each occasion. The engine on top will cost you a pretty penny just to purchase. As to the performance curve- for low speed work it might struggle- it wasn't very powerful low down, bt really came on boost strongly. Would work really well offroad attached to an auto, but you could struggle with a manual. Would be a great enginefor comp safari though as its small and reasonably light for so much power. They can of course be tuned to 260bhp odd. On the flip side it might be better value installing a TD5, with a variable boost turbo, a big intercooler and propane injection and you'll probably get similar power! I do know that the 4.2tdi as found in the landcruiser and nissan stuff can produce 320bhp with mahoosive intercooolers and a "bit" of a pump tweak.

I've used VHT caliper pain t from Frosts in the M-i-Laws oven She never found out- its no problem as long as you are careful with drips and clearing out the fumes a fan oven seems to help in this respect- but obviously reduce by a few degrees and a few minutes otherwise it'll burn.....

going to get in trouble for this- but its very rare to find a siezed thread on the cruiser and thats a 1993 vehicle. All of the bolts are pssivated fine thread M6, M8 or other metric with 12mm, 14mm and 17mm heads. is it down to thread, quality of metal, finishing, or something else?

the vast variety of bolt types you find on the same vehicle- a stage 1 v8 was the worst for this- had metric and imperial interspersed all over the place- oh and the fact that none of the bolts are fine thread so rust ridiculously quickly!

404 Axles can be picked up pretty cheap- last set (admittedly a few yeras ago) cost £250- that would give you 4 portal boxes to play with. NO idea if they would take the speed though- perhaps getting something cheap, then cryo-treated and REM finished.

Hey Ford Prefect parts for Stage 1 V8s are very very rare- you could be better of flogging the CVs and then buying some 252s

Holy **** what happened to all my formatting!