Jocklandjohn

Just had a look - wow - what a flexible material. One thing not immediately obvious (to me) from looking at various videos - so far all the wheels running on the tracks are in the horizontal plane, is it possible to reorientate to the vertical? Or is the load bearing capacity so high that the H orientation has the capability (depending on wheel type?)? I found ASL (Amber Spyglass) who stock it but unhelpfully they don't have images of much of the stuff they sell so really hard to figure it out 'visually'. Any idea?

Well I was unaware of that treasure trove of stuff! Thanks for the heads up - will stick my head into it and see what I can unearth, but that looks really interesting. Who knew!

Thanks for thinking of me anyway! Dimensions are critical and the stuff I've linked to might just be wide enough/small enough to fit the gap I have available (out of all the stuff I've been looking at). Need to do some serious measuring, I've taken the fabric sides off yesterday so I can see in the gap properly, so a wee bit of measuring and scribbling is on the cards!

Back on the lifting mechanism again and have an idea and wonder if anyone can see any obvious flaws in it. The idea that lo fi kindly drew in his CAD software is the route I'm exploring (bottom one) which is an elaboration of the pic I posted further up the post. My main problem is I have no proper engineering kit to fabricate anything complicated, so as I did with my lifting roof I'm being creative with commercially available stuff. What I've been looking for is an industrial track I can use to allow the lower end of the lifting strut to roll along - the track preventing it from being pushed sideways by the linear actuator. I had a brainwave and looked at hanging door track and hey presto came across this which is the correct height to fit the space I have, is not too expensive, and seems robust enough. Basically I screw the hanging track 'upside down' onto the lower section of the roof, insert wheeled hanger and make a simple strut to lift and fastening for the end of my linear actuator. The roof weight is around 100kg, linear actuators 1500N push/pull each (x 2) and track/wheels rated for 75kg (in hanging mode). Wheeled bracket usefully has a threaded centre to allow me to connect to, and I'll have to come up with some form of metal 'shoulder' designed into it to straddle the casting (to prevent it rotating. The bracket should also be able to incorporate the 'flying wedge' idea lo fi came up with so I get that initial lift in the horizontal plane to take some of the pressure of the initial lift. Thoughts?

I'd a problem thats worth being aware of - had a LR Original Parts spindle and a Bearmach one - all hunky dory running off an old LR genuine rack. I changed the rack for a new one (Britpart) and it would not slide into the LR spindle box. It worked ok on the Bearmach one but there was some incompatibility with the LR one. I reverted to the Genuine parts and it fitted fine. Best to test all this before you get it into the dash void as its a pita to pull out again.

I've got them too. Rear (flood) one is pretty tatty as the black finish has rusted off but the light is stellar and can scare bumper-huggers with a short blip. I put four on the front too, two spot and two flood, but sadly the two floods have succumbed to water ingress and have got a tad hiccupy so were removed. They seem good value, are plenty bright, but an added fitting precaution would be a smear of clear silicone around the edges to prevent water entry.

Aha - so they've known about the problem for a decade and done nothing!

Thats interesting - looks like a proper AirlIft thing. One of their UK agents did say a fix was being worked on so maybe thats it.

If you DO go down this route you might find this thread of interest and some use:

I did this - works perfectly. What I saved by NOT buying fancy shocks (and instead using standard Armstrong ones) I spent on Airlift bags. LR springs all round - rides great, and the airbags allow great flexibility.

I'm going to re-suggest the IR gun so you can get an accurate idea of the engine temp and can then relate that to the readings you're seeing. For what little they cost its well worth it. Any other faffing about without a good idea of actual running temp is chasing your tail to be honest.

Well some success! The front window wash motor power feed is the one that was not working, I established that by putting a new local earth from the motor to chassis in the front wing. Bingo - it now works. However easy the cure seems in retrospect, it was puzzling because there are two relays on that circuit and triggering different items and some strange combination of wiring had got both relays knocked out and blown a fuse. One relay is used to trigger all the auxiliary stuff off a separate fuse board - dash gauges, aux interior lights, fan etc -and the other relay triggereing a set of roof spots all of which had ceased to function. Once I re-established the earth at the washer motor it all came back on, relay clicked in and everything works. I still have not figured out where the missing earth that caused this is lurking nor how it got messed up, although given the wiring its possible the culprit is the folks who renovated the van a decade ago and who did some seriously dodgy stuff with the loom which I am slowly unearthing as time goes by. So thanks all for the help - the wiring diagram was particulalry useful.

Thanks for doing those for me - thats really helpful!

Ok thanks Ralph. Whats the actual set up from the ignition to the fuse holders - does a wire from the ignition switch a relay to activate them?

Well I removed the earth straps from gearbox and batteries to chassis and gave a good scrub, also the small bulkhead one beside the steeering column. Appears to have made no difference. I messed about with the multimeter and I have to say the internal shenanigans has got me stumped. Here are some of the anomalies: The windscreen wash motor, which started all this, apparently wont work because its lost its earth. Earthing the pump locally at the front inner wing will allow it to work. So far so good. I could do that but.... The Auxiliary Fuse Board I installed with several items running off it is switched through an ignition-dependent relay (using an ignition fed supply from the now redundant rear window wash power wire) and its now NOT switching on. Also, a pair of relays triggering other items, both of which were also using that rear wash/wipe power feed are not working either. Reconnecting ALL of them to a new 12V supply WILL get them to function. So that points to some problem with the rear wash wipe power supply or its earth. But its behaving oddly. Its the ONLY fuse in the bulkhead fuse holder that shows 12V across it! Despite not energising any of the attached relays as mentioned above, it shows 12V when the meter is across the fuse. However with the meter across any of the other fuses in the two strips there's no 12v (although all the individual stuff is working ok). BUT if I meter across two separate fuses - one from the left fuse strip and one from the right fuse strip I CAN get 12V. If I remove a fuse (eg I tried this with the indicators - pulled both L and R side the fuses out) - the indicators still work. That seems really weird? As far as I can recall when I started trying to track down the washer issue ALL the other auxiliary stuff thats ignition-relay-triggered on my additional fuse board was working fine (although I could be wrong). Only thing Ilve done I can think of is when I decided to run two new wires through the dash to replace the wash motor wires I poked a very thin plastic rod through to fish the wires back with. Is it possible I've pulled something off in the dash wiring behind the steering wheel thats created this issue? Is there any specifc wires in the main loom that are in there that mght cause this if easily diconnected/broken? Any suggestions whats going on with the fuse holders that they only show 12V across 2 fuses and not one? Thats got me baffled.