Night Train

Just use a standard black can or jerry can with this sticker on it. No mistaking it then.

I suppose the method will depend on the size of the cable and the crimp. I have a 175A Anderson plug in the back of my car for a little 3000lb winch. The cables are only 25mm and so nowhere near big enough to crimp. I just soldered the cable to the inside of the crimp tube. The tube was so big in relation to the cable that I could get the iron in there too and soldered the cable neatly to the inside face.

Cig sockets are variable. I got a cheap one from Ebay that arrived with a label saying not suitable for cigarette lighters! Fortunately it was only going to supply a satnav charger.

Same for the spinny ends of the axle when one guy is looking closely at the CV joint and the other is steering the axle. Could have someone's eye out!

This thread reminds me of when I attended a Land Rover club trial in the early 90's. One chap turned up in a standard 2wd transit van and completed every section, albeit with a bit of extra shunting.

The thing with any towing attachment is to check that it is secure by whatever means is suitable before driving off. I have seen many people who hook a trailer onto a 50mm ball, retract the jockey wheel etc and drive off. I always use the jockey wheel to jack the hitch upwards to make sure that it doesn't pull off the ball. You could (but perhaps shouldn't go that far) jack the back wheels of a car off the ground doing that and the ball should stay in the hitch.

I suppose technically you would have one to apply the trailer brakes should the hitch, or hitch bolts, fail. The breakaway cable would then need to be attached to something other then the hitch for that security. On a trailer of up to 750kg MAM a cable or chain that prevents a detached trailer coupling from hitting the ground while still attached to the towing vehicle would be fine. I would too but a NATO hitch looks odd and sticks out too far behind my car! I have tried. It wouldn't be approved either as my car is too young.

See here on the NTTA site for the European type Approval for tow hitches. See here on the NTTA site for the vehicle types.

I bought a 5l plant sprayer specifically for pumping gear oil uphill to my gear and transfer boxes back in '89. Lasted years of use. It is probably still knocking about in my 'shed' somewhere. Gear oil was hard to pump. I used to pump up the pressure and then leave it filling while I went to have a cuppa. Sometimes had time for cake as well before it needed shutting off. I put an old plumbing valve on it to shut off the flow quickly.

Yep, I took the oil with me and did a mix in the chainsaw tank. I since 'inherited' the saw so any problems would be mine now.

When driving a Series Land Rover or an MGB I was always stopping and helping or being helped. It seemed like everyone was a friend and wanted to help out. Driving other cars didn't get the same friendliness. Quite a few times I sold the contents of my jerry can at cost to drivers who had run out. The most recent bit of generosity I experienced though was when I borrowed a chain saw to cut a bit of wood and it ran out of petrol. Not having a petrol can at the time I decided to take the chain saw to the local petrol station. I asked a chap who was about to fill his car if he could fill the chainsaw and I'll pay him the cost on the pump. He did and then refused to take any money.

I've built a few trailers in my time. I currently have a box trailer made from a couple of Series roofs and 3mm ali sheet on a 50x50x3mm box section chassis. It is 400kg unladen and 1300kg MGM. The inside is fully carpeted for moving furniture. I also have an extending trailer that is made from two pallet crates on a 60x60x8mm angle iron chassis. It stretches from 2.4m to 4.5m so with overhang and a trailer board it can carry 7m length. It also grosses at 1300kg. Both were based on caravan suspension components with trailing wishbones, coil springs and dampers. The most important thing about making a trailer is to make sure that it is both safe and legal for the purpose. If you decide to use twin axles from a caravan for a car transporter you risk over loading an axle if you are climbing a kerb or if the trailer bed isn't level at all times. Twin or triple axles should really be load balancing to prevent overload of any one axle.

Could put the cubby box next to the passenger side door then! It can be extra deep if you use the seatbox space too!

I've recently done a load of double glazed units for both my workshop and a friend's recording studio. The trick was to get the glass really clean and then scrape it with a razor blade and soapy water to get all the bits off. My glazing was removed, as the beading was inside, and I did everything in the bath with a shower head streaming water and soapy water in the bath with the plug in. My firend's was done in situ as his windows were beaded on the outside and the galzing was glued to the frames. The method I used was to peal back one edge of the backing while keeping the film well soaked with soapy water from a plant sprayer and then to crease the backing leaving a couple of inches of film exposed. I then stuck the film to the top edge of the very soapy wet glass and squeegeed it flat and bubble free making sure it was in position. I then slowly pulled the backing downwards a couple of inches at a time and kept spraying the film and squeegeeing. If I got a bubble or crease I would carefully lift the film, before it is squeegeed as that makes it stick fast, and carefully reposition the film. Finally I would squeegee out any bubbles that have escaped my notice using a lot of pressure on the tip of the squeegee blade pushing it to the nearest edge. Any that absolutely refused to move were usually only 1-2mm across adn so I pricked them and squeegeed them away. I had the added complication that I was using two layers of 5% film so that the glazing is really dark and the second layer doesn't slip so well on the first layer of film. If you can remove the glass and put it in the bath, on a towel, then it is much easier to keep wet enough to do a good job. With curved glass you can stretch the film a little with a hair dryer to warm it but it is more then a little tricky.

Scary! I've not had that happen to me as yet, I spend too much time messing with my wheels and brakes to let them go unchecked for long. However, I did lose a wheel returning from a play at Bovington in the 6x6. Wet sand had wrecked the hub oil seal just before I left and trundelling down the motorway at 70mph I felt a rumbling wobble so I pulled over. I had a good look around and didn't see anything amiss so I felt all the hubs to see if any were warm. The nearside front hub was too hot to touch! I jacked up the axle and the wheel, drum and hub fell off. On inspection the bearings had ground themselves away. The wheel continued to run on the drive shaft until the shaft welded itself onto the stubaxle and the wheel twisted the rest of the hot shaft off. The only thing keeping the hub on the stub axle was the melted ridges of what was the bearing carriers. The AA took a bit of convincing of what I needed in terms of a recovery. I asked for a flatbead recovery with a single wheel dolly to go under the missing wheel. Eventually they found one, the recovery chap had never seen or used one before.

I used to have a pedal lock that was shaped like a steel box. The box was in two overlapping halves with cut outs for the pedals. The box was slipped over the brake and clutch and then the top slammed shut with a captive lock barrel that was inaccessible except by feel. It was very effective at completely enclosing the pedals. I also made a locking bar for the pedals on my S3. The gear stick snapped off one day so I made a new removable one. Removing it was one stage of the security, locking it behind the pedals was the second stage. The gear stick was secured to a socket adjacent to the accelerator and locked behind a steel plate next to the clutch. I made the gearstic out of 20mm pipe with a loose hardened steel rod inside. The transfer box lever was also locked in neutral.

A damper will just have oil that has to be forced through small holes. That means that if you lean on them for long enough they will eventually move their full length and stay where they are left. Gas assisted dampers have a gas inside that is compressed as a gas spring as well as the oil and little holes damping the movement. The pressure of the gas will dictate whether or not you have the weight to compress them. Without the oil they will 'bounce' like an undamped spring but if they are in good condition the two elements together can make them very hard to compress. Once you do manage to compress them they will return to full length under gas pressure. At least that is what it was like back in the 80's.

All cable has an electrical resistence. It increases with length so you would use a larger cross sectional area to make up for it. The volt drop is more noticable at lower voltages so it matters more at 12 volts. Once you have your 12 volts at the winch then the short runs of slightly smaller cable will surfice.

I doubt the weight of the plywood on the floor is causing the roll. It is really low down and not as heavy as any steel that may be higher up. The roll would be caused by the high centre of gravity and the roll centre of the suspension design. Up rating the suspension spring rate won't change that but adding an anti roll bar, or increasing the rate of the one you have, would do. If it were me I would probably not be thinking of removing the floor material. What ever you change it to, and the stuff used by Ifor Williams is good, will weigh just as much if you want it to be up to the job of being a working floor. Here is some for sale on Ebay in Scotland. Ask the seller to weigh a sheet if you want to know how much it weighs. If you are driving on an overland expedition then stuff will be bouncing on the floor and the impact strength of the floor will be important.

I don't know much about the Pug engine or its applications but might there be a variation in its tuning depending on its source and original application? Engines are sometimes detuned for commercial applications and the torque curve is different. Commercial applications may require a peak torque lower in the rev range resulting in lower power but a more tractable engine. In car applications the peak torque is higher up in the rev range with a correspondingly hight peak power. The peak torque and power being close together in the reve range results in a 'peaky' engine that requires closer ratio gearing and will have much less power and torque at low revs where it would be needed to shift a heavier vehicle off road. Land Rover engines of old have peak torque quite low down in its rev range relative to its peak power. Didn't give it much go but it would keep going albeit slowly.

I clicked on this to test my memory. Sadly it has failed the test with regards to the maths! I last did this experiment a quarter century ago and we were comparing the effects of temperature on the properties of the steel samples. Temperature had a large effect on the outcomes of the tests based on lab certified samples. Also we found that notches and surface damage due to corrosion also had an effect. The tests we did covered tensile stress through extension of the sample and also impact testing by placing the sample in a carrage and releasing a weighted 'axe' to impact it. We found that even with the lab certified samples there was variation.

May need the springs uprating a bit. I wonder what transmission one would need?

I know someone who chained their chassis down to a lorry sized trolley jack and jacked it up against the relay. Despite lots of WD40 and slow addition of pressure from the jack over a few days it didn't come out of the chassis tube. The chassis tube, however, did part company with the chassis with the relay still in it!

Well according to Western's thumbnail attachment the splines are sealed and so to me that means that they don't come apart or are not intended to come apart. I would then suspect that it is the wrong prop shaft.

I'd agree, if it wasn't a problem then leave it as it is. If you must change it then have you unscrewed the collar on the splines that stop the splines coming apart? If you have then sometimes 'shocking' it apart works. Push it as far in as it will go and then yank it really hard outwards. If the grease on the splines makes it difficult to slide it quickly enough to shock it then wash off the grease with some parrafin or light oil and regrease after it is reassembled.