Night Train

The HAZ (heat affected zone), as has been mentioned, changes its metalugy slightly and this can cause it to be more likely to corrode. It is worth designing welded areas to be away from moisture traps especially where a coating or surface treatment can not be used. Turning welded seam pipe so that the weld seam isn't at the bottom where condensation could collect for instance would reduce the chance of the pipe corroding from the inside out along the seam. It is true that a good weld should be stronger then the parent metal but, again, that depends on the parent metal and how the HAZ has changed its properties. The weld may be stronger then the parent metal adjacent to the weld within the HAZ but may also be weaker then the original metal which may have had a heat treatment. Generally, if you weld two peices of metal plate together and then test its tensile strength the metal should fail in the HAZ area and not in the weld itself or elsewhere in the parent metal.

I used to have a rotary 3ph converter in my workshop in London and a huge abundance of 1ph and 3ph motors as we were repairing and selling them. Up here I still have a small stash of 1ph motors left over but no converter. It was easier to just change the motors in the machines I have, as they are belt driven, then to get another converter and start adding a 3ph supply to my workshop. It is bad enough that I have 240V and 110v without having to have 415V circuits as well. A converter is a more convenient way to go as a fresh start but given the stash of 1ph motors it was simpler to go that route for the first machine, then the second and then the third.

One of my employees, a while back, was stopped for non display of a tax disc. The disc holder had lost its stickiness and it fell off on to the seat while he was driving. He offered to put it back on the screen but was still fined as it wasn't on display at the time the police officer saw him. There was no doubt or dispute that his van was taxed but that wasn't the point. I always use the Post Office and take all my documents to make sure I have the disc in my hands before the month ends. I don't trust the DVLA or the Post Office to get it to me on time once they have my money.

I would be very cautious of helping but I probably would help in most cases. However, I would also take lots of before, during and after photos for my own security. I do this after any accident on the road that I am involved in, no matter how minor. Some years ago one of my electricians bumped a parked car with his van while getting out of a parking space. There was no damage and the owner of the car came out of the cafe and accepted that it was just a touch and no damage. My electrician headed off. A week or so later he got a summonds to court for hit and run. The other car had apparently been written off and the owner, and all his mates who happened to be in the cafe with him at the time, all claim to have seen my electrician smash the car to bits and then drive off. He had to pay up as he had no witnesses on his side and also ended up with points on his licence and his own insurance went up.

I buy waste oil based B100 currently for 99.9p a litre. I occasionally add SVO (out of date olive oil last time) if I have some waste oil of my own to get rid off. I got 76.3mpg coming home from work on Sunday in my Skoda Octavia 1.9TDi. Growing fuel crops is not a good thing as the amount of fuel oil we use would dominate British agriculture and reduce food production. We could buy in food from other countries but if they are all growing fuel crops to cash in on the market then there won't be much food from them either. The biggest problem is that the wealthy countries, with a high fuel demand, will buy fuel crops from poorer countries who have a low fuel demand. This makes the fuel crop more profitable for the poorer farmers and so they will grow fuel and not food. Those countries' population will then have a food shortages and correspondingly higher prices which the the population could not afford. The wealthy countries would then try selling GM high yield crops to the poorer countires to off set the reduced food output thus tying the poorer country to buying an expensive seed stock each planting season. This could be offset by selling the fuel crop to the wealthy countries at a lower price in return for the GM seed stock and the process will lead to fuel crops not having the economic benefit it had before. Food crops then become viable again but the poorer countries won't then be able to revert back to food production as they are caught in the GM crop cycle, which they can't afford to maintain due to reducing their fuel crop production. To make biofuels viable crops need to be grown primarily for food production and then the organic byproducts from that food production be used for fuel production. This would lead to smaller quantities of biofuel at a lower grade but that will be something that we need to find a way to engineer around. Whether or not you believe there is an environmental crisis one thing that can't be denied is that the supply of fossil fuel will run out and society will need to be preparing for that sooner rather then later or when it is too late. Electric drive is really good for off road driving, maximum torque at zero RPM and no gear changes needed.

I tend to but 3 phase industrial machinery too. I change the motor rather then mess about with 3 phase converters so that might be an option.

When I'm welding under a vehicle I tend to lie well over to one side and weld at arms length with sleeves tucked into the welding gauntlets. I look at the weld from the side to see any drips as they happen. I also weld in short bursts to prevent excessive heat. If I am stick welding I will use the end of the welding rod to push the weld back up if it starts to drip.

M8x1.25x40 = metric, 8mm diameter thread, with 1.25 threads per mm, with 40mm of length below the bolt head. Machine screws are fully threaded to the base of the bolt head, Bolts have a plain unthreaded section. Don't forget that you will also need to know the tensile strength of the bolt, and nut, so that you are not replacing a strong bolt with a weak one. The bolt will have a number on the head. The standard high tensile bolt would have 8.8 on it for example and a cap screw (one that has a cylindrical head that takes an allen key) would be 12.2 I think and so stronger. Unmarked bolts could be half the strength of a high tensile bolt and will stretch and break. As spares I had boxes of M6, M8, M10 and M12 bolts at lengths from 20mm up to 70mm depending on size. I also had plain nuts and nyloc nuts and a range of washers. I also had lots of brass M4 and M5 machine screws with washers and nuts for electrical bodges. All this is good for emergencies and setting up but some bolts should be the proper type, for brakes, suspension and steering for example. Also putting M8 bolts on a prop shaft doesn't work even in an emergency, they break and fall off within a few miles leaving your prop to whip round breaking things and itself.

Very large diesel engines are started using compressed air See here. Also blank gunpowder cartridges were used to as starters in the same manner, blasting the expanding hot gases into the cylinders. They were called Coffman starters. In the original film 'Flight Of The Pheonix' The crashed plane was restarted using Coffman cartridges. It's not such a daft idea but as has been said it takes more energy to make the compressed air then you would get out of the engine.

I'm trying to change jobs to remove the 70mile round trip each day. Even in a car it is starting to smart a bit when I have to fill up. I am using B100 from a local supplier at the moment but even that has gone up to 99.9p a litre.

I don't think a pair of wheels loose on a pole would roll very well or very securely. You may be better off going to a scrap yard and getting hold of the back axle off a transit or similar complete with twin wheels and then removing any parts you don't need. Basically, keep the wheels, hubs and stub axles and return the rest. Then make an adaptor and fit the transit stub axles to your existing axle to replace the original stub axles and rebuild with twin wheels.

If your rotary switch was double pole then you could have the feed to the in/out switches and then from there to the rotary selector switch. The current can then be fed from each pole of the rotary switch to each pair of relays.

Just found this on a Canadian forum. It's a FourCross, an off road wheel chair for both abled and disabled users. Looks great fun.

I wouldn't just extend the the studs as the outer wheel will not have any location to keep it central to the inner wheel or for it to take any load. You could weld on location tabs or a ring around the rim of the inner wheel to locate the outer and then use 'long studs' to pull them together but it won't be good because studs won't like being extended and the tyres would be rubbing sidewalls and that isn't good. The way it was done on the Thornycroft Antar heavy truck was to have a large diameter tube that had a flange at one end that was bolted on to the inner wheel (you can use slightly extended studs for this or bolt it to another part of the wheel that might be safe to have holes in it) and on the outer end held studs for the outer wheel. I don't really like the idea of extended studs though, not sure why.

He places the age at 1959 so it must be a S2 underneath all that, with a coil spring conversion, some updated body work and interior and later replacement running gear. However, he spoils it by calling it a Defender which it cannot be if it is 1959. Fisherman's knife springs to mind though.

You could get some 'Mini' stub axles and bolt them to each end of a length of steel box. The box can then be bolted to the existing axle hub so that you have a walking beam that looks like a twin axle set up. If you are determined to off set the track then you can do that with the box section and some welding of have one stub axle facing inwards and the other facing outwards if there is clearance. You could have four wheels per side with stub axles facing in and out at each end of the walking beam. This could be done with mini hubs or you can go cheap skate and use wheel barrow type boat launch wheels.

If it is beach use only then I would get a load of cheap wheels, the bushed ones that are used for boat launchers and wheel barrows and bolt them on to the chassis of the trailer. I think they are 20mm or 25mm bore. I made up a trolley for moving stone with a couple held on with M20 bolts to a frame. You could have a number of them behind and in front of the true axle and slightly off the ground so it is still able to turn on hard ground but will spread the weight on the soft stuff. My personal route would be to fit wide twin tyres, on twin axles if needed.

IIRC the reg can be older then the vehicle but not younger so that plate should be ok. He could do well selling the plate seperately, if I bought the vehicle I would sell the plate.

Good one. That's the way we were shown to do it at college and then it was checked with the proper equipment to see that we did it right. It does rely on the front and rear axle track to be the same though so no good for twin wheel transits etc. Also we had to be aware of independent rear suspension as some might toe out a touch to allow for straightening up under drive. Doing this is also a good opportunity to measure your wheel base each side to make sur there is no chassis twist or other misalignment first.

Years ago there were some big, ribbed, bolt on buckets (think they were called cogs) that could be used on Land Rover sized wheels. Perhaps finding, or making, something like this would help.

You could bolt on a couple of small wheels behind the main axle that are off the ground and then make up a set of conveyor belt tracks to go around them to make a tracked trailer.

Howabout welding some lugs on the trailer wheel rims and making a set of bolt on twin wheels? You can, if you have an area of clear chassis, U bolt on a second axle. The best way to do this would be to look on ebay for a trailer axle of the right size and carry it on the trailer until it is needed. They turn up from time to time with a caravan chassis attached to it.

You can have a momentry switch latch a relay with a push and then the next momentry switch will unlatch the first and latch a second and so on. However, can you say if the switches are: a ) single pole, double pole, two way, etc so the best use of the switch can be made b ) possible to be changed for latching switches as this would make things easier I have a momentry switch on my gear stick for reversing flood lights. Only when reverse is selected will the momentry switch work and latch a relay to light the floods if pressed. When I come out of reverse the floods switch off and the relay unlatches. Re selecting reverse will not switch on the floods until the momentary switch is pressed again. It uses two relays to make this one operation work. Yours could be done with two relays per winch switch and, I think they will need to be double pole to allow for the rocker control.

All good reasons not to run wheels inside out. However, I am sure I saw somewhere some (probably American) 8 spokes that were designed to be run eitherway round. The holes were coned both sides and the centre was flanged to allow springing in either direction. I think it had a slight lip on both sides of the centre so it would spring tight on the nuts either side. I can't remember what they did with the valve hole. Maybe it was just for safer off road play to get the wider track. Then again I could have imagined it all.

I use deWalt battery tools and Bosch 240v at the moment. The Bosch were all bought new 20 years ago and still going strong the deWalt were second hand 15 years ago. All still going strong. The deWalt batteries have been rebuilt a couple of times but no problems. I use both 12v and 14.4v with a smart charger. I have also tried the B&Q Pro range and found the little discontinued trim saw so good as a tool that I converted it to take a 12v deWalt battery. The Pro 18v circular saw was rubbish. I also have a little discontinued Pro 190mm slidig mitre saw and that is excellent. I did manage to break a couple of teeth off the main gear wheel though through abuse (using it to cut a cove into a lump of wood) and spares are not available so I welded new teeth on to it and it is fine now. My dad uses Makita a lot and swears by them over deWalt as he repairs mine and hasn't had to with the Makita. Having said that he doesn't work his as hard as I do with mine. I also have a Hitachi nibbler which has been great but doesn't get used much and some really old Black and Decker alloy body drills that are best part of 30 years old. I don't use the 12v tools powered from teh car but I do have an inverter for battery charging and running the 240v tools.