Night Train

Mortice locks are more secure but if you have a fire then you are locked in your own home, if you leave the keys in the lock then it is no longer as secure. Personal safety is a big issue, as others have said, much better the car then a member of the household being attacked. I've been fortunate so far, only works vans have been taken when at work and only one break in and that was when I lived in London. I am still as careful as I can be though.

After a quick flick through it seems quite a good mag. I'm going to save it to read when I am in Wales without broadband or mobile next week. Look forward to the next one.

Yep, a simple process. I have had to legally get into so many houses in the course of my work in the past, bits of wire, parcel strapping, coat hangers and tiny bits of shaped hacksaw blades get through most things now and all the instructions are on Youtube.

Some locks are very easy to get past. Standard night latches (Yale type locks) are very easy. The Euro lock barrels used in uPVC doors and multipoint locking systems are even easier. I always used to suggest to people to try and break into their own homes if they were locked out and many found it surprisingly easy especially with a few hints. I use mortice locks and keep my house and car keys with me in the bed room at night. It is very easy to poke a 'fishing' rod through the letter box to hook house or car keys off a hall table for breaking in.

When burning wood the flames are caused by the flamable gasses coming off the hot wood (off gassing). It is more efficient to burn wood quickly, with a high draft to make sure all the gasses are burnt as well as the wood itself. If you allow a wood fire to be damped down by slowing the draft then the gasses given off (which is most of the fuel in a wood fire) goes up the chimney unburnt. The most effective wood burners are batch burners. They burn logs or wood chips (biomass) very quickly and efficiently with a lot of flame and transfer that heat to a heat store (usually a water tank) to be used as required later. In a domestic installation it may only need to do a half hour burn in the morning and that will provide the heat and hot water for the whole house for the day if the heat store is sufficiently insulated.

I saw, on Grand Designs recently, a white cube house that was painted with a commercial finish that was smooth and stayed clean. The presenter had a sample panel of the paint and was dunking it in and out of a pot of thick mud. None of the mud stuck to the paint and it was as clean after the mud as before. Perhaps this isn't the effect you are after though.

I found on YouTube that might help about the rods. There are others in the series about welding that seem quite useful.

For basic mild steel welding it isn't so much the rods being warm as the coating being dry. Rods have various types of flux around them for different types of welding, some are good for flat welding only while others are good for vertical or upside down welding. It also varies for the types of steel you want to weld. But they all absorb moisture and their sheilding properties then break down and the misture can cause porosity in the weld. Rods left on a damp garage floor might even start to corrode I think and that will then mess up the weld by putting impurities in the weld. In a cold garage they could suffer from condensation. I have been told that rods that have got wet can be put in the oven to dry them off before storage but I've not tried that. I was always told to keep them dry by keeping them warm, and dry. I know that some specialist pressure tank and pipe welders keep their rods in an oven and only remove a few at a time and I think for that sort of welding heated rods are better.

Wouldn't you get electrolitic action between the copper and aluminium?

I built my 6x6 entirely with a £50 arc welder. I saved my mig for thin sheet stuff when I was repairing the works vans. There isn't anything wrong with a cheap arc and it can be a very capable bit of kit, bog standard and nothing to go wrong. The one I still have has a cheap rod holder that just releases the rod ends at a push of a button and I have a bag of assorted mild steel rods from 2mm to 5mm. It takes practice to get the arc started and for learners it helps to have a higher current to get the hang of the action of striking an arc. I can weld on very low current now and can weld 1.2mm sheet, albeit slowly, in short steps and waiting for the sheet to cool each time. I wouldn't recommend it though as it is a waste of time, stick to welding thicker stuff. I got around the short duty cycle by cutting a big hole on the back of the welder casing and fitting a fan connected to the power switch. It sucks the heat out really quickly and I have never had it cut out on me. It took me a while to learn to weld vertically at first but then took a 1 year course at college and learnt to weld pressure pipes in situ, ie: all the way around, flat, downwards, upside down, and upwards using arc, mig, tig and gas. I don't have a mig anymore though I do still have the gas regulator and adaptor for the big gas bottles. If you do get an arc welder make sure you keep your rods in a warm dry place, or stick them on a hot radiator a day before use to drive out any dampness.

I would think he means the threaded ali bar rather then the swing arm. Once it is screwed in cut off a few mm proud and then peen the end over like a rivet and then file down for polishing. This will close up any gaps in the edge of the hole where the thread is.

Send him to the Centre For Alternative Technology where he will have a great time with similarly minded people. I am there myself on the Environmental Architecture MSc course.

I've seen sheers like that handle 10mm bar and crop bits of 4-5mm plate. I guess it depends on the size of the sheer though.

I have recently started using B100 in my Skoda Octavia. It has done 120,000 miles in 6 years and was returning a nice healthy 60-65mpg on long runs. With the B100 I have noticed more noise and a drop in power and increased fuel consumption to around 50-55mpg. I am only on my second tank full so I will give it a fair run and then get it serviced to see what shows up. I will then go back to mineral diesel to see what happens and if I get the power and economy back. Depending on what I find I will then decide what I stick with. The B100 is costing me 95p/litre and is slightly less financially viable at this loss of economy. Also, according to a recent report in the Guardian it isn't much greener then good quality mineral diesel. I thought about Straight Veg Oil (SVO) but the glycerin in it plasticises at high temperatures and can gunge up the pistons, cylinders, valves and injectors. As I use the car everyday to earn a living I didn't want that risk.

Both are really rusty and needs a good clean up. I was tempted by then in classifieds but they are too far away. The guillotine is a sheer for cutting steel bar or maybe even short lengths of steel plate or sheet, the other is wheel for stretching steel sheet to induce a curve into them. The rollers on then need to be really smooth and polished otherwise they will just roll dents into the sheet. The wheels have a curved profile to them to ease the the sheet thinner where the wheels roll, this makes the sheet spread in a controlled way and so the sheet gets a little curve in it. Depending on how rusty the wheels are they may be beyond saving but new ones could be made on a lathe. I would recommend that they be remachined anyway to get the cleanest surface for use.

I guess I could say something too. In members vehicles you will see the 6x6 scammell lookalike Land Rover I built many years ago. It was built on the public road with busy traffic and no shelter and with only a cheap £50 arc welder and a friend with some high quality rods and decades of welding experience for the difficult bits. I needed deadlines to keep the build going and mine was getting an MOT and tax disc each year so I could keep it on the public road. It took three years. Year 1: Modify the front end body work and install a Ford York 6cyl 3.6l diesel engine and 5speed ZF gear box. Build a new clutch pedel to operate the cable clutch. Get all the fuel, exhaust and electrics working. Mate up the ZF box to the transfer box. Strip off the Safari body work and build a pick up bed. Make an extended truck cab from scratch and adjust the roof and doors to add 8" to the width of the back of the cab. Refit electric winch to front. Get it MOT, insure and taxed for another year. Year 2: Strip off the rear suspension, buy three more Sailsbury axles and cut and shut to make two extra wide axles. Design and build all the suspension components and chassis cross members for the rear bogie. Design and build a three speed transfer box with three axle drives and a PTO. Install the transfer box and rear suspension. Design the propshaft routes, dog clutches and hand brake assembly and then make and install. Modify all the braking system for the six wheel drive. Change the fuel system again to place lorry tank in load bed. MOT, insure and tax for another year. Year 3: Strip off the front suspension, cut away the front of the chassis and rebuild with a transverse leaf mounting on a new cross member. Cut and rebuild the front axle to match the width of the rear axles. Sort out the mounting of the suspension and drive shafts. Design the steering to reduce bump steer by fitting an Audi power streering rack to the side of the chassis under the drivers seat. Rebuild all the steering shafts to reach the rack. Rewire the whole vehicle and build a recovery crane to fit in the rear. Rebuild front winch mounting and install PTO winch in the rear. MOT, insure and tax for another year. To keep a build moving you do need to have a deadlines that are reasonable and achievable. Do it one task at a time and get that task done so that you can feel good for doing it. You don't need much equipment, a small generator and stick welder can work wonders if you know what you are doing. Alternatively get a gas set. You can prepare a whole load of bits for welding and then hire a petrol or diesel site welding set and just get it all done in a weekend. Then get the next load ready for another weekend. All the rest of the stuff can be done with battery tools. Get an inverter for your car and have 240v to recharge batteries with and to run some smaller 240v tools. I have a 600watt (800watt peak) inverter in the back of my car now. Great for power tools as well as running laptops and printers and charging batteries. Another way to get the build moving again is to get a friend involved, someone who doesn't have a project of their own and wants to work with you on yours, someone who may have skills you need or who you can teach skills to. Or someone with their own project and you both work on each others alternately to keep the interst up. I hope you get your enthusiasm back again. Good luck with it.

I found this about the powered trailer system.

Where possible I refrained from spending silly money on special tools if I was able to make one up from parts. Often the tools only needed to work a handful of times and so effort need not be wasted in making it pretty or long lasting.

Looks like you should be able to drift that off if all was ok with it. If you use a small cold chisel you could end up chiseling the castlations off the nut. Better to use something softer like a mild steel bar with a blunt end or a piece of brass bar. But if it is that tight then you may need to make up something to help. You could carefully grind a piece of steel tube or a spare socket to fit it but be careful to get the fit right to spread the load on to all the castlations or the drive pegs will break off one by one on the socket. Heat would help free it if you have access to a blow torch or similar. If all else fails chisel it to split it open and then drift it round. You will need to be careful not to damage the threads so that a new one can be fitted.

Someone did this many years ago. It was featured in a magazine as a pair of coil sprung 101's. I think one was all RR underneath while the other was RR axles and coils on the 101 chassis. One of the giveaways, apart from the coils, from conventional 101's were the 5 stud wheels. I can't remember when that was though.

Hmmm, very true. I was hoping to find a way not to have more then one vehicle in bits on the drive though. Perhaps I may not have a choice.

I really liked the idea of the powered trailer but what it really needed was a method of slowing down the drive to the trailer in proportion to the sharpness of the corner being taken to prevent a 'push' over. The easiest way would be to use a hydraulic drive that was controlled by the articulation of the tow hitch and also the amount of pull/push it experiences. That way it reduces its power if it is cornering and the power is applied forwards when the hitch experiences a pull and backwards when the hitch experiences a push for braking and reversing.

This may need to be in the classifieds so it may need moving please. I have had an offer that is making me think about a project to work on. I'm not sure if this will be a vapour build or a real one as I also have two jobs, an MSc course and a house renovation to deal with as well. I was just wondering roughly how much I would need to spend to get a good running 200 or 300 tdi with an auto box and transfer box and all the bits needed to make it run for transplanting? My ideal starting point would be a six pot diesel with an auto but it would need to big, modern and clean running as well as high reving but I figured that this would be beyond my means unless anyone has a better suggestion. Priorities for an ideal engine would be clean running, economic, designed for torque rather then power, not electronic, cheap source of spares, hydraulic engine mounted pump for steering and winches, cheap. Has anyone thought of using, or has any experience of, electric traction motors for vehicles? Thank you.

My trailer is a little nose down when unladen and level when loaded with the correct nose weight. It is only a single axle trailer though. I did once move it a short distance with slightly negative nose weight once and it was really, really scary. Fortunately it was only a few hundred yards on a private road.

The one on the back of my Skoda Octavia is 18" to the top of the ball if it helps.