Night Train

What's a Freelander? I'm old school! I don't know tbh, I've never been very interested in that end of the market. The last time I looked at light weight stuff it was Baja VW sand rails of the 70's, since then it has been LWB Land Rovers upwards (with the odd racing MGB thrown in).

You would if the suspension arms are equal length but if the upper arms are shorter then the lower arms then it has the effect of changing the camber of the wheel to keep the track at the ground contact patch almost the same. The overall geometry can be adjusted to minimise this.

Is that thing driven by chains or gears, Fridge?

Forget diffs, springs and dampers. What you need is this!

I 'found' some 3mm ali sheet, that used to be a construction hoarding sign, in a skip. It was 4 8'x4' sheets with sticky back plastic on one side. The plastic was easy to remove, with a little heat on the back side of the sheet it pealed away easily. I used direct sunlight on some sheets and then a hot air gun when the sun retired for the night. If you know of any construction sites that are coming to a close you might be able to 'acquire' some that way.

Unless you are thinking of having other three phase kit then you would be better off just getting a replacement single phase motor. Machine Mart will have something off the shelf but you can probably find cheaper.

Buy a copy of Classic and Vintage Commercial vehicle magazine and look in the ads for a Scammell Explorer and then then nick the axles and suspension from it. Drill a few lightening holes in strategic places and you should be able to get your unsprung weight down to about 3 1/3 tons. You will have the added advantage of being able to fit some really big rubber!

The steering lock was fine when I had it, pretty much the same turning circle as a standard 109. I found that it favoured scrubbing the rear axle in tight turns on tarmac as it was driven by the middle axle. I used to lean outside the door and hang over the edge to look underneath when parking up to cars and could see what the wheels were doing. I also used to belt around in London with it so it had to be easy to park too. It did tail slide nicely at speed as well! It would be good to see what it would be capable of with triple diff locks.

I tend to ignore where people are until it matters so I am all for having some sort of location shown. It did take me a while after I joined to find all the account/control panel bits to make changes and add location and stuff. Anyway, I am here in Manchester but originally from London and now travel all over for work sometimes. My Dad accidently went to Liverpool too when he came up to visit. He took the wrong slip road at J21a of the M6 and kept going and going and going...

I am really impressed both by the effort and the appearance of the finished machining. I must admit that I didn't have the machining equipment when I built my 6x6 and used the skills of a local machine shop for some turning and welded mild steel plate for everything else. Not pretty and not light weight but it was cheap and it worked. Good luck with it, I am looking forward to the finished pictures.

Ipods are solid state or hard drive MP3 players made by Apple. They have loads of storage and you can download music from the internet from Itunes. I use a fairly cheap Sony MP3 player, the NW-E407. It is old but holds 600 tracks (1 gigabyte capacity), lasts 50 hours on one charge and is only the size of a small cig lighter. I will get a newer one sometime as I have lost the software for it. Anyhow, I made a descrete clip for it on the edge of the dashboard that holds it where I can both see the display and adjust the controls easily. It is plugged into a little FM transmitter which is tucked away in the dash and powered by a cig lighter socket. I set the transmitter to a frequency that isn't used for radio in my area and then tuned a radio preset to pick it up. The transmitter is automatic as it will switch off if it dosen't get any audio signal but switches on again when it does. The audio lead is tucked into the dash panels and reappears where the clip for the Sony is for plugging in so the installation is reall neat. When I want to listen to my own music I just press play on the Sony and the appropriate preset on the radio and there it is. One day I will try a convoy and see if vehicles in front and behind can also listen to my music by tuning in to the same frequency.

I feel like a kid in a sweet shop reading through that lot.

Being a retired sparky I seem to remember that the crimp tools I used were designed to compress the crimp all the way around its circumference rather then just squashing it as you would with a vice or pliers. It did this by having semicircular (or sometimes hexagonal) jaws that were smaller then the natural diameter of the crimp. In others the jaws also had a bump to put a depression into the side of the crimp while preventing the crimp from spreading under pressure. For best electrical contact the crimp should be properly sized to the conductor area or additional strands of cable added to make up the size. The electro-mechanical strength of the crimp is in fully consolidating the strands of the conductor together along with the bore of the crimp so the fit needs to be good to start with. Soldering would work almost as well so long as the strands of the conductor are fully tinned when soldered to the crimp. I would say that if the crimp was heated and the conductor plunged in then the solder may cool before it is able to fully coat all the strands especially in the centre of the conductor. If you want to make vice mounted crimp jaws then you could get two bits of steel about 6-10 mm thick in the vice jaws clamped edge to edge and then drill a hole, slightly smaller then the outside diameter of the crimp by maybe 1mm, through the steel where they meet so that you get two matching semicircles. If you needed these to be tighter then space the two bits of steel before drilling so the hole would be flattened in one axis when the spacer is removed. With these fitted to removable vice jaws you would be able to crimp accurately each time. If required a small stud could be made on one of the semicircles to indent the crimp. This could be a spot of weld or a ball bearing in a small drilling or similar.

I just checked my research, it doesn't say what method the service brakes can or can't use but it does say that the parking brake must not use hydraulic, pneumatic or electrical means to hold them on. Also a Disco's brakes would be servo operated and, on a trailer, if it still needs a servo to achive the 50% braking effort then there needs to be a means of maintaining that servo assistance if it fails from the towing vehicle. This makes it difficult to use a Disco axle as it won't have any other means of braking. I found the same links as madmatt. It is simpler to use a mechanical service and parking brake that is hydraulically damped, over run and auto reverse to the maximum weight of the trailer. Note that the braking requirements change depending on the age of manufacture. That may influence you between building from scratch and modifying an old Sankey.

Start with working out just how much capacity you need for the trailer, both volume and weight, and from there you can see what you need to achieve. Think about where you need to be able to access stuff as well as you don't want to unload everything to get the one thing you use most just because it only fits there in the pile. Lots of compartments may be better then one big box for instance. If you are building or adapting anything then you can make the best of the space with different access points. You can also decide on the maximum length, width and height that you can work to. If all this fits a Sankey then that is a good point to start from. If not then you can determine whether it is best to build from scratch or modify a Sankey. Whichever way you go, keeping to standard Land Rover parts, where you can, would make spares easier, especially if they are the same as the towing vehicle. One problem with using a Disco for its brakes is that they are hydraulic and currently I am sure that UK regs won't allow hydraulic trailer brakes. They will need to be rod or cable operated. I don't know if this is the same elsewhere. Whatever else you save on you really want to make sure that the brakes are the best.

That's got to win, Boothy, the longest I've driven, sort of, is doing a show where I towed 30 assorted Land Rovers in a line with my S3 2 1/4 petrol 109 safari around the show ground. I must scan in some photos some time.

Lottery win would see me in a 1928 4 1/2 litre Blower Bentley.

Inside a vehicle the metal work and current carrying cables distort the magnetic field causing all sorts of problems. Vehicle compasses should have a couple of magnetic adjusters to fine tune the direction the needle points at and these should be set while the vehicle is running in its normal condition. It is easiest if the vehicle is parked facing north before adjusting.

Lego isn't that easy to scale with, Bill, I had to do something to support the top of the winch. Also, before you mention it, I know it doesn't have a split screen, Lego don't make one. I am a 'Lego purist' I only use standard bricks.

There's nothing wrong with only having Lego, so long as it is Lego Technic. I don't have a current Land Rover either and I can't decide if I should get another or something bigger again (or just spend my money on practical stuff like workshop equipment). I wanted a Scammel but didn't have space so I built a Lego Scammell Super Constructor recovery truck. It has twin drive motors, 6 wheel drive and full suspension. It also has a pneumatic crane and underlift and motorised legs at the back. The electric winch is good for a 2kg lift at full extension of the crane. In proper Scammell fashion it is also able to climb a vertical wall until it falls over. When I sold my AEC Matador timber tractor I missed it so I built one of them too. It is also driven by twin motors with 4 wheel drive and suspension. The winch is also rated at 2kg and the crane and ground anchor is manually operated like the original.

If those who have the parts posted photos (taken from a similar angle) then someone who was good with photoshop could then assemble the bits into an imaginary vehicle. Would that be any good? I have worked through the process of making my 6x6 Skoda already to make sure it is possible. I just need someone to shunt mine up the rear so the insurance claim can set the ball in motion! OK, I leave the Skoda for another forum.

Nice job there, very well executed. A friend of mine did something very similar in 1990 with a S3 109 pick up with an 88 hard top on it. Quite effective as an early crew cab.

It was originally a 109 V8 front end and then the 110 but the back was the shortened track system from the scorpion light 'tank'. It has a habit of twisting prop shafts. There is one for sale here if anyone has the money for it.

I don't know how imaginary this will remain but for many reasons I drive a Skoda Octavia estate which suits my work up to a point. I really need a longer load bed. So I thought of getting a rear shunted Octavia 4x4 and grafting on the rear of a front damaged 4x4 and having a 6x6 Skoda like this: It will require a little bit of engineering work to get the drive to the rear axle but I have a cunning plan... Something else I was wondering was are there enough unwanted spares amongst the members of this forum to build a complete vehicle from scratch? Nothing extra to be bought except for safety reasons, just unwanted bits and pieces.

We are doing normal cars, just some of us have added the oddballs that don't drive all their wheels!