B reg 90

Then I put in the rear steel target. I put a nice fold into this at the local college when I was supposed to be welding. The 'floor' is just 20 x 20 x3 angles. This works, but later I put a mesh sheet across the top which is much better/more stable. I also built the grit pick up. Based on info from the web and some tips from the guy at blast-wash this has a 45 degree cut to maximise the opening. The copper pipe (brake pipe) is an air line. You can't suck the grit up the suction hose with out some air to entrain/blow it along. The copper pipe provides the air supply to the 45 degree inlet. This sticks into the drain at the bottom - I just hole sawed a hole and glued in some drain/waste pipe and fitted a screw on cap at the bottom. The other pipe is for a return line from the exhaust for any grit that drops out. I also fitted the window (Ford Transit connect rear door glass). This is sealed to the door with more 4mm double glazing sticky foam strip. I quickly found that the glass gets etched. I now have a sheet of florists cellophane trapped on the inside to provide a sacrificial layer.

No problem, didn't make it that clear in my post

Next step was fitting out the interior. The horizontal copper tube has slits cut into it allong it's length and will be behind the steel back target. The idea being that it will then pull contaminated air from just above the hopper, but not get direct 'blast' from the nozzle at it. At this point I only had one outlet - 28mm copper - fits right into the Dyson hose with out the need for any fittings. The lights are just 240V LED down lighters from screw fix. I should have fitted 3. They go into the false ceiling that the air enters into. The false ceiling directs the air onto the front window via a gap at it's front edge. The width of the gap is varied to ensure the correct vacuum is pulled in the cabinet. I did envisage a nice sliding 'thing' to adjust this. However the 1st test run used electricians tape - it does the job, so it's still there.

Next up was the intial leg installation - there is cross bracing to come. Finally holes for the glooves (Marigold Emperor - jubilee clipped on to 4" OD ducting) and the edging around the front opening to take the stick on foam (4mm thick double glazing foam) for the front door/hatch to seal against. The front hatch has no opening at this point as I did not have any glass - I later found the rear windows from a transit connect were a good fit and only a fiver from a scrappy.

Rob, I found that as long as I did not deliberatl blast the wood I was OK. I have gone with glossed white walls to keep it bright. I might later find the need for the rubber. I have tweaked the design slightly based on test runs, but I'll cover that in a post or two. Adrian

I then screwed/glued the cone to the base of the cabinet to give the following

I decided to make the cone hopper non symetrical with the point pushed to wards the rear so that if I sat on a stool at the blaster the cone would allow my legs to fit under the blaster. Don't do this. It makes the angles in the cone a right b***t**d to work out. I spent an evening with a piece of paper and a bottle of wine deriving the angles the edges of the cone needed to be cut at. Feeling satisfied at my superior math skills I decided to measure twice and cut once. So I made a scale cone from card and measured the angles to verify my maths. Obviously they were different from the angles I calculated. So I used the measured angles

Thought I'd post up some info and pictures on my blast cabinet project. I've always wanted one as wire brushing parts is no where near as satisfying. After losing access to one via an old job I googled to see what others had done. Turns out that it is possible to build a working unit out of ply quite successfully. After some research I ended up with the following plan: 1/. Plywood 'box' with a cone base so that used blast media collects and can re used by the gun. Steel 'target on rear wall to re-inforce. Other seemed to get away with out this, but it seemed like a good idea and I had a suitably sized bit of sheet of 1mm steel in the shed. I did think about a steel cabinet, but my welder failed after building a shelf and despite repairing (soldering in a new relay) it only lasted 10 minutes before a repeat performance - it was also rubbish when it actually worked. 2/. Suction blast gun - Mainly because of my air supply limit. I have a 3HP 200 liter air compressor. I bought one from www.blast-wash.co.uk. They were quite helpful and gave me some good tips. 3/. I wanted to run the cabinet at a vacuum/lower than atmospheric pressure so that air leaked into the cabinet rather then dust leaking out. The master plan was to have the pressure low enough that there was still a vacuum with the blast gun running. I used a Dyson DC04. Luckily it turns out that the DC04 can shift more air than my 3HP air compressor. I spent a bit of time looking at dust extraction as apparently blasting can/will produce sub micron level particle that ruin your lungs. I did think about making a cyclonic separator with a vent out of the roof of the garage. However I currently just put the dyson out side and hope for the best.... 4/. Air inlet to the cabinet at the top directing air onto the glass screen. This limits the impact of blast media onto the glass. 5/. Dust/air extraction from the base so that dust is drawn down out of the viewing area 6/. Lighting so that I could see what I was doing. Others suggested painting the interior white to make it as light as possible. I knocked up a design on CAD that would allow me to fit most items in - diff casing, brake caliper, etc. I fitted a removable side hatch so that longer items could be blasted. Intention being that a canvas extension could be fitted to the side to wrap around long items. Cabinet size was tailor to fit the space in the garage. Normal access is via lifting the front panel. This is driven by space constraints in my garage. The space was occupied by a shelving unit. This kick started an enabling project to build a shelf above both garage doors so that the shelf unit could be removed. One sunny day I started chopping up 2 sheets of plywood.

I always spooled the rope on under load. Used to winch the forklift up the drive (moderate slope) feeding the rope on evenly. Rope spooled off excellently. At the end of a day's competing at a winch challenge event I would re spool under load.

I've got an Allen Bradley inverter - bought from Drives Direct. Had it for 9 years? Still works fine and does what is says on the tin. 230V single phase in, 3 phase 415V out. 7.5 HP. I'd use Drives Direct again

My take for what it's worth: Assumptions: This is an off roader, rather a 4x4 daily driver, i.e. off road performance is to be omptimised It's a 90 ?? You have off road biased tyres that increase rolling resistance quite a lot 1/. Finalise your tyre size choice 2/. Correct your diff ratio's to give the land speed you are happy with in low range 1st gear - I found 35" tyres with standard diffs meant I was far to fast when descending hills on winch challenges. Dropping to 4.75 diffs made a huge difference. This has the advantage of dropping your high range as well back to standard. 3/. Chose a transfer box ratio to suit your intended driving. I'd draw up a graph of a standard 90 on 29" tyres and look at the gear spread. Then see what transfer box you need to roughly match it. Why - There is no point being over geared: A 90 is a heavy vehicle with significant wind resistance - your going to struggle to get a much higher top speed what ever you do (unless you go for a massive V8) Add off road tyres and the increase in rolling resistance will sap power. Land rover tried to put the engine revs at the most economical in each gear to get a reasonable fuel efficiency. Your mate may be compensating for his over gearing by boosting his engine power, but he will only accelerate as approximately as fast as a standard motor and pay more to do it..... If your going to boost the power it seems pointless if your not actually going to see any benefit when driving? You are stuck with the rev range of your engine - hence you need gear ratio's close enough to stop your engine revs dropping too much when you change up so that the engine has enough have the torque to continue to accelerate 'briskly'. If it is purely an off roader then I'd be tempted to fit a higher ratio transfer box. Realistically your not going to do 60 - 80 mph off road, so 5th is useless. Stick in a 1.6 transfer box and high range is suddenly a bit lower. You get better acceleration in high range and can use the full 5 gears. High 1st is lower so you can do most off roading in High range, then you have a better top speed without needing to stop and change between low/high box. After that is suspect it depends on how much you want to spend: Cheap - bigger intercooler, tweak fuel pump, up boost pressure Expensive: Fit a water cooled charge cooler instead of an standard air cooled intercooler - gives you max cooling of inlet air even when stationary in mud, hence more oxygen into cylinder. Redlinemike has one on his TD5 - Allisport did some before and after temperature logging. A standard intercooler quickly becomes heat soaked with no air flow over it and hence does little cooling. A charge cooler was giving a significant temp drop with the vehicle stationary, mimicking the effect of massive air flow over an standard intercooler (equivalent of motorway driving). Down side - there is always a little fan running on the charge cooler radiator, the noise is irritating. The added advantage is the more compact size of a charge cooler - results in the engine coming on boost quicker (you may or may not value this, I would). Fit a VNT. It will give you more power lower down the rev range. This will make the car accelerate better at lower revs and 'feel' more powerful even if the peak HP is the same. I had a conversation with Paul Round of Rally Raid UK. He described how he could over take car after car in the desert (Dakar) with a M57 (BMW 6 cylinder VNT diesel, ~ 280 HP) powered racer and leave 400+HP V8 racers standing. Basically he had the low down torque to accelerate up the gears. The guy in the V8 car (with a higher peak HP) had lower power at lower engine rev's compared to the M57 diesel. In sand this meant that when the V8 car changed up a gear the more power full V8 did not have the power to accelerate up from the reduced engine revs, in fact they were having to drop back down a gear as the V8 could not hold the speed in the higher gear. In short if you are staying with a 200TDI, sort the gearing, maximise power through out the engine rev range to give you the best acceleration rate. Peak horse power is for boasting purposes only in the pub. Adrian

when does it smoke? At idle? above a certain rev's or load? Smoke means too little air or fuel: 1/. Not enough air getting in - blocked air filter, restricted air inlet, blocked intercooler, waste gate stuck open 2/. To much fuel going in - ingesting oil from leaky turbo?, fuel pump turned up to much, valve guides worn causing oil to drip on back of inlet valve when off, causes smoke on startup. Etc.... Be systematic about what your symptoms are. Then write out a list of possible causes and possible root causes. Check them one by one. You will eventually get to the root cause. It may not be what you think - I did a root cause investigation on a turbo expander. The word was that it had failed it's thrust bearing on startup as usual. A lot of digging later found that it was destroying its thrust bearing on shut down due to being run with a much higher pressure drop than it was designed for. Symptoms only showed at start-up. Keep an open mind and unless you can prove a potential root cause not relevant /OK, it is a potential cause. Adrian

I think that the V8 early defenders (if standard) will become the 90 to have/become collectors items. If your going to pay a fortune in the futore to own a 90/defender, which would you choose? It would be a V8 every time for me - provided it's a secondvehicle and limited milage.T They can only go up in value

Google Dana 60 axles on the likes of pirate 4x4 as a Salisbury is in effect a Dana 60 with specially poor internals

I suspect we should celebrate the vagueness and the room for negotiation it gives us. I remember reading about a German car enthusiast having to get his speed recalibrated by the relevant authority due to a slight change in tyre diameter from manufacturers spec for his car....

I swopped a diesel civic for a petrol one when we changed it last year as I thought diesel tax would go up. Plus I believe that diesel cars will be increasingly restricted from city centres. Now looking at changing my 20 year old disco and wondering if I can get a decent lpg disco...

Change down a gear and you will drop EGT in my view. Why? Assume a non turbo engine to make things simpler. Assume a constant load (steady hill) and constant speed. Therefore it takes the same amount of energy (diesel) what ever the gear (not quite true as engine efficiency will vary with speed, but ignoring that). A non turbo diesel draws in a fixed amount of air per air intake stroke. The injector pump adds fuel depending on the throttle position. If the load is low then not much fuel is injected. The burn heats the 'spare' air in the cylinder - the exhaust gas is hence an average of the combustion gases and spare air. If you add more fuel you eventually get to full load - assume no spare air, hence all exhaust gases are combustion gases - in this scenario the exhaust gas is hence hotter. Going back to the steady hill and constant speed: Your in 4th at 2000 rpm. You change down to 3rd and keep the same speed. The energy needed to move the car has not changed. The but the engine revs have increased. So you are putting in less fuel per ignition stroke, but the same amount over time as the engine is rev'img faster. However the air intake volume is approx the same per Rev. So you are getting more ignition strokes with less fuel in them - the excess air in the cylinder 'cools' the combustion gas (by being heated). So EGT drops. However exhaust gas volume goes up. You are burning the same amount of energy, just in smaller chunks more quickly and mixing the resulting gas with more air.

Change down a gear and you will drop EGT in my view. Why? Assume a non turbo engine to make things simpler. Assume a constant load (steady hill) and constant speed. Therefore it takes the same amount of energy (diesel) what ever the gear (not quite true as engine efficiency will vary with speed, but ignoring that). A non turbo diesel draws in a fixed amount of air per air intake stroke. The injector pump adds fuel depending on the throttle position. If the load is low then not much fuel is injected. The burn heats the 'spare' air in the cylinder - the exhaust gas is hence an average of the combustion gases and spare air. If you add more fuel you eventually get to full load - assume no spare air, hence all exhaust gases are combustion gases - in this scenario the exhaust gas is hence hotter. Going back to the steady hill and constant speed: Your in 4th at 2000 rpm. You change down to 3rd and keep the same speed. The energy needed to move the car has not changed. The but the engine revs have increased. So you are putting in less fuel per ignition stroke, but the same amount over time as the engine is rev'img faster. However the air intake volume is approx the same per Rev. So you are getting more ignition strokes with less fuel in them - the excess air in the cylinder 'cools' the combustion gas (by being heated). So EGT drops. However exhaust gas volume goes up. You are burning the same amount of energy, just in smaller chunks more quickly and mixing the resulting gas with more air.

Been thinking about this. There is probably three limits: 1/. Turbine blades soften/ deform - your really o et doing it 2/. Creep rupture failure - gas turbines suffer from this. A 1970's gas turbine I'm about to overhaul has a power turbine inlet temp limit of 820 c. You can run at 820 for 100,000 hours - then blades need changing. If you run hotter you rapidly reduce service life (an rolls Royce RB211 has a reduced turbine blade life of 30% for a 10c increase in operating temp). So run it to hot and you are reducing the turbo life span. Failure mode will be brittle failure of the blade. 3/. Over heating of bearing oil from heat convection - coming of oil, laquering on bearing reducing clearances until bearing runs hot and fails (assumes it is a journal bearing) Your probably OK firshort bursts, but you are reducing the time to turbo failure - but that might not be significant for you

It's probably in the insurance company terms and conditions that they can chose to dispose.

Suggest she registers complaint with police - car stolen for a second time? Re recovery - ask them if it is a fine. They will say no. That means it must be a service. Then ask them for a copy of the purchase order that authorised them to do the work - errr doesn't exist. No order, no payment....

I push them out with air. Don't strip the caliber apart. Get some flat bar and bend up 3 ''C' shapes the fit over the caliber body and piston such that it stops them coming out. Get a tyre valve and shape the end that would go in the rim into a cone. Put valve in a foot pump. Put on a full face visor, ram the tyre valve in the fluid inlet on the caliber and pump. 3 Pistons will come out against the bend steel C's. The 4th will pop out. Replace seals and piston, swop over the C's and continue.

I have one of the Sykes Pickavant units. Works great. I'd recommend

I second the light suggestion, lots of them & round the edges and in the middle for good measure!

U need to paint the walls White before u move anything else in!