B reg 90

If your reffering to a 300 TDi - use the mount holes on the block nearest the middle of the block - causes the engine to be moslty supported by front mounts, this means the bell housing is under less stress, hecne deflects less. Supposed to reduce noise/harshness.

yes! Check that in the shut position the glass is being held down sufficiently. I found it was not on mine - side winds on a motorway caused wind ingress, moderate push down on glass caused glass to move. I removed the winder mechanism and stripped it so that the indent for fully closed was one tooth further round. This pulled the glass doen further stopping the side wind noise and water ingress. Problem solved! Adrian

I have michelins on my 300 Tdi disco - they have done 85,000 miles so far. I'd get them again!

Plated. Not worth buying paint at that price

I'm in the AA. Tested their service one Sunday night on the M74. My 19 year old disco blew a rad hose off (corroded hose clip), causing a big steam cloud. I had no tools, no water to top up. Rang the AA - told them I thought that I had overheated the engine - I'd pulled over straight away, engine fine...... They agreed to send a truck straight away. Then I mentioned the twin axle ifor williams (loaded). AA - 'No problem sir, is it under 18' long', Me - 'definitely', AA - 'we will send to trucks' They were there in 40 minutes. The trailer measured at/just over 18', but they recovered it any way and took me to the next service station. Then they looked at the engine - we collectively agreed that 'it must have overheated' so that I could have a tow all the way home and not have to find out if the engine was overheating/damaged with 3 tons on a trailer behind it. Excellent service, couldn't fault them.

If your buying new then look on line. I found that PC world and co have year old models at best. The new models are on the manufacturers web sites. Typically you cpould get one model/revision up for the same money for buying on line form the manufacturer. You can 'acquire' AutoCAD and similar for free on line if you know where to look.

A 300 TDI disco will have body rot and will likely die in the next few years, so I see that as a short term fix. After that it comes down to what you want the car for? If it needs comfort anf family travel capability, a disco of some sort it is. If you plan on using as a second car for fun, then a 90. After that it's what 90 or what disco. Assuming you can justify running multiple cars I'd rebuild your existing 90. Probably it will be most cost effective longer term. I don't see much in the way of depreciation on 90/110's once production stops. Think of 110's in America - silly money for a old truck. I have a similar dilemma - 19 year old 300 tdi disco as a daily driver, fancy a change. But a disco 3 is a bit £££ and I see big maintenance bills. However a 90 is bit agricultural for a daily drive. But i think it will cost the least to maintain, hove the lowest depreciation etc. I'm swaying towards a 90 and £1000 car.

Well ideally you need to calculate the load and work out what thickness pin you need. However I would buy a bigger 10.9 bolt and machine the pin out of it. Make sure you get a bolt just big enough as the heat treatment is most effective near the surface. If you want to make from round bar I would suggest a 1.25% chrome steel like bs970 709m40 in the T condition. Stud bolts are made from this for the oil industry.

Simon, I'd go for a set as well. Adrian

My brother drove from Sheffield to Nepal if that counts? He crossed Iran in five days, that's a lot of driving.

As the prop bolts are not 'fitted', ie reamed out holes with bolts with machined shanks, the torque is transmitted between the prop flange and diff flange via friction between the metal faces. The clamping force of the prop bolts holds the flange faces together tightly enough such that enough friction is created to transfer the design torque level. So.... Introduce powder coating: 1/. You have altered the coefficient of friction - my guesstimate says that is lower. So the flange faces will twist against each other when you load the joint in reverse and forwards direction. 2/. The powder coating will crush (it's softer than steel) as the flange fave move. So the joint will become slack as the powder coat disintegrates, the friction levels will be inadequate to transmit the torque. The bolts will then end up driving the diff. These will elongate the prop and diff flange holes and give u drive train slack. To summarise - don't powder coat the flange faces! Adrian

Sold a car last month with a paper tax disk. Sola sent a tax refund.

I did the same as fridgefreezer - raised the garage door up by removing the 6" wooden section above, then fastened the wood to the bottom of the door. Then with a little bit of rubbing the 90 drove in. When I sold the house I spent an afternoon lowering the door back down and tacked the 6" wide wood back where it came from. Worked a treat.

Just selling off an odd tyre they had left imported before ban??

I had a conversation with Devon 4x4 about this. They stated that it is the aromatic oil content that is the issue. The EU have some realy strict cirteria that requires manufacturers to submit tyres for testing and so on. D44 told me that interco some time used rubber with the oil in, sometimes not, but for them to comply with the EU regs would be to much hassle for the volumes sold, therefore they did not both to try and comply. End result is that they are techncially illegal to import and sell as, even if they are oil free, they will not have been certified oil free by the right boffin in the EU money grabbing machine. I think the end user can use them. According to D44 the importer of tyres which have not been tested by the right EU boffin for aromatic compounds can be fined £5,000 per tyre -even if oil free.......... However I understand that you can import personally. Not sure if you have to only use off road. However it's easy to state that for the customs man. I have 4 of boggers that I bought to allow mock up of my (never ending) project, but no spare. I intend to just import two more when (later this century) I complete the LR. I was intending to ring round US distributors and get a price for tyres + delivery. However that may prove to be £££££.

Couple of observations: Build tolerances are massive compared to what you or I would start at, so this may be just at one end of the scale. I have skimmed the flange faces on the end of my C303 axle tubes on my bridgeport mill. I can post up a picture of the set up if you want. If your 1/2 shaft is OK, i.e. no sign of fretting on splines, then I'd think you axle is 'happy'. In which case consider just shimming the trailing arm at the relvent side to pull/push the axle back into alignment. Thinking that you should shim at the rubber block at the chassis end. Adrian

Good point - had not considered that. Another thought - engines are mass produced. Surface finish variations, casting defects are are to be expected within the water passages. All these will make pressure drop in the water passages fairly variable between engines. Hence designers will make the passages big enough such that the pressure drop changes from the manufacturing tolerances of castings are not significant. They then control flow by sticking in a restriction plate (thermostat) that they can put an accurate cheap hole in to create the required back pressure/system resistance. What I am trying to say is that removing the restriction at the thermostat is a poor decision unless you have data from your engine to back your the decision. As Nigel has a custom engine, with a custom ECU map, it's the kind of thing that I'm thinking he would do based on evidence, not gut feel? Any way, time for another beer....

Idris, How do you KNOW the pump is operating at a point that it will not cavitate? I'm not saying the pump is cavitating, but that know one knows if is it or not unless you know the suction pressure, + Temp + where the pump is operating on it's performance curve. The pump is small enough that you will not hear it cavitate (especially while engine is running). Removing the restrictor plate is a WAG (Wild Arsed Guess) unless you measure what is happening. Adrian

So meant to finish with: So removing restrictir plate may push the NPSH r up to the point that the pump cavitates, flow drops, temps go up, engine overheats.

mmmm, I don't agree with this unless you have provided key data about how the electric pump performs in YOUR system, namely: Pump inlet pressure Pump inlet temperature Pump outlet pressure All the above need to be at pump max speed with the engine HOT, i.e, hottest pump inlet pressure as this is the worst case. Only when they have this data can they calculate the pump Net Positive Suction Head Available (NPSHa) at the pump inlet and compare this to the Net Positive Suction Head Required (NPSHr) by the pump at the running speed and flow rate it is doing. NPSHa needs to be above NPSHr for the pump to not cavitate. In fact as cavitation energy with water is quite high (water en trains air easily) you need quite a margin. Typically in the oil industry you would look for a minimum margin of NPSHa over NPSHr of 1 meter of liquid head (the pressure at the bottom of a column of liquid 1 meter high, in our case water ). However as you will not run continuously at max engine load you could accept a lower margin. Net Positive Suction Head - A measure of how close a liquid is to boiling at a defined pressure and temperature. For example water at 100 C and atmospheric pressure will boil - it has a NPSH of zero. NPSHr - The NPSH required by the pump varies depending on a few factors: 1/. Pump speed - higher pump rpm's requires a higher NPSH. 2/. Flow rate - the higher the flow rate through the pump at a given pump rpm the higher the NPSH required to prevent cavitation. Pump flow rate is set by the system resistance to flow. In your case as pump is just circulating water back to the pump inlet the friction losses in the pipes, radiator, etc, set this. If your pump is cavitating you can increase the system resistance (fit a smaller restrictor plate in the thermostat) to reduce flow and hence the NPSHr 3/. Pump inlet pressure - If you increase the inlet pressure the boiling point gets higher. So you can fit a higher pressure radiator cap (don't forget that you need a lower air volume in the header tank to get the system to pressurize to a higher pressure) so that the system runs at a higher pressure when hot. 4/.Pump inlet temperature - the lower the inlet pressure the further the liquid is away from boiling. So a lower temperature thermostat (if you have one),and/ or a bigger radiator would drop inlet temperatures. In short unless EWP have the above data their reply is a guess. It may be an educated guess based on experience, but again it is still a guess. You hoping to prevent your engine over heating based on this guess. I'd ask EWP for the pump curve (including NPSHr), do some testing and actually work it out. Adrian

Looks like casting porosity.

Only 50k!! That's terrible I'm at 80k on my michelins

I had the front edge of the roof/body side flange leak. A small bit of dum dum on the leading edge and problem solved.... Took years to find

I had the front edge of the roof/body side flange leak. A small bit of dum dum on the leading edge and problem solved.... Took years to find

I found that the NFU were the only insurer that would cover tools over a basic amount. I have a lathe, bridgeport mill, beaver mill (CNC) and tooling. It adds up when you start looking up the prices of a range of morse taper drills....