mickeyw

Indeed he has packed up making cross members. I found him very pleasant and accommodating. You are right though, he had health problems alright. I think the attitude may not have been the cross members themselves, but the people that wanted them. As a one man small business you're either on the phone or your working on product - you can't do both. So many folk mess you about, complain when you don't answer the phone, complain when you're late and can't understand when you don't keep custom made items in stock. I can understand him getting fed up, but it's a shame you got the sharp end of his tongue. His product was excellent.

Not saying it can't be done, but I wouldn't want to arc weld a chassis repair. From a skill requirement perspective MIG is so much easier, especially as you will need to weld some sections while upside down. As with any welding method, if you've never done it before you will need to practice on something that doesn't matter first, and it sounds like your friendly blacksmith is the right place to find some scraps. Practice, practice, practice until you are happy with the result. Practice welding the right way up, then vertical and upside down. Depending on the quality of welder wire speed may need a tweak when doing the latter two. Before and during, Youtube is your friend for advice. My first MIG welder was pretty cheap and crappy, but I did a LOT of work with it and learned even more.

I had one like that from Aldi. At 3.7v 10w it wasn't going to make it like daylight, although it lit the garden up quite well just now. It's a typical LED cool white, it's excellent for under a car or lighting up a very large tent. The battery might last 2-3 hours max - it says it's 2200mah. The Makita light is a completely different colour temp. It's very warm white but offers similar wide angle ( tests in garage make me think around 150 degrees) and range of light to the Workzone lamp. The Makta label says power dissipation 12x 510mw, luminous intensity 270LM. With a 3ah battery I've run it for at least 6 hours and lost just 1 of 4 LEDs on the battery meter, so battery performance wise the blue one is far better. What is not shown in the Makita details is the adjustable webbing strap with hook that it comes with. I am trying to add a photo but Google photos on my phone doesn't want to upload. Gimme back my Windows phone 😕

You are comparing two rims that sit a fair bit inboard, compared to say the generic aftermarket 7x16 modular rim. I can't imagine the difference being light and day. I run 255/85R16s on 7x16 modular rims (can't see any offset figure stamped on them) and get excellent lock. That's to say the stop bolt couldn't really be adjusted in any further, and the tyres don't contact anything except on full articulation. My 110 is easier to get into a Tescos car park space than our Merc B class! By contrast, the way LR despatched vehicles fitted with 7x16 Boost alloys (sit MUCH further inboard) results in an horrific turning circle, and has in the past resulted in very a embarrassing trailer maneuvering incident (110 with 235/85R16s). After that day I got under with the spanners and was able to improve things a fair bit without any tyre rub. I think you really need to achieve at least 25-30mm outward spacing to make any significant improvement in available lock. This is about the thickness of a lot of wheel spacers I think, but I am not a fan of such things.

James, I read somewhere that you've bought into Makita tools. I recently bought one of these and am very pleased with it. It last for hours and hours on a 3Ah battery. In fact I have yet to flatten one with it.

For that kinda money you could always buy yourself a cheap MIG welder and teach yourself how to do the job, and be quids in. This is assuming you don't already know to weld.😉

This would be the first 1/16" BSP fitting I have come across. The designation PC6-M5 says to me Ø6 pipe and M5 thread.

Sometimes manufacturers use what look like generic plugs, but they like to complicate matters by throwing in an non-standard orientation tang . I've been caught out by this in the past 😕

Doesn't @PaulMc on here know all about connectors used on LR stuff?

I notice that JeffR hasn't been seen in quite a while, otherwise I'd have expected him to be adding to these tales of gore. Hope he's OK. I recall he wasn't in the best of health.

If you want really simple and plan to make it yourself, the Pivlock style show here is pretty good, but it opens independently to the door. I prefer the Mantec style which has been widely copied, just like the one in the Withams auction. I bought mine from Foundry 4x4 for not much more £.

Oooh, very interesting. Subscribed

This is coming along so well James. Fantastic work.

Ross, you take shims OUT as they wear to add swivel preload, hence it being a problem if you can't have a stack of shims in there when new 😉

It's been at least 15 years since I rebushed my old 90 in this way. I had a similar problem (no shims needed) and ended up fitting 2 thrust washers in each side. This wasn't ideal as I found myself having to make extra shims up to get the preload right. 1mm steel IIRC.