mickeyw

Peter, how long do you find the battery keeps going for? 1.5 Ah isn't very much in the context of other battery powered tools I use.

I had to laugh when I saw the TV ad for this showing it being used to clean a Defender. I really can't see it being much use for dealing with the aftermath of an off road play day. It's probably pretty good for cleaning your mountain bike off before taking it home, maybe even a motocrosser if the mud hasn't dried on. On the topic of cordless things, today I picked this up in Lidl as I already have a jigsaw that uses the required batteries. Given how much I hate extension leads I thought this would be dead handy for those little soldering jobs on the LR. I'll be interested to see how long it'll run off a 2ah battery. It takes less than a minute to heat up and has auto power off after 10 mins. https://www.lidl.co.uk/p/diy-projects/parkside-20v-cordless-soldering-station-bare-unit/p45858

Get well soon Mike.

This is a point I have made many times. I run a very tidy 19 year old diesel car that has 85000 miles under its belt. I drive it maybe 3000 miles per year, and working from home for the last 18 months it has done even less. IMO the carbon cost of building the car has not yet been paid off, and for the modest mileage I do it is not worth buying anything newer and cleaner running and costing the Earth far more tonnes of carbon than I'll emit in the next few years driving the car I have.

Back in the mid 80's? the politicians were telling us to run diesel because apparently it was the cleaner greener option. I predict that in 30-40 years, possibly during my life time, the politicos will have done a full U-turn on the electric-cars-are-good thing because we're running out of lithium, or cobalt. They'll be telling us how environmentally harmful it is to mine, process and recycle lithium and batteries. But it won't be their fault for poorly advising us back in the 20's because they were merely going by what some scientists had told them at the time; and that we should be adopting their latest tax-earning transport whim.

I did this recently. It was the best spent £10 and half hour of work I've managed in along time. No more rattling windows for me 😁 I bought the felt strip from Woolies trim.

Our camping fridge is an Outwell unit. We have been really impressed with it. Just one drawback though - it only runs in the car with the engine running, that is to say when voltages are up at charging levels. It won't run of a 12v car battery. I have yet to experiment and see exactly what voltage it cuts out at. This hasn't been such a problem when we've pre-cooled it at home, gone on a long trip in the car and run on campsite mains while we're there. More annoying for back woods camping though, but that's when the big Coleman ice chest comes into its own. That'll easily keep things cold for 2-3 days if you throw a big bag of ice in the bottom to begin with. Editted brand after looking in the garage

That looks very similar to the Numax XV31MF I have in the 110, only the Numax has both standard and stud terminals.

Looks like a handy solution for the sort of items you mention Ralph. I've used bungee nets suspended from the ceiling for clothing. My thoughts on a solid shelf - How does it position? I wouldn't want to bump my head on it while leaning into the back. Would it in any way impede access to other items in the back? It'll block the light from the dome light above, so I'd maybe want some additional load area lighting. Not trying to be negative, more raise points for consideration.

I had a similar experience many years back, only in deepest darkest Wales. We were in a mate's company Mazda 5, off on a mountaineering weekend. We hit a rock on the side of a narrow single track road which wrecked the tyre. Having found the car had no spare, and realised the compressor and can of snot was no use at all, we limped on to a place we could stop and other traffic could pass. A 10 minute walk to higher ground where we had a mobile signal, then trying to describe the the RAC operator where we where.....what's your address, what's the street number of the nearest house? The poor woman had no idea what to do with an OS grid reference, so we gave turn by turn directions from the nearest town, which was a good 20 mins drive away. What a palava! 2 hours later a breakdown van turns up, removes the damaged wheel and tyre and takes said mate off to find a tyre shop...on a Sunday... in the back end of Wales. Meanwhile the rest of us went off on a walk. Several hours later we returned to the car to find the breakdown chappy refitting the wheel, which was now wearing an eyewateringly expensive new tyre. That is why I always carry a serviceable spare.

This has been a pet hate of mine for years re DRLs. There is a particular year of VW Golf that has the front indicator and DRL unit (non LED) right next to one another, and like you say, it may as well have BMW indicators for all the visibility they have! I see that the latest cars with LED everything seem shut off the DRL while the indicator is operating (and about bluddy time too). Some even share the function of the LEDs, so it changes from a white emitter to blinking orange when indicating. A much smarter solution IMO.

I think these would rather work against the whole 'covert camper' thinking behind this build. I've only recently found this thread. Don't know how I missed it before but it is fascinating. When I saw Si's early renders my first thought was that he's put a 4-post lift inside a van. That's a whole new definition for a 4-post bed

Good grief Jeff, that was a close one. Glad you're on the mend. I'll echo what others are saying - your antics make Nige's efforts pale into relative insignificance🤣. Nige don't go getting all competitive will you! As much as your story telling over the years generally has top level entertainment factor, we would like you to stick around a while longer please. I think many of the older ones of us are from the 'wait it out and see if it gets better on its own' camp, rather than rushing off to the doctor for every scratch. It was pretty much a year ago exactly that I was sitting in my home office thinking that I didn't feel great, and wondered if I'd eaten something dodgy. As the day wore on I felt worse and was persuaded to ring the doc, who told me to come and see him immediately. Anyway, long story short, my appendix was removed by 10pm that night. Further ignorance off said problem would have been a bad idea. Lessons to learn.

There are many 'special tools' shown in the Green Bible, and often drawings enabling one to build one's own. I made this item for a similar large 'nut' (a large threaded ring with 2 flats) that you describe. In my case the target of attention was an LT85 gearbox. It's just a few bits of 1/2" thick steel (just what was to hand) welded together, with the centre square hole to suit a 1/2" drive ratchet handle.

I've used the DB combined tow ball and hitch for the last 30 years on various LRs, and invariably on an adjustanle drop plate. I think they are unbeatable for versatility. One key factor that many miss is that they should always be used with the pin installed, even when towing on the ball. It's on the DB instructions and on the plate that is rivetted on them when new. Failure to do so can result in the jaw bending. On the recovery thing, as others have said , I've never seen a tow ball fail, only the part it was attached to.

I'm more than happy enough with the factory offerings. However if I had to change them I'd rather have wood than aluminium that freezes your fingers in winter and burns 'em in the summer

Nice saw there Ross. Multico used to be just up the road from me.

Judging by the logo it looks like a Mac Industries table.

Very nice Ross - somewhat overkill? But very nicely made Did I miss the announcement of your fixture table? It looks very similar to what a number of popular YouTubers have been buying. Is yours bought or your own design?

A picture definitely helps. A very similar access issue can be found with a couple of the screws that secure the older type Rover V8 oil pump housing. That uses 1/4" UNC reduced head 12 pt screws. There is just about enough room to get in with a 5/16" ring spanner.

You can get a lot of car for your money buying older luxury models. They depreciate heavily. I bought my 1990 Vogue SE back in 2005 with 90k miles on it for a mere £1900. That car was IRO £30k new. It had been well looked after and drove beautifully. I've never had to travel huge mileages for work, so a luxury barge is far more appealing than a eurobox. My car buying budget is pretty low, and rarely exercised. I think my 8th hand 1986 V8 90 was the most expensive car I ever bought. It was 8 years old with 40k miles on, but it had suffered massively from lack of use and lack of maintenance.

I've been down this road too. I have my car and home insurance with NFU. I asked about contents cover extending to my garage, and it seems things are much easier if your garage is attached to the house, as opposed to down the garden. Trying to explain that the value of your garage contents far exceeds what's in the house is hard to get across to them. Like Ross I started to go through my tools and equipment to get an idea of replacement value - it becomes pages and pages long and is quite scary. It's a handy exercise though as I had no idea that I have around 50 pairs of pliers and cutters of various types. I cannot say that I definitely got across to them what I wanted, or that I have the cover I'd like. I do my best to work safely, as we are not just talking about loss through break-ins, but fire is a very high risk in our hobby. I have plenty of gear that would be very hard to remove, but could easily be destroyed in a fire. When you have worked in well regulated industrial environment you are more aware about the need for 'hot work' procedures. For example I never weld or grind something in the garage and depart immediately. I prefer to do both outside, safely away from the garage clutter and flammable items when possible. At my old job no hot work was allowed inside an hour of the premises closing for the day. Fires can take a while to become sufficiently obvious.

Having come across this thread I was prompted to take action on my sliding windows. I had previously looked at the Garrison Trim option but baulked at the price. I ordered 2x 1m lengths of 1" x 1/8" felt from Woolies Trim. This is the narrowest they had listed. The remnants of old felt I removed measured approx 20mm (3/4"), so I trimmed the felt to width with a stout pair of scissors. After a considerable amount of cleaning and moss removal from the window track I followed the instructions in the Britanica Restorations video above. It really is as easy as he says. The first window took me maybe 15 minutes, and the second one much less. This very worthwhile improvement has cost me just over £10 (felt (2x£2.50/m) and £5.40 for postage) and took less than an hour to do, including all the cleaning. The LR part would of course have been the correct size material, but is priced around £15 per window. If I'd found some 20mm (3/4") wide felt I'd have saved 10 minutes perhaps, but I'm very happy with the result.

Ditto. Not sorted the cubby yet, but it's actually worked out handy without one. I can get 6' long things in without folding the seats, plus the kids can walk through to the rear. The seats can fold fully forward, if the headrest is pulled out and the seat base removed.

This rather depends on how you use your vehicle. Frequent driving through the sloppy brown stuff not only means frequent adjustment of the drums is necessary, but the complete removal of the drums to clean out dried muck that causes varius components to rust a jam up. It takes quite a lot of time! I found converting to a disk rear axle on my 90 a complete revelation from a maintenance POV. You still burn through pads in the mud, but generally a blast with the jet wash is all that is needed to keep everything in working order. A disk conversion is on the cards for my 110 at some point.