simonr

One last suggestion! Replace the coaxial cable with something decent. The stuff they use is usually dreadful! Good quality RG58 50 ohm is reasonable with soldered on connector at the CB end. I like Minivin's idea of crimping a ring terminal to the braid and bolting this to the body skin adjacent to the antenna base. Good belt & braces approach. The other option is a type of antenna which does not require a ground plane. Not the silly little spiky things that are supposed to replace it, but something like a folded J which doesn't need one at all (which is what I used for 2m / 70cm). Don't know if such a thing is available for CB, but a mobile amateur 10m antenna should work OK. Si

Your new alternator is internally cooled - so you don't need the turbine thing on your original alternator. You should be able to make it work using spacers to move the pulley away from the front bearing. Most alternators have one or two of the things - but they can easily be improvised (M16 washers usually work). It is (usually) as simple as that. Si

I don't know where people get this idea that Al makes a poor ground plane! Al is a better conductor than steel - and will thus be a better ground plane! Issues with it being poor are generally down to having a poor connection to it. First try measuring the SWR with the antenna disconnected from the SWR meter. I suspect this will give a similar reading to what you have now. If it does, then you either have a short or a break in the circuit. Test with a multi-meter. There should be no connection between the centre core of the plug and the shroud. There should be a good connection between the centre core of the plug which connects to the rig and the antenna (where it screws on to the base). Even the most cra@@y antenna should give you better than 3 and I would expect to end up with an SWR of between 1.2 and 2.0. In practice this will be plenty good enough. Aim for about 1.5 If the above all checks out OK (I suspect it wont) then, it must be the length of the antenna. You can use the following procedure to tune the length of the antenna. Measure the SWR on Chan 1 and Chan 40. If it is better on Chan 1 than 40 your antenna is too Long If it is better on 40 than 1, the antenna is too Short. Change the length in increments of 2mm or so and stop, ideally when it is the same on 1 and 40, or when the readings reverse. Finally measure the SWR on Chan 20. Si

Go for it Chris. I would happily pay to be taken round green lanes (having no navigational skills myself) - you are very good at it! Tying it in with landscape photography might be a good angle. Many of the places we've been were quite breathtaking - and I wish we had had the time to stop and take piccies more often. I think for a lot of people, avoiding the headache of working out where to go and where to stay would be worth a few quid. There are also many people who can afford a weekend, or a long weekend but not much more in terms of taking leave from work. I know that put me off the trips to the foreign in the past. You could supliment your income by flogging ropes, waffles, shackles, gloves, CB's, kagools - that kind of thing. Might be worth having a number of classes of trip with one suitable for all the L322 owners, many of whom would love to justify having a 4x by taking it off road in a safe and undamaging environment. You will get my full support in whatever capacity I can offer if you do it (even as a punter in my mobile Chip Shop!). Si Si

That all looks quite good! I was going to put in an appearance - but felt too knackered! Next year maybe! Si

With a wee bit of luck, Pugwash & I will soon have ARB Style carlton switches available for front & rear winch, winch enable and freespool (for the few with pneumatic freespools). Si

It'll be fine James! Si

So, what was your RTI score? Si

What's the difference between an LT77 s, g & h? Si

Sorry you had to learn that way - but it is generally the best way! I learned that machining a lump of metal you've been working on for best part of a week while drunk is not a good idea - the hard way. Turned handle on mill wrong way, lump of metal finds new home in bin, spend next week machining from scratch while sober! Si

I don't think anybody is or has suggested taking a vote on everything - that, I agree would be daft. I just cannot accept you assertion that we, the members, should be happy to have no control or say in the running of the forum, that the mods are ALWAYS RIGHT and if we don't like it, we should go elsewhere. I'm not saying being a moderator is easy, or that they do not do a good job, or even that I want the nature of the forum to change - quite the opposite - but the administration must be accoutable to the membership. I have a suspicion that most of your comment above is slightly skewed by your apparently being invited to be a moderator on the fabrication forum. I would suggest that you thus have a vested interest in keeping the current status quo - and one could be forgiven for thinking, sucking up to the current administration. Easy when you can have your cake and eat it! Before you jump in with one of your more vective replies - remember what it says in your sig - it applies here too. Si

Tell you what! I'd pay for access to the recycle forum! Or is the 'recycle forum' just another name for ORRP? I don't know if invision support this, but many forums have other classes of member other than 'guest', 'member', 'mod' and 'admin' Could we introduce another one between guest & member which you get when you register. Give rights to read and post on everything bar the classifieds, which is read only. A member then applies to be upgraded. Si

Plan 'E'? E for EDIS? Si

It would certainly be worth a shot. Acetone is used as brush cleaner and nail varnish remover (in case Les wants to try it ) Homebase sell it - and it's pretty cheap. Halfords had some 'Super power' (something like that anyway) fuel improver - which contains Acetone, Xylene and a couple of other things. 0.2% is about 100ml per tank in a 90 Si

Dear Mr "1200 posts more than me" Henson I appreciate what both of you are saying - I just feel there should be a set procedure for these kind of things. Not necessarily the one I posted - but not one made up by each moderator on the fly either! That is kind of the idea of a charter or constitution isn't it? Si

I'd agree with the above - the level of rudeness allowed. My main gripe about the forum has always been that decisions lke this have always been out of the control of members, let alone the appointment of moderators. I would like to see a mechanism by which we are at the very least consulted before a mod is appointed. The reason given in the past for not allowing them to be elected was that the mods might be privey to information which would render that person unsuitable which is not public knowledge - thus it's better to let the mods decide. I say, it cuts both ways. An ideal candidate as far as the mods are concerned might be busy flaming people by PM or email? I propose that we, the members be permitted to nominate suitable candidates for a given post (but not oneself). The nominations should be closed (only visible to the mods) and for any given appointment, let the mods decide between the top few candidates, ordered by the number of nominations. If nobody votes, the mods decide as before. This I believe is a reasonable compromise between the two extremes. It might be worth allowing negative nominations as well to cope with the above 'flaming by PM' situation. The top nominations should not be disclosed to the members (to stop fighting), only the final choice. It strikes me that there have been several instances recently of posts or entire threads being deleted - possibly with good reason - but that's the trouble, it's a closed subject and we'll never know. There should be an escalation procedure. Something like: * If post can be modified to remove rude words without changing the meaning or censoring - it should be done immediatly. * If a post falls in to one of the categories for deletion listed above, the post should be edited by the mod and annotated with the reason why it has been edited. * If a block of posts fall in to this category, a single annotation is sufficient, the rest of the posts can be deleted. * If a thread is going bad (content wise) and the above is not working, the offenders should be warned by PM. * If the warning does not work, the thread should at most be locked - not deleted. * A thread should only ever be deleted with a unanimous vote by the mods and admins. If a thread is to be deleted, a public explanation should be posted of the reasons. There should be the right for a member to appeal against such a decision and if the general opinion is that the moderator has overstepped the line, the post be reinstated. The other mods and admins should self police mods who misbehave! The above satisfies the requirements set out by steve, without the actions of the mods appearing as open as the KGB! This will in turn improve the members perception of the mods. It would be daft to open up every decision o the forum to a public debate like this - but there should be more of them. Since, to a greater extent than any other forum, it is owned and funded by the members, it is not unreasonable to expect to be able to exert some control over it's running. At the moment, threads get moved to a more appropriate forum on occasion (Eg. if I started a thread about tweaking L322 RR ECU's in the Series Forum - it would be reasonable to move it to the RR forum. The same should be true of the really OT posts as described by Chris above. Rather than just deleting them - move them to a OT forum. The users can carry on the discussion as necessary but it keeps the other forums clear. That's about all I can think of for now! Si

It tends to be the mechanism that dies rather than the electrics - in my experience! After a dunk in muddy water - none of my gauges worked. Managed to make the speedo work again by washing, but replaced the others. At least an electric one can just be un plugged and a new one plugged in without having to thread a load of capillary tube. Si

How about two vans and a tow truck. If one van breaks down, you can nick someone elses and do a cut-n-shut in your workshop. Si

Les, send me your user name & password. I'll try it out for you and tell you if it's a scam or not (once the transfers have gone through) Disagree with the "never click on a link in an email". I would revise it to "never click on a link in an email you were not expecting or from someone you do not know. Even then, treat the page returned with some suspicion". Si

I figured that if you split the return in the same ratio, although you end up with a mixture in both tanks, the cross-over cancels out when you re-mix them. You could feed all the return into the oil tank - then your proportion of diesel would increase as you went along - but you run the risk of over-flowing the oil tank if you are running less than 50/50. Chris's Idea of running the fuel return to the lift pump inlet should work - maybe with a bleed valve there as well Chris, could your extra smoke be because you have tweaked the fueling? If the oil does not burn as well, dumping extra in might make it burn even less well. As a just in case, I have read that flooring it on hill climbs helps burn off a lot of the oil stuck to the bores. The fuel is cheap - so hay - I've been flooring it rather more than that! Adding a bit of petrol seems reasonable. One year (doing the Lombard RAC as a radio vehicle) in Keilder, my diesel froze over night (it was getting down to -21 C). We got it going with a camping stove under the tank though. A chap (army I think) suggested adding a splash of petrol to the tank - and it worked a treat. the engine had a bit more 'clatter' noise - but it didn't wax up nor freeze over night. We added 50% antifreeze to the screen-wash as well. The regular screenwash was freezing before it hit the screen and just bouncing off! Si

Forgot to mention - no difference in performance. It feels slightly different to drive - but it's very subtle and I can't quite tell what is different. Slightly different power curve maybe? On Sunflower oil, I get quite a nice smell from the exhaust. It smells like they are cooking popcorn nextdoor. I was wondering about using something like a 'rotary manifold' or proportional manifold to mix the oil & diesel from separate tanks - on the fly. A proportional manifold is a thing used in hydraulics if you want say a pair of rams to move together - even if the load is different on each - for example the rams that lift the front shovel on a digger. They are a bit like a pair of oil gear pumps connected together on the same shaft. If you were to connect one side to the diesel and the other to the veg oil, a given amount of diesel flowing through the manifold would pump the same volume of oil through the other side. This would give a consistent, precise mixture of the two, from separate tanks. Just a thought. Si

OK, Time to share my experience so far. There is just too much info on the web - and a lot of it contradictory (a lot of it is just wrong - or skewed by companies trying to flog £799 kits for running SVO). My current average fuel consumption in a 200tdi is 24.2mpg - most of which is short runs < 5 mile. My average over 6 years of commuting 34 miles per day was 28.4mpg in the same vehicle. Why do I know this so precisely? It's a company vehicle - and I keep accurate fuel & mileage records. The last tank worth I ran 50% sunflower oil with Millers fuel additive for a bit of extra lube. I got 24.1mpg - so within the experimental accuracy - the same mpg. I would conclude therefore that the stories of the oil not atomising and not burning when cold - is just plain untrue. The diesel and veg oil are misible i.e mix completly, do not separate out like oil & water. There is no way they wil magically separate in the injectors. If the combustion was that poor when cold, I would expect a measurable reduction in mpg - emphasised by the short runs and the engine never reaching operating temperature. It would be worth removing one of the injectors & fire it up just to see what the spray pattern is like. I went to tesco today to buy oil - completly sold out, save for small and expensive bottles. Went to Sainsburys - and bought all the 3l bottles they had (12) - and it was only £0.49 per litre. The last tank worth was £0.69 a litre - maybe the demand is drawing down prices? As for the £799 kits. The first people to run on SVO built their own. If you use manual change-over 'Y' valves and can remember not to switch to oil until the engine is up to temperature and to purge the system before you stop - you don't need the £299 control box. The heat exchanger is easy to make. Simplest is a length of 1/2" anealed copper pipe (used for air conditioning) with 8mm anealed copper pipe (microbore heating systems) wound tightly in a coil around it. Even better if one is soldered to the other. Insulate and wrap in tape. The 1/2" pipe goes before the heater in your cooling system and the 8mm in series with the oil feed to the engine. An oil tank can be as simple as a jerry can - or even one of the nice orange plastic tanks - all of £40. I sent Tony a circuit for how to build a simple controller that you can build for a couple of quid - it has a purge warning buzzer and will only allow you to switch to oil when the engine is up to temp. If tony wants to post it - that's fine. I deleted the file by mistake. With the fuel prices as high as they are and the Veg oil prices as low - it would be rude not to! Si

Does the cable you are trying to join on to the control have the right fitting to attach to the plunger - i.e. is it just the nut assembly you are missing? If it were me, I would machine something which engages with the slot on the plunger and attaches to your cable with a crimp . screw - then machine the threaded bit. Make it sleeve the fitst bit of the cable sleeve - and hold it in place with hose clips / hot glue. Si

Three identical bicycles! Any fool can fix one - and by the end of the year we'll all be as thin as Mr Turbocharger! Si

I suspect this, like most other protests, will fall on deaf ears - however, I whave written on behalf of X-Eng to support the cause. This, in one fell swoop will put most of the LR (and other cars) parts suppliers out of business - so it's quite important! Si