simonr

You missed that you have to be rubbing your tummy & patting your head at the same time as doing all this! The last replacement key I had for my RR, a local key place (Timpsons) did it. £100, including the key & fob. 6 years on, still works perfectly.

Variable displacement pumps are quite common industrially. I once found one on a Bin Lorry at a scrap-yard, attached to the crank. Unfortunately it was fed by 2" hoses, which I thought might be a bit excessive in a Land Rover! Normally they're a swash-plate design with an actuator which varies the angle of the swash plate through another feed of hydraulic pressure. One big advantage, along side the variable speed, is not needing a clutch to connect it to the crank. Just set a zero angle on the swash plate & it doesn't pump at all. Worth a look on eBay I guess!

Chris (GBMud) had just messaged me to say Les had died. I'd like to send my best wishes to everyone that knew him. Ironically, he would have hated a thread like this, it not being Technical or about Land Rovers 😉. However, I view the forum as a group of friends who happen to like Land Rovers & Technical stuff. So, when one of US dies, I think it deserves mention! RIP Les.

I've slept in a Bivi, under my 110. I didn't even wake up with the Bivi covered in dripping oil! I used to just roll up the Bivi with a sleeping bag & Thermarest inside. Then you can go from it being packed away to sleeping in it in about 10 sec!

That looks pretty good. Everything I hoped the new defender would be in fact! Only a shame there's no SWB version. Having had two 110's, two 90's and two SWB Series - SWB seems to fit my purposes better.

Once again, youve made something really cool, this time out of nothing! My friend in Australia is planning on having the same conversation with his wife this weekend. I get the impression it may not go as well as yours though! Still, he can always live in the workshop if it goes badly 😉

Alternatively, many Laser Cutters will fold as well. While I have the facilities for folding, I rarely bother to do it myself. The cost difference between cutting alone & cutting then folding is pretty small. For little stuff, I have one of these & it's fantastic! https://www.axminstertools.com/axminster-adjustable-vice-jaw-bender-100mm-300371 For medium (6mm thick up to 300mm) I have a press with tooling Anything bigger, or too complicated to figure out how to bend it, I just cut slots on the bends. Then it's hard to stop the bend landing on the exact line you need. This approach worked on a bit of 20mm thick steel. Still needed a sledge hammer to bend it - but it bent perfectly. If the bend needs the strength, you can put a nice fillet weld in the gap. I made the gaps on the above wider than they need, to make them obvious. If you make them 1/2 the material thickness, wide - the inner edges touch one another.

There are more & more completely self contained LiFePO4 'car' batteries on the market. You effectively get double the capacity compared to Lead Acid - so your 100Ah Lead Acid can be replaced by a 50Ah LiFePO4. There's a significant weight saving even for the same Ah rating. I've used Victron LiFePO4 'smart' batteries previously - expensive but reliable. They have a Bluetooth app server built in. 100Ah weighed about 10kg. I've also used second hand Valance batteries which show up on eBay fairly often. These are fantastic! The BMS is built in - you just treat it like a car battery. When the battery is rated for over thousands of 100% charge discharge cycles (which you rerely do in a car), being second hand barely affects the life expectancy. I paid £300 for the last 100Ah Valance battery.

Me too! But chargers are an off the shelf item, as is the battery management (and the two talk to one another) - so, these days it's pretty simple! I've used LiFePO4 cells, mainly because they are the hardest to set fire to (or make spontaneously combust), the down-side being lower power density. Probably worth it for the peace of mind!

I had an Adwest, remanufactured box - which was about as perfect as it could be! However, I've read that Adwest is now part of the Magal Group - so I've no idea what they'll be like now! Still, if I needed one today - I would still buy one. There are several retailers apparently offering Adwest Boxes.

And you're probably better at that than me!

🤣

At work, we have a couple of mobile single post lifts which seem to work pretty well. They were about the same price as a 2 post. We bought them because space was very limited where we were and we didn't need to work on cars every day. On other days, the lift was pushed into a corner or outside.

I have a servo self-levelling bed in my camper! I don't have to worry about the van being level - just push the 'level' button on the bed and seconds later it's comfortable!

I spent about £7.5k. Batteries were £2k of that, for 13.5kWh. For a regular vehicle (heavier than this, Actually Don Incol's Lightweight LR) a rule of thumb seems to be Pack kWh x 2.5 = Range in miles. Based on being half the weight, but about the same drag coefficient, I'm betting on 50m+ range at 30mph & 30m range at 50mph. So, for a 100m range in a Land Rover using new batteries, I would expect to pay about £15k for the bits. If you use 'pre-loved' batteries and maybe a Nissan Leaf motor (which has been thoroughly hacked now, using a 'Thunderstruck' controller), a bit less maybe. The main thing I would change is I were starting over would be to use pre-made battery modules. The amount of extra thinking & construction that needs to go into making your own with heating, cooling & management - isn't worth it!

On a more cheerful note 🙂 This is the first road run of my EV converted Polaris General (with a tiny 'off road' bit too). This has been my project over the last few weeks. If you're interested, I've written most of it up here DIYElectricCar.com

On one of my vehicles, I fitted a remote servo (from an Austin Princess IIRC) to the clutch. I had recently broken one of the bones in my foot (I kicked my 110, remembering too late I was wearing soft wellies rather than my more usual toe cap boots 🤣🥵) The difference was really impressive. The clutch went from heavy & painful to being light as a feather! One could potentially fit a remote servo in line with the brake servo to double the braking assistance. It has the advantage of being remote - so it's easy to package somewhere convenient. There was one of the after market companies selling a remote servo for LR - I made a mental note of it as an easier way to source one in future.

Not me! I've replaced the seal on a couple of vehicles though.

Mo, when you say 'better braking' - do you mean more stopping force, or more pushes of the pedal before the vacuum / assistance is gone? If the latter, a vacuum reservoir makes a big difference. I added one to my V8 90 as it never seemed to produce enough vacuum. The reservoir itself was just a Viair pressure reservoir plus a non return valve - so it would retain the vacuum. This at least would be easy to try before changing a big chunk of the braking system.

Earth points would have been my first conclusion - however, the more I read, the more I thought CANBUS. Then you confirmed a CAN fault! If you can access anything on a CAN network (even the OBDC connector), measure the resistance between CAN High & Low with the battery disconnected. It should read 60 Ohms (or close to that). You will easily see if the resistance is much higher (indicating a break), much lower (a short) or 120 Ohm, indicating one of the two terminations is disconnected. If that is the case, try unplugging & re-plugging modules to see if you can get it back to 60 Ohm. One termination is usually inside the ECU and the second inside the most important / biggest thing on that network (instrument display for example). My suspicion would be a loose / dirty connector on something. The seals in the connectors are often only rated waterproof for 3 years - after that, you may get water ingress. If you find a dodgy connector, unplug it, spray contact cleaner liberally inside, pack it with petrollium jelly and reconnect. That should fix it long term. The jelly just keeps the water out. I have a recurrent problem with the SRS warning light on my RRS. Every few years I have to repeat the contact cleaner & Petrollium jelly trick.

Mine arrived today - and they work brilliantly! I used them on a hose clip which had defied loosening by any other means.

I don't have any photos, but it puts me in mind of a story. Back in the late 80's, I went to a formal dinner hosted by the Royal Institution in some big stately home, near Birmingham. There was a queue of limousines & shiny cars at the enterance, all waiting their turn for valet parking. I was in my, none too tidy 1959 S2 - and felt a bit out of place! I was wishing I had parked around the back! As I drew closer to the enterance, I had a stream of people taking photos of the S2. I assumed I was going to be trouble for turning up in such an inappropriate car. When the Valet asked if he could park my S2, I appologised for it being a bit dirty & not a Limo - but he said, with a beaming smile, everyone inside is talking about my Land Rover. They love it. Afterall, the Queen drives one of these! So, in a way, it out-classes everything else here. Inside, loads of people complimented it, including some Royal dude who said he had a Series 1 and wishes he'd driven that instead.

Any solar is worthwhile - as indicated by the single panel I have connected as a test, just sat on the roof of my bike shed. It's enough to reduce the 'phantom load' (all the internet access points, usb chargers etc that stay on all the time) close to zero during the day for 6 months of the year. To get panels installed on a roof, it may require scaffold & will definitely incur labour costs. The more panels you install, the lower the proportion of this overhead. Where it becomes credible really depends on you & the circumstances. The installers seem to think, around 2-3kW is the minimum sensible. With the best panels, you will see about 200W per sqm - so 10 to 15 sqm.

My backup plan, if planning permission for the solar was refused was to make a 'solar, covered walkway' from the house to my workshop. Just supporting a string of panels on posts, the panels forming a roof. I figured it could qualify as a temporary structure. I also wondered about lining the inside of one of the fences with panels. I'm kind of surprised nobody makes solar fencing! I suspect the cost of energy will continue to rise (and not fall significantly when the current crises are over) - so I may implement the above anyway. I quite like the idea of a covered walkway to my workshop! The covered walkway and fence could deliver another 5kW capacity potentially with minimal build cost on top of the panels. On my Van, I've used panels made by Canadian Solar. These are designed for diffused light - and produce almost as much power when the sun is obscured by cloud as not. They don't seem to be a common option in the UK for some reason? Panels are supposed to deliver the highest efficiency inclined at about 51 deg in the UK. The ones on the van are horizontal - but still seem to perform well. These might be a good option for locations that don't get particularly good light?

I looked at ground-sourced heat pumps. It either meant digging up the whole garden - & the garden aparently wasn't really big enough (1/5th Acre), or drilling a vertical shaft. I can't remember the exact depth, but I think it was about 60m. Again, I can't remember the cost but at the time it was prohibitave. Might be worth re-looking now though! We're all going to be forced down the route of air or ground sourced heat pumps in the not to distant future. Our boiler really needs replacing - so I'll have to look at it soon. The down-sides of air-sourced, at least is the pump itself is fairly big and judging by one which has been installed around the corner from here, fairly noisy. I'm told you need a bigger HW cylinder & ideally need to increase the bore of the CH pipework because the water coming out of the pump is cooler than out of a boiler. I really don't fancy having to tear out all the CH pipework & probably radiators as well - and I have no idea where to put a bigger HW tank! It sounds like a great option for new-builds or if you are replacing the whole heating system - but adds too much cost otherwise. My stop-gap plan is to use the excess solar energy to run the immersion heater in the HW tank. I think that should provide all the hot water over the summer. Maybe if we looked at better insulation too, it would be viable to abandon the gas boiler altogether & just use the immersion heater?