callum

sorry i meant fuel duty was on the fuel you burned and road tax was a flat-ish rate. even if your car taxed at £400 wasn't switched on at all during the year and therefore emmitted nothing, it still faces the higher band of tax. whereas you could do 100000miles in your honda insight or smart diesel and pay nothing. whilst road tax is helpful for effectively paying for a parking space on the public highway for a year and keepig down the number of cars laying about at the side of the road, its basis on emmisions is somewhat unfair. you are taxed for what your car could emit rather than what it actually does emit in reality.

as an owner of older more rubbish cars, i would concur. what is concerning though is the second hand market for these cars. the initial buyer may not be too fussed by £400 road tax, but maybe 10 years down the line nobody is interested in buying one because of the cost of tax vs value of car. could lead to a premature end to a vehicle's life because of taxation, which seems slightly wasteful. the older system of paying tax on the fuel you burn would seem to tie up better with environmental concerns. the more fuel you burn, the more emissions you create and therefore the more you have to pay

i think you'll struggle to get longfields now unless you do the whole toy conversion. http://www.rovertracks.com/products/axles.html now out of production and according to the above, the manufacturer (rockford aeromatic i think is the name, although i may have that a bit wrong) was asked to stop producing the rover longfields at the request of another more expensive manufacturer. so unless you can find some that have not yet been sold i think your decision is made for you. later on date in the year had been bandied about on pirate for the resumption production of rover longfields/longtracks. also remember that longfield versions are/were 27 spline at the cv end like toyota and they did not make an aue 2522 version, only the later type, which i cannot remmeber the number of. in the unlikely event you break one, you can't make a temprary substitution with a standard part whilst you wait for your free replacement. hope that helps.

can get 315's for a 16" rim, they'd fit on a 2" lifted 90. if you got busy with the scissors you could most likely get them on an unlifted one too. if you roll on to a thread in the 'out and about section' jimfoo has posted some trail shots and there's a disco 2 running a set. not quite sure what size though.

they are available, not sure about in the uk yet though. they're only available in a pretty limited size range at the moment, mostly larger sizes i think. unfortunately its a bit too early to tell what the wear rate will be in comparison to their predecessors, but in terms of performance they seem to have received a number of very favourable reviews.

could it be considered a fuel additive though? are stp, redex etc taxed for use on the road?

ahhh, that's a pretty useful picture, but really, you didn't have to tear your 109 apart just to show me 90's/110's have lights down the bottom, but i dont see any harm in bringing them inside i suppose. strangely the 109 in the scrapyard (a hard top van) had lockers on both sides. i wish i had paid more attention to it to be honest, i can only assume it ran a swb tank. it was actually a pretty pimp one with an inside wheel carrier on the seatbox on the driver's side and door trims on the cab doors. such things must have been considered superfluous by 1983. now that you are running 37's do you suffer from any interference with the standard locker? perhaps that's not so relevant to you given the not inconsiderable distance you now have between your hubs and the body. thanks for your help

thanks for the input, although its probably not what i wanted to hear. i was rather hoping they dropped into an aperture in the seat box rather than being spot welded into place. i suppose i shall just have to bend up my own. I might have to try a tiny vice based folderiserfrom screwfix et al. since finishing uni i don't have access to a proper folder anymore, which is a shame as they made a rather better job of things than a workmate and a block of wood. one last question, the ones in the 109 were pretty big and i presume went right to the back of the vehicle. did this mean that any access to the tail lights was through these lockers? anyway, thanks for your input

i came across a 109 in the scrapyard the other day and it had storage lockers at the rear of the seatboxes accessed from inside. i thought about swiping these to put in my 110. i didn't get a particularly good look, so i'm trying to find out a bit more information about them and whether it is feasible to remove them from that vehicle. they looked to be spot welded in, which is a pain in the arse, are there any other fixings. also do they make up the structure of the tub, i.e if i were to cut them out would have to cut out the whole wing or are they kind of double skinned. also, how close to the tyres run to these when suspension is compressed. i have lsightly larger than standard tyres and i dont want them to rub. although in saying that, i don thtink it would be difficult to reshape the boxes. finally is it worth the bother of trying to ge them out? can i buy new ones from someone and save myself lots of hassle? thanks for your assistance, i'm not terribly familiar with series vehicles.

a bit off topic and i wasn't really sure which forum this should be in, but a friend gave me the link to this manual for dakar preparation for a lada niva. some quite interesting reading as the solution is not 'give it to your multi million pound works garage' but its more little modifications for desert and rally work that an enthusiast could carry out on a budget. some stuff might be applicable to land rovers of varying sorts too. http://www.veytisou.com/lada/Lada_Niva_Dakar_preparation.pdf translated from french so there might be some odd terms, but the person that did it did a really good job.

reasonable rule of thumb is 1/3 taxes and processing etc ammount to about a third of te cost of the item. of course stuff varies, but that is a reasonable guide.

to veer wildly off topic, have you any more information on that creation or pictures, it looks ace.

upside down portals

you can see in this csk pic that later ones mounted to the b pillar. i expect this is the same set up as in later lhd 2 doors you will see in europe with the more modern mid 80's on seats. i have read about reinforcement of the b pillar on an australian forum before, perhaps you could do a search on outerlimits4x4.com maybe a parts manual might reveal is there is a land rover part for this.

...but you'd have to remove a corner of your radiator or do without a steering box. (well, if you have a proper tdi radiator i suppose you could flip the handing of the rad and move the intercooler up front)

maybe its just an MOD thing, but is there not meant to be a bracket which attaches to the threaded holes on the underside of the diff to prevent the track rod doing a proper banana. it only prevents the rod bending backwards and downwards unfortunately (and i managed to bend mine the other way), but it does allow a bit of flex before giving resistance. if you fit a fatter rod you'd have to modify it to get enough clearance though.

thought i recognised that car. pictures i have of it have standard 120y lights and some different rims. might you then be 'will lightburn, alias datman' as featured in retro cars june 2005. this maybe explains the nissan thing. looks quite mean now.

could take a look at the new bfg mud km2. they seem to be getting good reviews at the moment. limited sizes though and 315/75r16 is the only 35" size available at the moment. of course them being new means not much idea of their longevity. you'd probably be one of the first in the country with them.

i'm afraid that's all you can get. i went to great lengths not to get abritpart one, but the one i ended up with is not much better than that. very thin steel held together with short bursts of weld, spatter all over the place and bits of wire stuck to it in places. in its defence i carefully measured it and it all seems ot be the correct size and alignment but its still ****. it will have to receive lots of remedial work before going on. i spoke to a few chassis suppliers when hunting for a non britpart one and they just used pattern parts rather than making their own, so when you get anew chassis, that's what you get attached to the end of it.

be sure to let us know when you solve that old chestnut.

b-ling looking good will, was wondering how you were goign to deal with instruments etc i think its the better bet taking the japanese wiring, it always seems to work properly and they use really good connectors. they also use (shock) relays, which i think are alien matter to land rover.

thanks for your help folks, i think have helped me sort it out now. shall blank off the mystery extra hole at the top of the rad and plumb it in as per 200tdi retrofit. hopefully that will do the trick. cheers callum

thanks for that ralph, you're a star...and the bearer of bad news, that's immensely complicated. i had just assumed the 300tdi tank was a plastic version of the earlier brass tank. but then you know what the say about assumption. i don't suppose a similar diagram exists for the 200 tdi? i'm hoping that i might be bale to use teh plastic tank i have to do the same job as the metal tank, or maybe some sort of combination of the two. is that diagram from the workshop manual? i shall go have alook through my workshop manuals to see if it is there. thanks again callum EDIT: jsut found a diagram in my 200tdi retro-fit manual. 200tdi verion it seems has the plastic tank, but a more simple set up. now to see if i can find the td/ normally aspirated diesel set up to see what i began with.

been trying to sort out my hybrid isuzu/land rover cooling system by making it a bit more land rover. it currently runs a 2.5 n/a diesel radiator and an isuzu expansion bottle, venting through a 1/2" bsp pressure fitting on top of the radiator. i decided i should go with a land rover expansion tank and normal pressure cap in the bottle, so i bought a nice 300tdi bottle to solve all my problems. Of course my move to simplify things made them much more complicated. on the 300tdi tank there are two connections, 1 higher up one (with which i was supplied the bit of hose) which i presume goes to the radiator and one at the bottom, which looking at pictures of 300tdi engines seems to hook up to the bottom rad hose. on the n/a deisel radiator there are two connectoins for the expansion bottle at tthe top of the radiator. i can't remember how it was plumbed in when i had the n/a 2.5 in and now am thoroughly bamboozled as to how i should attach this tank to the my radiator/cooling system. i'm not really sure what the aim of the plumbing ought to be, has anyone come across diagrams for land rover cooling systems which might let me know what i am trying to achieve. I'm also open to suggestoins as to what i should be trying to connect to what. the system i have at the moment works, but i seem to be losing water so wanted to make it a more simple set up. i did not bear in mind/remember that a land rover set up was maybe not so simple. thanks callum

if you're in the uk is it worthwhile doing this? usually is is discussed in north american forums because its what they have over there and they have been unable to fit in 6bt's. in europe you have better access to diesel engines from medium trucks from europe and japan. in many cases someone has gone to the trouble of making conversoin kits, which make your life much easier. also in north america they dont have access to 4x4 sized small diesels so tend to go towards 'bread van' diesels such as the 4bt as there isn't anything else. i have also heard that 4bt's are pretty noisy, so i you're set on a diesel that size you might want to look towards something a bit more refined from isuzu or nissan if you are keen on motorway cruising.