The Grave yard

[jules]

I don't see the point in buying a car that losses money faster than last years laptop.

Spend 28k on a Alfa

I may as well stand on my drive every morning and burn £30 for three years it would cost me less then a alfa would.

[Steve Hiatt]

I like Alfas too but wouldn't buy new.

We've got an Alfa 75 3.0 V6, currently resting awaiting some enthusiasm but we had two trouble free years and 20,000 miles for £500. I did. a few odd jobs on it but it never let us down. Incidently looking at ebay I could probably get a grand for it now!

Pig ugly but great to drive, the last of the RWD Alfas

[Guest diesel_jim]

I used the 8274 to fit the bulkhead on my project90-2.....

but i don't think the scaffold bar liked it much......

[Hybrid_From_Hell]

I have just written to them as I have a new editorial for them.

A friend of mine has just bought a Lotus elise, and he thinks its useless.

As a builder he says he now can't get either his cement mixer in it, nor his 11 bags of cement and 40 noggins, and as such the manufactuer should be brought to book. Nobody told him this fact when he bought it to replace his transit, disgraceful. People should be made aware of these sorts of shortfalls

Nige

[reads90]

I don't see the point in buying a car that losses money faster than last years laptop.

Spend 28k on a Alfa

I may as well stand on my drive every morning and burn £30 for three years it would cost me less then a alfa would.

Yeah just ask Matt we have taken the tiddle out of him for years about that fact

But he still carried on buying them brand new

[bill van snorkle]

''Australians let us all ring Joyce, for she is young and free.

-----------------------------

You have obviously learned by now that around 90 % of Australians (100% of Queenslanders)don't know the true words to our national Anthem.

Don't stay up there too long. The sun will eventually shrivel your brain to the size of a pea.

[bill van snorkle]

Anyone know how the pull rating of 4x4 winches is determined ? If a winch is rated at say 8000lb on the first layer, why would it not be capable of lifting that same 8000lb ? I did read somewhere that for a winch to be rated for lifting, the drum diameter had to be a minimum of 13 times the diameter of suitably rated rope. Anything else ?

Bill.

[BogMonster]

Yes you can do it and no HSE "experts" won't recommend it but HSE rules are designed so the lowest common denominator (a complete f***ing idiot from the shallow end of the gene pool, the bit where it has started to dry out, the sort of person who would light a match to look for a gas leak in the middle of the night) can't really hurt themselves.

I made a fitting on my garage roof to put a pulley block on to and used my winch for hanging a 1/4 of beef to cut down:

Worked a treat

The sensible things to do when using a pulling-only device for lifting would be:

1) Apply a safety factor of about 10 to 1 in other words with a 4/5 tonne winch don't lift anything more than about 500kg

and

2) Remember it (probably) doesn't have any safety features built in e.g. over centre valves on a hyd winch so if the winch fails the load falls. I.e. stand out of the #kin way!

The one thing I would not do is use it for raising people except in a dire emergency e.g. somebody who had just fallen over a cliff, because of the lack of safety features.

Somebody in the know may correct me on this but I *think* the Tirfor type winches are rated for lifting which is why they are referred to as a "wire rope hoist". I have one of those too (a T-Max hand winch) but the Milemarker was much easier to use

[BogMonster]

Anyone know how the pull rating of 4x4 winches is determined ? If a winch is rated at say 8000lb on the first layer, why would it not be capable of lifting that same 8000lb ? I did read somewhere that for a winch to be rated for lifting, the drum diameter had to be a minimum of 13 times the diameter of suitably rated rope. Anything else ?

Bill.

Bill

I think most 4x4 winches are rated on the "absolute maximum load it will pull for 1/2 second before something goes pop" basis

I have read all sorts of different figures but "proper" equipment I think has a safety factor of 2 for pulling, around 5 to 7 for lifting and 10 for lifting people i.e. minimum breaking strain of the weakest part is 2 or 5 or 7 or 10 times the rated load.

[reads90]

''Australians let us all ring Joyce, for she is young and free.

-----------------------------

You have obviously learned by now that around 90 % of Australians (100% of Queenslanders)don't know the true words to our national Anthem.

Don't stay up there too long. The sun will eventually shrivel your brain to the size of a pea.

Have you not seen the film kenny . Bloody funny film

[FridgeFreezer]

My H14W (14000lb) is safety stamped for lifting 1 ton, it's ex-electric board and apparently they use them to lift & raise poles. Gives you an idea of the safety factor. It's also stamped for 1.5 Tons pulling, although I'm guessing that would be for pulling something that has no wheels up a very steep hill

[jules]

Yeah just ask Matt we have taken the tiddle out of him for years about that fact

But he still carried on buying them brand new

But hat off to him his new Masaratti is very nice. (bit bling but very nice)

[bill van snorkle]

So a ''proper'' 8000lb winch would be a very large piece of equipment then? I have noticed the old LandRover optional Hydraulic winch (very rare over here) at 5000lb pull rating was much more heavily built than the more commonly seen American 8000lb pull rating jobs. Are British standards for rating winches more exacting than US standards?

Bill.

[reads90]

But hat off to him his new Masaratti is very nice. (bit bling but very nice)

mmm sounds nice but i have always seen them as the alfa of supercars

[Mark90]

Buying a new Maserati is a sure way to address the money/sense balance.

[FridgeFreezer]

I'm sure Jules or someone else familiar with the current regs will post up soon but a winch that is "health and safety" rated for 8000lbs lifting would have to be capable of lifting about 6x as much. The safety factors are massive, but I guess here's a reason for it.

4x4 winches are, as has been mentioned, often rated in a similar fashion to the "PMPO Watts" rating you see on PC speakers - EG think of a number and double it

[bill van snorkle]

Have you not seen the film kenny . Bloody funny film

Yes I have heard it's good value. But no I haven,t seen it yet.

Bill.

[Michele]

We've got an Alfa 75 3.0 V6, the last of the RWD Alfas

Once upon a time they were Alfa Romeo,

now they're FIAT which want to look like Alfa.

[reads90]

Buying a new Maserati is a sure way to address the money/sense balance.

last time i was talking to him he could not make his mind up between a Disco 3 or Maserati

Talk about differant cars

Looks like he went for the Maserati

[d110pickup]

Ya'll are going to love this use.

A friend here built a new shop and needed a way to lift the roof trusses into place. He constructed this crane using a very strong ladder and his Jeep with an 8274. He is an engineer and was confident that the rig would support the weight of one truss (about 100 lbs.) and they were careful not to stand under a load.

To give an idea of scale those are 42 inch tires on the Jeep.

Mike

[BogMonster]

I'm sure Jules or someone else familiar with the current regs will post up soon but a winch that is "health and safety" rated for 8000lbs lifting would have to be capable of lifting about 6x as much. The safety factors are massive, but I guess here's a reason for it.

4x4 winches are, as has been mentioned, often rated in a similar fashion to the "PMPO Watts" rating you see on PC speakers - EG think of a number and double it

Rated, and load tested frequently too I think, though I don't know how much they overload a lifting device from its "rated load" to load test it before issuing a certificate. A part of our company maintains forklifts used by the MOD and I think those have to be given a "thorough examination" and certified about three or four times a year!

I thought PMPO was think of a number and quadruple it

[leeds]

Dependent on the load to be lifted, surely using a vehicle winch as a crane would start to lift the front end of the landrover up.

If the load is only of the order of a few hundred kilos then this would not be a major problem.

If you wanted to lift a couple of tons using a LR winch then having a pulley block firmly fasten to the floor in front of the LR before the winch cable went over a second pulley fixed above the object to be lifted would surely overcome the problem of front end of LR going up.

The LR winch is then being used for pulling rather then for lifting. Yep HSE would probably have a dicky fit, but when needs must etc.

Sorry i don't know how to put sketch diagrams on here.

Regards

Leeds

[FridgeFreezer]

That's why recovery trucks use A-frames bolted to the chassis - you're lifting relative to the chassis not relative to the floor, so rather than the landy go up in the air the load goes up in relation to the A-frame.

[BigSi110]

I ran an Alfa 156 for over a year as a company car and did 40,000 miles in it..

Looked and sounded superb (for a 4-pot).

Build quality wasn't that good, the engine drank nearly a litre of oil every 750 miles (in the end, I never checked it, but just added half a litre to it every week - it was doing about 700 miles / week anyway, but the engine note changed dramatically when the oil was low, so I always knew), but within Alfa limits, the steering (quick, but devoid of feel) was OK, handling OK (handled WAY better with a load in the boot) and interior space awful.

I loved the car as it made long journeys fun (in places), but scary in others (wet-weather handling was very twitchy).

The dealer was total sh*t. Charged £800 for a main service WITHOUT cambelt, sent the car out after a service in a dangerous state (needed new suspension bushes, leasing company wouldn't pay, dealer gave me car back without any thoughts about the car's safety!!!! - it went back!).

A flawed gem.

On balance, I MUCH preferred (and still do) driving my E-Class. The chassis communicates much more, steering is way better and build is in another galaxy.

I miss the Alfa, but if it was as good as it could have been, I'd have bought myself another one.

As things ended up, I gave up a job with a company car and bought the 110.

Although the experiences are similar, I've never been as obsessed with a car as much as the 110.

[Paul64]

Here is my 100 euro baby! She joins the family on Feb 24th.

Here is the roof damage after she took a roll in the wind!