glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 20, 2024 20:46:55 GMT
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Did a bit today after work. Dragged out the spare engine and fitted the centre section of the manifold to see what room I had to play with. Found another dipstick tube as I had pretty much ruined the first one, and started again. Gently eased it into a shape that allowed it to fit in the space available. I’m not completely divorced from the idea of fitting a second alternator yet, so I also made sure that it would fit around the cut down bracket so that if I revisit it in the future I don’t have to remake the dipstick tube a third time. I will leave the alternator bracket on this spare engine for now, so I don’t mislay it, and I made up a short spacer tube to take its place instead. Welded on the steady tag, then gave it a quick squirt of paint. Hopefully I’ll get it fitted and the Land-Rover back together tomorrow. After that I will be doing a fluids change/top up, new filters, and a couple of other jobs.
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 20, 2024 19:17:21 GMT
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Liked for the KFC only.
😉
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 20, 2024 11:59:41 GMT
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Ditto. 👍👍
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 19, 2024 10:43:34 GMT
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Both of those are options.
I have resorted to sticking the battery on charge every now and then, but the issue with that is the necessity to disconnect the battery being charged from the system to prevent the split charge relay cutting in and trying to charge both batteries simultaneously, which confuses a normal battery conditioner like a ctek or optimate. A solar panel would work well enough in the summer months, but will require a proper charge controller and things start to get a little bit more spendy than I’m comfortable with pretty quickly. The other downsides of solar are increased height when I only just squeak into car parks etc as it is, and the major one being that as soon as I get an opportunity to build one, I intend parking the Land-Rover under cover…
Running two alternators would have been the simplest solution electrically, but not if it’s going to make the under bonnet area even more of a Heath-Robinson lashup than it already is.
I have been reading up about dedicated motorhome/marine setups that can take input power from an alternator, a mains hookup and a solar panel, and then maintain two or more batteries properly. These too are a bit spendier than I’m comfortable with, but they do look like the best solution (other than the fact that I can’t justify the cost just now 🤣).
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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I don’t think so Mark. I think the root of the problem is that I am currently doing too little driving, and what I am doing is too short a duration and with too much low speed work. I currently have a 75 amp alternator fitted, which should be more than enough, but even a 100+ version is still not going to be generating enough with the current way I’m using the wagon.
The issue is compounded by the fact that it appears the night heater has a constant low parasitic draw, which is pulling the auxiliary battery down, and because I have a simple voltage sensing split charge relay that means that the auxiliary battery gets the lion’s share of the available charging current.
I’m sure that if I did more miles, or less low speed stuff with all the lights on, that I wouldn’t have any issues.
Putting the smaller diameter crank pulley on isn’t going to help, but as far as avoiding further mechanical damage it’s the only way to go.
I’m going to fit an isolator switch on the night heater, to see if that is enough, and if not then I’ll investigate a smart battery management system instead of the simple relay.
I have also picked up a good, secondhand Eberspacher night heater that should be better than the cheap one I have at the moment, and might have a lower current consumption when not being used.
Hopefully having a drive belt that doesn’t slip, and the fuse out of the heater, will be enough to make a difference in the short term. At the moment I need to get over the dipstick hurdle before I can go any further. 😃👍
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 18, 2024 21:28:46 GMT
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With that swapped, and the spacer given a quick squirt of paint, everything went back together ok, and I was pleased to find that a stock Discovery main belt (crank/waterpump/power steering) was a perfect fit. That’s a result in itself as it means belts are cheap and easy to get. It was at this point that things started to go less well. I wasted a good couple of hours trying to get a second alternator mounted on the engine above the first, using the original Discovery mount. This did not go to plan. Firstly I had to cut all the power steering pump mounting bits off the bracket and then, once I had got that done and a second alternator mocked up, it became abundantly clear that driving it was going to be an issue. It’s not an impossibility, but it’s either going to require fitting a double pulley to the main alternator and revising its mount so that the second groove can drive the second alternator via a short belt; or revisiting the main alternator mount rearward and driving it from the rear groove in the crank pulley, then driving the second alternator and the waterpump from the front. Either way it is too much work for too little return, particularly now as time is running out for road trip prep. So I eventually gave up on the idea completely and moved on to the next disaster of the day. The current dipstick is a much bent affair from a Defender Tdi, and it’s too short to be able to reach easily now that it’s buried under intercooler and intake pipework. I had found a Disco 200 Tdi dipstick that I had carefully reshaped on my spare engine so I next spent an inordinate amount of time trying to undo and remove the old dipstick. When I eventually got the damned thing off I discovered that clever me had remembered to route the tube around the end of the manifold, but had forgotten to take into account the turbo and the down pipe. Doh. So my nicely painted and prepared dipstick just would not fit no matter how much I swore at it. 😡 So I have to work out a different way to get the job done…
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 18, 2024 21:02:39 GMT
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 18, 2024 20:51:44 GMT
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Today has been a mixed bag. Some of the jobs that I wanted to do went ok, others not so… The first thing to address was the wonky bottom pulley. On my old engine I have a heavy cast and machined one, but on this engine it’s a pressed steel affair. They stick out a fair bit further than a on the standard engines, and are also bigger in diameter. This means that, under full deflection, they can clatter the front axle. Now there’s signs that my old engine’s pulley had hit the axle more than once, but it was obviously strong enough to take that abuse. Sadly, the pressed steel ones clearly aren’t, and I have wrecked a couple of them now. Time to do something about it. Another issue that I have been having is that the crank and water pump pulleys are 13mm wide for an “A” section belt, but the alternator has a narrow pulley on it. I have been using a narrow belt since fitting this engine and it’s been impossible to stop it slipping slightly as it’s been running on the bottom of the grooves rather than the sides. So first thing was to pull off the bottom pulley and work out how to go forward. You can see how the belt has been running by the way the pulley is polished and how the belt itself is worn. I took the cast pulley off my other engine and did a comparison. It’s slightly smaller in diameter, which might account for some of the damage, but it’s still going to be vulnerable. I did briefly consider using the inner groove on that second pulley, but it was going to require a custom water pump pulley fabricating, and a reworking of the alternator mount to move that back too, which I decided was simply too much work. So I continued to root through the stores. I found a pulley from a Defender 200tdi which was both cast and smaller diameter, so I cleaned it up and put it side by side with the Discovery one.
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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That's a very kind offer Glen, but Andy really wants to keep to the smiths guage. No problem. I prefer the traditional Smiths gauges too, which is why I have never fitted this to anything yet. 😃👍
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 15, 2024 17:50:31 GMT
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I have got this here that you’re welcome to if you want it. New and unopened. Capillary type, so no sender issues.
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 14, 2024 13:43:45 GMT
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You could always swap out the whole lot for a capillary gauge…
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 14, 2024 12:07:55 GMT
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Those senders will either work for years, or fail straight out of the box.
As has been mentioned, thread seal tape can stop them working.
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 13, 2024 22:28:55 GMT
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…any mods to the chassis should be done more than 30 years ago so as not to upset DVLA I have also found that making sure that all mods were carried out at least thirty years ago is the best way. 🤣 Plausible deniability is key. 😉
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 13, 2024 10:37:58 GMT
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Out of curiosity, what’s the chassis like on UFM? And does it have a V5? Once stripped of all the bits you need the rolling chassis might make a decent basis for a special…
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 13, 2024 10:33:59 GMT
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I’d definitely be looking at a bigger, later version of the B-Series if more power/useability whilst retaining all the benefits of tax/mot exemption is your goal.
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 13, 2024 10:31:07 GMT
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Yeah, sending off an old V5 only works if the vehicle is live on the system, which NNB919 isn’t. Keeping the old V5 safe while lining up all the other ducks for the owners’ club to go the V765 route is the best option. The only thing that you need to bear in mind, if it’s going to bother you, is that they don’t list the number as “non transferable” when they reissue all the paperwork.
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 12, 2024 17:38:55 GMT
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That does look like you have the basis for one very good car from the two there. 👍
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 11, 2024 16:23:25 GMT
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I’ll have a dig around in the shed and see what I can find.
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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Jul 11, 2024 12:40:42 GMT
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Nice. Welcome to the fold. Are you going to fit the side sill panels? If so, I might have a set for a SWB, or most of a set anyway...
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member
Posts: 4,262
Club RR Member Number: 64
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1964 Bedford J6glenanderson
@glenanderson
Club Retro Rides Member 64
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Jul 10, 2024 19:35:11 GMT
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Fantastic. I am quite jealous of your progress. 👍👍👍
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My worst worry about dying is my wife selling my stuff for what I told her it cost...
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