Oh the joy of a frosty morning and a cold spanner....

It's getting to that time of year again, cold and damp, and any thoughts of major work have been put on hold. With Elly in the garage there's only just room to close the door so working around her is difficult. However, there are some jobs that'll need doing before our trip next year so the local garage might get some more business since any major, or even minor work has to be done outside on the gravel and with little protection from the weather....

Fairly high on the Job Priority List will have to be the persistent fuel leak. Having chased this leak all over the place and sorted out various points that were clearly not as tight as they should be, we found that when we filled the long-range tank there were drips from the forward edge of the main tank. When the fuel in the LR tank dropped to about 10 litres - a guess since there's no gauge for it - then the drips stopped. Mike proved this by filling both tanks, moaned about the leak again and siphoned about 25 litres out again. I'll tell yer, sucking diesel through a plastic pipe is unpleasant enough anyway, but when you've got a beard for the stuff to splash into, well....makes a glass of wine taste a bit odd for a while. Anyway, the leak is coming from the top of the main tank where the fuel return goes in - or not, in our case. 

this diagram came from  https://www.landroverworkshop.com/diagrams/fuel-emission-systems/fuel-air-inlet-systems/fuel-tank-pump-and-mountings_53500

The cause is either a broken pipe - part 20 in the diagram, a broken seal (part 21) or a loose connection, all of which need the tank dropped to fix. With no ramp or sufficient muscle, this is a professional garage job. We'll just have to pick a time when the tank's almost empty. It's going to be expensive but the alternative is a smelly rear end, just like last time and not pleasant to sleep and eat with the smell of leaking fuel even if it's only a drip every minute or so. The fuel spreads out over the base of the tank and soaks up dust, which soaks up more fuel and so on until the whole of the underside of the tank, chassis and crossmember are thick with it. It'll be a good time to renew all the rubber pipes since they don't look too great either, and we'll do a proper job using proper parts on the tank breather (25-27) which we had to sort out in France this year.

Now that we've moved the Engel onto the "middle shelf" the Stealth Camper option is open again. With that in mind we've had another thought about blackout curtains. The curtain rod arrangement between the front and back worked but it was untidy and awkward to use. We need something that just fits onto the windows. Mike raided the scrapyard at work again and came home with a few metres of what looked like brown string. This is basically a fridge magnet - quite literally. 

If you strip the seal from a fridge door and cut it open the stuff inside is a strip of magnetic rubber that is strong enough to hold thin material against steel surfaces. Et voila! - the new blackout blinds! Made from bits of old tent - the really light stuff. The bits of Elly that aren't magnetic just had some bits of the brown string glued to it to fool the magnets that hold up the blind. If carefully fitted we've checked from the outside and no chinks of light leak out and because they're black the telltale sign that there's folk in residence isn't so obvious.
 

 We'll do something similar to hold midge netting in place as well. The doors and side windows get this treatment while the windscreen has a foil heat reflector painted black on the outer side and held in place by the sun visors. The blinds don't offer much in the way of heat insulation though, so we may still have to make some radiator foil - type liners for cold weather living.

Moving the fridge has meant we've lost the storage space for the spare gas bottle.

 We saw some very neat external carriers on some of the rigs at Stratford so we've made up something similar - but much simpler - that uses the ladder as a basic frame. The rest is made up from mild steel strip bent up on the bench and the hinge is a leftover from some DIY project.

The whole thing is rock-solid when closed with a bolt and wingnut, the other nuts are the anti-tamper square ones and there's a padlock to make sure we stay the rightful owners. With the roof tent in place we don't use the rear ladder anyway, so now it's working for a living.

The doors have had the security lock treatment but the windows are still vulnerable. Not much we can do about the front windows but a bit of work with the welding torch and Mike made up some grilles for the back that should at least make a casual tea-leaf have second thoughts. 

It was also a good time to finish off the inner door paintwork to match the outside and get rid of the previous owner's attempts to do the same but with a pot of Dulux and a yard broom. This aspect isn't really very important, but it's just a lot more rewarding to do the job properly instead of getting a little bit more irritated every time we look at something that we just didn't bother to do right the first time.



We've had yet another try at fixing the roof lining....this time we had to strip off everything previously glued - or rather, not glued - to the rear roof panels. We looked at buying some self-adhesive "egg box" sound insulation from Noisekiller but it's quite expensive and probably not very easy to clean either, so with loads of thick closed cell foam lying about we've tried again using that and some different glue.

This'll be the 4th attempt, having tried just about everything short of tile cement!

The bit over the cooker has radiator foil glued to it to provide a wipe-clean surface. We'll see how long it takes for this latest attempt to fall off!

Our requests for stickers to a number of off-road equipment suppliers has had some success. It'd be unfair to name those who didn't bother to respond - not even a "no, go away" - and that's disappointing. It might make the decision easier when it comes to spending money on replacement parts, though. Those who did respond - and some were very generous with their stuff - will get a mention at some point, either directly or in pictures, as well as some of our cash. A big "Thank You" to everyone who helped make Elly a little more "personalised".😎

Mike's been wanting to do a bit more painting - adding a stripe or two to Elly's flanks, but that will have to wait until the weather gets warmer/drier/less windy....next summer, in other words, and perhaps not even then. Oh, for a bigger garage!

....and finally....the Wobble is back. Despite having had both front wheels balanced there's still a really annoying "steering wheel wobble" at 50-55mph. This is just the speed we tend to spend most of our time. Having checked everything else, Mike is homing in on something called a Panhard Rod. I can see his legs sticking out from underneath, on the gravel, in the rain.....