Brickbatts and Bouquets - the Best and Worst of 2018.

The Best and Worst....? That's the title of this post, but having given it some thought it probably isn't the best way to begin the New Year - moaning about poor service from mail order suppliers, I mean. 

 

However, it is worth lavishing some praise on those who've done what I'd expect them to do, though:

Yes, the suppliers of the troublesome Wallas hob. I'm not giving anything away by mentioning their name at last since there's only one place in the UK that supply the kit. Brett, the chap I dealt with, was on the case straight away, arranged a Return-to-Base repair and had the hob back to me within a week. All this at the company's expense. Well "so it should be", you might say, but in the world of commerce this no-nonsense Let's-Get-On-With-It response isn't exactly common and very reassuring when it happens. While it was a pity that it was U/SOOTB (UnServiceable Out Of The Box), mechanical things do break so it was good to find that the people who sell them stand by their promises and sort any problems out.


FloatYourBoat, the new eBay name for JayWolfe marine chandlers.

A satisfyingly quick response to my report of a damaged-in-transit product. Not their fault that it takes a week to get anything from Anywhere South of the ISO-Carriage Charge Line...


DK Salvage- the dealer who replaced the U/SOOTB Landrover jack that I bought on-line. No quibbles, they just sent another one, tested and working.

Then there's the star of the show (or year)....

Larry presents the Fruits of his Labours before going home for breakfast.

Larry Butterworth of LVB OffRoad in Doncaster. Fitted the AluCab roof....you can read the previous posts on this, but enough to say that he and his team did a sterling job, when he said they would, at the price he agreed and delivered on time despite working all night. Top service!

I had high hopes for the pocket-sized jump start pack - see the previous post. Disappointed, it went back to them and I was expecting a lengthy period of debate over what was wrong with it. See below. Not so; I had a refund probably within minutes of the unit arriving back with them.

                   A Happy Customer, will use them all again.


That's the bouquets handed out. I think I'll forget about the brickbatts...and the people who deserve them. Anyone who's interested can find out who I'm talking about by reading the previous rants. Waste of time commenting further; nothing's going to change.


And now, onto more interesting things. Top of the list was the fix for the heater blower. As predicted, the bodge repair of a few weeks ago didn't last more than a few days, so I pulled it all apart again. Although I have some spare connectors they are a right pain to assemble, even on the bench, and I had no intention of taking the loom out to do that. Trying to do it outside in the rain and wind on the wing top wasn't going to work either, so I just cut them off and remade the connections with standard M/F spades and some heat shrink. Since I shouldn't (Hah! I bet I'll regret that) need to remove it again, the fix was easy, it works again and should stay that way.

The new side locker is in. This goes in the space freed up by the removal of the wing water tank, which we've now sold to a chap in Belgium. There are 2 commercial options on the market that are specifically for the Defender , but neither would fit into the space we have available now that the Wallas pipework is under the wing as well as the waste water tank. They're also bloody pricey for a metal box.

A bit of careful measuring is needed to make sure the wrong bits of skin aren't cut, but other than that it's a simple job and makes useful extra storage space. We used a "slot cutter" from Lidl to do the job, and it worked like a dream.

 The hole was marked out using a template, which allowed for accurate positioning to avoid the ribs and flanges inside the wing. With the little "nicks" filed around the edge to accommodate the rivets in the box, it fits perfectly. There's enough space to carry a gas bottle, recovery kit or anything else that should be kept handy and accessible from outside. The box is waterproof and sturdy enough to resist all but an attack with an axe. There's also some useful space behind it, between the box and the chassis rail, which we'll make use of somehow. I considered making the box a little deeper to take up this space but it would've compromised the waterproof qualities. The sides of the box aren't completely true and flat and potentially hard to seal effectively.

The latches are lockable. We mounted this the opposite way up from its larger brother on the other side as things have a tendency to come loose and jam the locks if they're at the bottom. I'll probably re-arrange the other locker eventually.

Another bit of useful storage hangs off the back door.

This is our cheap version of the popular and expensive "Trasharoo". It cost nothing as it was a bag from a discarded shopping trolley. Now past its best we replaced it with another from a charity shop for a tenner. 

This one came with the frame and wheels which we intended to remove, but it fits the spare wheel perfectly, provides a stable mounting and, removed, gives us the ability to go shopping without having to carry heavy stuff like 5 litre water bottles all over town.

OK, so it's not a particularly "gnarly" colour, it isn't made of heavy-duty ripstop nylon and canvas, and it isn't some kind of camouflage colour, but at the price it isn't a bad alternative.

It also does away with the present method of attachment - the spare wheel cover - which just gets in the way of a wheel change, particularly when it's windy. The last time we did one in Morocco the cover, plus bag full of rubbish, took off across the desert like a frisbee....

A quick blast of black paint and bungee straps and we have something less garish and quickly removeable for those moments of retail therapy or gash ditching, as the Navy say...

The "new" jack was replaced with one that works, as I said, which left me with the broken one to dispose of. Never inclined to just dump anything in the bin, I put some heat on the end of the plunger and got the cradle off. This was then welded to a length of steel tube....

...not the prettiest welding in the world, but it works and I tested it with a hammer to be sure it wouldn't fall apart. With the tube cut to a decent length...

...it fitted over the ram of my old jack. 

Since this actually has about 5cm more "reach" than the Landrover item and is rated to 5 tonnes, guess which one I'll be carrying? Does anyone want to buy a genuine Landy jack, now surplus to requirements?


  The re-shaping of the "office" has begun since the headlamp flasher stopped working a week or so back. I reckoned that as I was now forced to start working on electrics again, I might as well do several jobs at once given that they'd probably all need me to take the dashboard apart. What joy!

We made a decision to provide some means of checking the engine oil pressure and temperature, and the coolant level. I didn't know it, but the oil pressure light on the dash doesn't come on until the pressure is almost zero, which is a Bad Thing, in my opinion. we need some advance warning of this kind of problem. As for the coolant, this is achieved by this little kit:

 Basically it's a float switch, buzzer, LED light and a Press-to-Test switch to give you the nice Warm an' Fuzzy feeling that it's actually working. It was dead simple to install, even for an electrical idiot like me, and removes the worry of loosing coolant and wrecking the cylinder head.

The shiny copper tube in the background is for the new oil pressure gauge

 
Having recently dismantled the thermostat housing it was clear that if all the coolant drained away, the temperature gauge in the dashboard would still read, but air temperature, not water. Not good, since the only indication I might have of a hole in the radiator or plumbing would be rising temperatures on that gauge. The light and PTT will go into the new instrument binnacle on the dash.

Now, a product review:

The Tacklife portable jump start pack. It may be that I got yet another U/SOOTB thing, but it didn't perform as advertised. This unit is supposed to provide enough power to start a 6.5 litre diesel engine with a flat battery. It doesn't. In fact, with the 300Tdi engine rated at less than 3 litres, the lack of ability to get it going was "disappointing". It might be that the boost selection wasn't working as it should, but I don't care. I need this thing to work under conditions where 1. the main battery needs some help (cold camping) and 2. when I don't have the spare juice in the aux battery bank to give me that extra "oomph" which, normally, I get by linking the main and aux batteries together. This might be the case if we were to camp in one place for several days in Arctic conditions- cold, not much daylight, negligible solar input, lots of need for lighting etc. In other words, the Scottish Highlands for 9 months of the bloody year. 
Oh, and the natty carrying case isn't big enough for everything that's supplied with it. The zip failed the first time we used it....A pity, 'cos it had such promise...👎

The construction of the new dashboard will have to wait until next time as I'm still waiting for some of the components to arrive, so to finish...I've had a Facebook Experience.😠

Never a fan of this Devil's Spawn, I decided that if we wanted to stay in touch with modern comms, Social Media couldn't be ignored any longer. A few months ago I began linking this blog to Facebook and at the same time decided to break a promise to myself to keep my head well below the SM parapet...
So I joined some Groups, posted some stuff that I thought might be useful and tried to support others that had the same philosophy. One group in particular got my attention and interest. If you visit the site you'll see why. To get the full story here, you'll have to join it. You can have my place.

So, one night after reading about someone's attempts to do what I'd already worked on (the flap-down table/track carrier), I tried to share my idea via a link. The response was, you could say, rather "precious". Or bloody rude, abusive and foul-mouthed, and that from a so-called "moderator" of the group. I could've just let it go, but that's not my style.

There were half-a-dozen or so Snowflakes who couldn't cope with the effort to get some value from my suggestion so I responded:

  "Thanks for the comments...
...the blog that the link might’ve taken you to has been ongoing for years and includes all our DIY modifications made to two overland expedition vehicles....
My reason for doing this was not to “get hits and referrals to (my) blog.” I don’t make any money out of it and it isn’t an ego trip. It’s there to save people like me – us – making the same mistakes as we’ve made and maybe be a bit of use to someone. It appeals to our “make-do-and-mend” outlook and promotes self-reliance and initiative, not to mention an element of recycling and re-purposing which is apparently becoming popular nowadays.

.... publicising our failures as well as our successes seemed like a Good Thing for other people like us. Save them time, frustration…and expense – theirs, at ours.

Some folk have located our blog from the corrupted link that appeared. I’ve PM’d others who expressed an interest. Good for you, guys. A pity that those who moaned about it and used such abusive language didn’t make the same effort....
Admin has “removed the post as it led to a pointless log in”, not because of the unpleasant and plainly arrogant comments that arose from it (from Mr Woodier). Message received. I’ll continue with the blog, but not the links." 

I've edited my original riposte to make it a little clearer. So, that Group has lost my support because I don't need the grief the Moderators and their mates gave me. A pity, it had such promise...and my suspicions about some people who use social media have unfortunately been confirmed.

I normally don't give free advice, but I'll break that rule too:

Mr Woodier, don't post when you're pissed. Up or Off.

                                         Happy New Year.