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.

Now that we've finished the turkey...

It's time to start some more little projects, or finish some old ones properly.

 I'd repaired the snorkel hose - the flexible bit that joins the two pipes together - a while ago and the repair worked well enough. Unfortunately it wasn't able to stand up to that piece of corrugated iron that whacked into it a few weeks ago and it split the repair wide open. I'd anticipated this and looked around for a replacement hose, but these only seemed to be available in a full snorkel kit, not as a replacement part. Since there's nothing wrong with the rest of it, I didn't feel like forking out a lot of Diesel Vouchers for a foot long rubber tube.
After the usual internet search over several days last year I'd found this:

It comes in other colours, too. All just as Bling.

A bit garish, I know, but the "trumpets" on the end are exactly the right diameter to accept the ends of the original hose and would seal well. A bit of surgery, some trimming of the new part and a smear of sealant adhesive and now we have a sealed unit again.

 

The new intake hose, with the mangled old one

The new part is mostly plastic, not rubber. It won't last as long but at just over £10 I thought it was worth a try. I made the final seal with self-almalgamating tape so it's very solid. In fact the expanded length is long enough to replace the upper steel pipe completely if necessary, although it'd be very vulnerable to damage from branches - or more flying iron, perhaps. I guess I could source something that'll slide over the new hose to beef it up a bit, but the important thing was to get a wade-proof connection back.

As the weather has been ridiculously warm I decided to have a go at top-coating the wheels. I'd normally have waited for the conditions to get drier but we struggle to get temperatures into double figures even in May, so to have 11 degrees on Boxing Day was too good to ignore. 
Before Christmas I'd tried to get some silver cellulose locally, but all the likely places had nothing other than expensive rattle cans. Having made the decision, though, I decided to invest in some Halfords "special" wheel paint and lacquer. An extravagant purchase but hey - it's a one off.

This is the result...

Not bad. Nice and shiny. I'll leave them for a week or two to really harden before getting the tyres on and balanced.






If you can tear yourself away from that fascinating picture of a wheel, maybe you'll find this bit of DIY more interesting:

You might recall "Project Flap-Down Table and Sand Track Store" from the previous entry. Having seen some other commercial variations on the theme I've put that on hold while I consider my options, as they say in Government. To fill the time - and the space on the other side of the truck - I had a go at making a storage box that'll hang off the cargo rails next to the jerry can carrier.

A trial run to check dimensions

The box is just an old, cheap camera case that was lying about, collecting dust. Like most of my DIY projects, I could probably have found something more suitable to use if I'd got the wallet out, but that's not the point. Well, not totally.
Anyway, this does the job well enough for us to test its usefulness, and we can upgrade the concept later without wasting anything more than a bit of time and effort.
The supporting hardware was made from a length of shelf support...

It would've been ideal to make them 150mm longer so I could use the extra length above the box to mount something else, but each bit is 1000mm long and I only had one in the junk pile. A quick spray with some silver paint - wonder where that came from? - and they looked quite professional. The mounting bolts were made the same way as I described before as I had none of the fancy ones I used last month for the can carrier .

The locks on the box wouldn't defeat a penknife, let alone a jemmy, so some better security was needed.

This is a combination of scrap ally plate, a suitably bent 14-inch Tee hinge and a hasp-and-staple door lock from Screwfix. A few pop rivets and a bit more silver paint later and we have....

The vulnerable outer face of the case has been reinforced with more scrap aluminium in front and behind, and a wire running from behind protects the lower edge from being forced open. Since the box is basically just hardboard covered in plastic I painted all the black bits with Plasti-Dip which should give a degree of water protection. The extra bit of cargo rail fixed above it gives me another lashing point and all the accessible nuts have been replaced with anti-tamper fixings.

OK, it's not bombproof but nothing is, really, if someone's determined enough. What will it be used for? Well, anything that we might need in a hurry or gets too manky to put away inside. Recovery straps, muddy boots, dirty overalls, that kind of thing and stuff it wouldn't be a tragedy to lose.
The space above is ideal to carry the rear awning kit or something similar. Actually, we probably wouldn't use the box for much unless we're away on a trip, where we tend not to be out of sight of the truck for more than a minute or two and then only in towns, where security wouldn't be so much of a problem. Except in Manchester, perhaps....so I wonder if one of these on the outside might work?

That's about it, except for the ongoing saga of the heater fan. It's stopped working again which probably means the lash-up "repair" I made before Christmas has given up and I need to do the job properly. I think that instead of trying to replace the Econoseal plug with another, I'll just use ordinary connectors, suitably waterproofed. It'll save me turning the air blue and upsetting passing dog walkers when I drop the little connector pins into the gravel.

I had intended to write a short review of one of these things, too...

A portable jump-starter unit

Given the difficulty of getting Elly started when the weather is really cold, I thought it'd be worth having one of these as a back-up if the aux battery linking option wasn't available - a possibility after a few days in one place. Since the day it arrived it's been almost Spring-like here so I haven't needed it. Someone did suggest that I left the lights on overnight to give it a fair trial, and I responded too quickly to the suggestion. It took until the following morning for the "Lightbulb Moment" to come and for me to realise he was joking. 

I think I need to get out more.

'Tis the Season to Be Jolly.

Tra-La - Lala - La. Doesn't feel too wintry here at the moment, though, and certainly not very white...unlike the smiles that we hope we've helped to give the kids in Morocco. 

And Malawi. Since Sue retired in September we've had her surgery chair taking up space in the shed.

 Too good to throw away, we wanted to sell it but given our location just on the Wrong Side of the Arctic Circle, no-one was interested in collecting it, even though it was worth ten times what we were asking for it. A chance conversation with our dentist provided the solution, much as a similar conversation had generatd the idea for "toothpaste to Tan Tan" earlier in the year.
To cut a long story short, Sue's chair is now en-route to Africa under the control of these guys:

We were very happy to see it go, not for the space it was taking up but more because it was going somewhere it was going to be useful.

Back in the workshop, things were not all going according to plan. 

1. Water supply. I had a long play about with the pump and decided, after dismantling everything related to it, that it was going to be more trouble than it was worth to rearrange plumbing etc to get the pump down to the same level as the bottom of the tank. It woud seem that the thing doesn't have the "suck" to draw water up through the filter so it's easier to remove it and use a submerged pump instead, like this:

 Not only did this work well, it's made more space under the sink for storage and maintenance, which is always a bonus.

2. The sink came in for some modification too, as I noted before that it didn't drain completely. Even mounting it at a slight angle wasn't going to solve the problem as it needed some kind of recess around the plughole to get all the water out. Having given this a bit of thought I did an experiment with a similar bit of plastic, the careful use of a hot air gun and a paint tin. This did the job and now the sink has the proper "dimple" around the drain. I thought I'd taken pictures of the process but they've gone Walkabout, so maybe these will appear in due course.

3. I'd congratulated myself a few weeks ago for overhauling the heater system and getting everything sorted for winter. Tempted fate a bit, there, I'm afraid. Not only was the air now coming out of the vents with some force again -a good thing - it wasn't exactly hot. In fact it was barely above body temperature for the first 15 minutes. Time to investigate the thermostat....

This bit of chewed-up plastic isn't normally found inside the thermostat housing. It's another Special Modification carried out by the Previous Owner. It's actually the remains of the top plug which has been broken off at some point in the distant past and left inside the housing. Since there isn't a lot of room in there and that which there is only just allows the thermostat to operate properly, I suspected that this bit of detritus might have affected matters a bit. I removed the old thermostat and, not surprisingly I suppose, the witness marks on the remains of the plastic plug matched the edge of the thermostat frame exactly. I think it got jammed under the frame and stopped the valve from closing. As it happened, when I tested it the thermostat was jammed open anyway so no wonder it was taking the coolant an age to warm up. With a new unit fitted, "hopefully that'll be the end of it"....I thought.

4. Wrongly. A few days later the fan stopped working on slow speed, and a few days after that stopped altogether. Fuse checked, nothing wrong. Ho Hum - yet more electrical fun to be had trying to track down the fault. I got back under the bonnet and luckily found the problem pretty quickly. While checking the connectivity to one of the funny little plugs the movement of the loom produced some reaction in the fan. A bit more pulling and twisting of the wires revealed a very iffy connection in the 3-pin plug. I pulled this apart to find 2 rather burnt connectors which I can repair but not with the wiring in place - there isn't enough space to work in for such a fiddly job. I found that by a bit of bodging and ty-wrapping I could get the connection to work, so that's how I've left it for now. A two-speed fan again, though for how long?

5. I had a thought about the heater control as well - the hot/cold air selector, that is. Any "slack" in the mechanism would lead to cold air leaking past when "full hot" was selected. I loosened the pinch bolt on the arm, pulled it hard over to the hot position and re-tightened the bolt. I gained about 15mm of travel in the process, which must improve the heat output....mustn't  it?


6. More mail-order fun. I bought a proper Landrover bottle jack - the one with the proper "horns" on the top - from a salvage yard which arrived as planned but a bit dusty.

In fact it was full of crud and cobwebs so hadn't been tested before posting...and it didn't work. I've done my best with it, of course, but the seal's gone inside and it won't pump.

  
7. The same day the new side locker arrived. 

Great, I thought, an easy job for the holidays. But no. Unpacking the box I found that somebody had been using the parcel as a seat while they ate their sandwiches. 

Not designed for some lard-arsed Hermes bloke to do this, it'd collapsed on one side and popped the rivets. Another mail-order disappointment. At least the company that sent it reacted quickly to my complaint but, of course, the last post had gone and it was a Friday, so I wasn't going to see the replacement "until Tuesday next week". Make that Thursday, actually. So, what with the wiper motor, the jack, the side locker...not scoring well with long-distance purchasing at the moment, not to mention the non-Landrover related stuff that Hermes have delivered, got a signature for etc etc...but not from the person it was addressed to, ie me.😠

Given nothing better to do, I started work on the side rack for the sand plates and fitted the jerrycan rack. The latter needed a bit of inventive thought since the original position just aft of the window relied on the gutter for support, and now that's gone with the old roof, I don't think the Alu-cab replacement is really up to the job of taking the weight of 20 litres of diesel at 3g+ as we hit the bumps. A few little accessories for the cargo rails has sorted it, though.

These work in the same way as the ones I designed for the seat mountings inside before I realised these were commercially available. The "proper ones" fit better than mine and have a load spreader, so they'll take the weight of the fuel can if it's hung off the tracks.

The rack for the sand plates is formed from 2 strap hinges, suitably bent to clear the tub cappings but able to hinge downwards. 

 









A bit of scrap aluminium plate will do as a table top for the time being until I can find something a bit longer which can be used as a flap-down surface outside the NAAFI flap, and it'll need some wires to hold it up or the hinges will bend. The space behind - presently packed out with a blue box lid -  will be used to store another folding table like we had before, but made of some kind of waterproof board, if I can find something suitable.

Two ratchet straps hold it all up, and all the screws are secured with Rivnuts, some of which were a real PITA to set. I think that, in future and despite their usefulness, they'll be the fixing of last resort due to the "hit-and-miss" nature of their grip. I had two of them spin when I ran the screws in but managed to save them by whacking the edges with a punch. This gave them enough "bite" to allow me to get the screws out and have another go at resetting them, but only one worked.
The sand plates are very light and strong, and have replaced the heavy, awkward and unpleasant-to-use waffle boards. Although I doubt the new plates have the bridging strength of the waffles, they are apparently rated to 10 tonnes so maybe I'll give 'em a bit of a test soon, just to see.

Inside, we've bought a folding seat to go onto the "library chair".

It's just the right width to fit the space and much more useful than the re-purposed lounger cushion we had before.Like the lounger, this also folds flat but can be set at all the angles in between without the need for a separate back support, so it'll provide a seat for relaxing, can be slid towards the table for eating and be laid flat for sleeping, if necessary.

The newly-discovered, by me that is, Facebook Marketplace has  provided 4 new tyres and some rather tatty modular steel wheels this week. The tyres are 235 BFGs - brand new, never fitted and half price!

The wheels needed sandblasting at our local outfit in Mosstodloch, and they put a coat of primer on for me as well for £25 a wheel. This is the first time I've had this type of work done - I normally spend a few weeks, wear out a few wire brushes and DIY it - but I think it's worth doing the job professionally this time. In fact as the wheels cost £15 each, by the time I've put more primer on and the topcoat and lacquer for the few quid I've saved I might as well have bought new ones.

Anyway, I've made another useful contact in the sandblaster and had some good tips on finishing the wheels so they won't rust as quickly in future, and maybe the final finish will be better.

These steels rust quite badly around the inner part of the rim,like the ones on at the moment:

The rust around the outer part of the rim is easy to remove, but not the stuff closer to the centre and around the dummy beadlockers.

Here I've been "striping" the areas where the sprayed primer won't have penetrated, as well as the sharp edges that always show rust more quickly..

...and a line of sealant in the gap ought to keep things cleaner for longer.

Finally, the Engel has a new coat:

Sue made these up - top cover, fridge and freezer - from the same material as we bought for the window insulation. They fit over the camping mat insulation we fitted previously and are held in place with velcro and thin bungee cord. I don't know how much difference having them on will make, but the insulation is now much better than the commercially available jackets which are marketed as mere covers "to protect the finish and enhance the resale value". A lot of money to spend on cosmetic protection, so a hell of a lot cheaper and better value to make than to buy.  
The Engel's being used, as I type this, as the overflow fridge for the Prosecco...Happy Christmas!