'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!

Wallas and Wipers...

...working in time for Winter. Which arrived at the weekend.

The hob arrived back with us on Tuesday last week, with a replacement fuel pump installed. I took it apart again to check it over, added a few tie-wraps and some cushioning on the places where the HP fuel pipe might chafe, and since we'd had a bit of practice it didn't take long to re-install. After 2 priming runs it fired up and everything worked as we'd hoped it would, so now it's time to plan our first outing in the new set-up.

The "new" wiper motor arrived, too. I got this off eBay from a scrap merchant - sorry, vehicle recycling enterprise - for about the same price as the Britpart junk sent by Cr*ddocks. The difference is that this part was original equipment made by someone who knew what they were about, not someone in a sweatshop in Nanking, making pattern parts using a kerbstone as an anvil.

A quick bench test - Learning Has Occurred, you see - and it was fitted and running inside 20 minutes. The (w)ear window wipes, washes and is weddy for Winter.
Sorry.

With that in mind, it seemed an excellent idea to do the first full test of everything on Saturday, the First Day of Winter. We have a viewpoint in the hills just inland, so I packed up the truck with a basket of goodies, a sleeping bag and DVD and headed off. Sue went South for the weekend with the dog, so I was solo.

Everything worked just as planned, with one exception which I'll come to later. The Wallas performed as advertised and I was warm and in shirtsleeves within minutes. The bedding was dry - I was expecting a cold damp feel to it after weeks without an airing  - and the insulating window blinds that Sue had made up worked well.

The material for these came some time ago from Vanguard Conversions in Fort William but there hadn't been any impetus to get them done since we had no heating. 

We ordered enough material to make an insulated cover for the fridge, too.

Sue used my measurements and her sewing skills to produce them at a fraction of the cost of the same thing I'd seen at the AO Show in September. One downside of these is that it completely seals the inside from outside lights and the "situational awareness" that being able to see out gives you. During the evening 2 or 3 cars came into the area, hung around for a few minutes and then left. I was aware this was happening, but felt a little uncomfortable that I knew no more than that. With the roof up it was obvious I was intending to stay for a while, and some folk don't like that much. My cover story, as if I really needed one, was that I was waiting for the Northern Lights. I had a camera just in case....

I made dinner on the Wallas, which did the job well. Positioning the pot on the hob controls the range of heat as well as adjusting the controls and probably more quickly. It's more important now to make sure the truck is parked level since the hob surface is polished, flat and offers no "grip" like the gas stove. The pot I chose had a slightly convex bottom and the vibration from the hob's fuel pump made it head for the low side quite quickly! I might add a small lip around the edge of the hob to guard against this . It wouldn't be good to have an unattended kettle of boiling water fall onto the floor, or anywhere else.

Being able to stand up to cook makes the whole job much more pleasant. There's very little condensation, if any, but I kept the top half of the rear window open anyway, with no noticeable affect on the temperature. The work we did to insulate all the metal inside has paid off. 

No, not a super-kettle..I needed a pot lid

After eating, I settled down in the sitting room with a glass of wine to watch a DVD. Luxury camping, this. In fact the feeling, with all that space overhead and no outside light coming in, was like being in a cosy cave. Come time for bed, I thought about leaving the heater running to test its noise level but decided not to. I wanted see how cold it'd get inside. In fact, the insulation we've put in and the Alu Cab quilted roof lining meant it didn't get really cold despite being below zero outside. In the morning - I slept for 8 hours straight - I could reach down and turn the hob on from the bedroom, and with the kettle in place already I could make breakfast from the bed. Big grins.

In fact, almost everything worked just as I'd designed it to work, which is really satisfying. There's nothing that needs major changes but, of course, it hasn't got the Soup Dragon's seal of approval yet. Only two "gripes":

1. The only thing that didn't do its job was the water pump. What is it about electrical stuff, pumps and me? It worked well in the last configuration so why not now? It makes all the right noises but won't pull water up the 300mm or so from the tank to the filter. I tried sucking on the tap to prime it, but got nowhere, so I pulled the drain plug out and filled the kettle from that. Hmmm.

2. Another thing that is sensitive to being level, or not, is the sink. This is the first time we've had a fixed sink and I hadn't really applied much thought to how a sink is designed. It's just a fancy bucket with a hole in the bottom, innit? Well, no, it's not quite that simple. If the bottom of the sink doesn't slope down to the drain hole in all directions, not all the water drains away. That's not obvious when you look at one - it all looks level and "square".  Our sink bottom is completely flat and the drain is at one end of it so I didn't have to run the pipe horizontally (a potential smelly grottrap) It needs to be set at a very slight angle, compared to the horizontal line of the hob, to get almost all the water down the drain. This is easily done but something I missed - we try hard to get everything square and level and some things work best when they aren't.... Never really thought about it before.

Later, at home, I played about with the pump again. 

I can get it to work if it doesn't have to pull water "uphill" more than a tiny amount. I recall that the previous pipe run was just over a metre and horizontally from the top of the tank, with a very slight bow in the middle. Once I'd primed the pipe the water stayed in it so became its own non-return valve. Maybe this is why it can't cope now? I could lower the pump a little but, quite frankly, it's way too big for the tiny job it has to do so irrespective of the reason it won't work, I think I'll replace it with something a lot smaller - then we can use the space more efficiently anyway.

The trip home was in bright sunshine, frozen puddles and ponds and the gorse white with a hard frost. A fair test of everything, I think, that I was warm, dry and comfortable all night. Job done. 

A Rear View

We spend some time on the boring stuff...

...like sorting out the rear view. The view out of the rear window, that is, not anything else....I only chose that as a title to raise the Google hit rate. That's a joke, in case somebody gets "precious" about it. When I typed it into the computer at work to look for some amusing picture to go along with it, the results might've got me sacked if The Management had walked in.

This has been a long-standing job which has eventually come around with the onset of winter and all sorts of crud on the back window which I can't see through. My original thought was that I'd just "give the glass a bit of a wipe" as necessary, but the aerodynamics of the Defender makes this ineffective - the window gets "clarted up" - as they say around here - in minutes if the weather is bad. And this is Scotland, in the Highlands, and not the 2 days in Summer when it isn't. Bad. So we need a rear wash-wipe that works. A previous post has covered the prep work for this upgrade, which amounts to gathering all the bits and doing the research to work out what wires go where.

So. Should be an easy job, right?

I really wish I hadn't said that.

Getting the required parts together took a while since I tried to group them all into one order to save on the postage costs. After everything had - at long last - arrived, it would seem a simple job to connect all the bits and get wiping and washing at the rear end. 

Hah!

Wash wasn't a problem. At least, not compared to Wipe.

After dismantling most of the interior trim I managed to find the end of the washer hose that I'd "thoughtfully" laid in place earlier. Only I couldn't get my fingers or anything else into the space behind the Alu-Cab trim to pull it out. This meant that I had to remove the trim panel and, of course, I had a screw that was held in place by a "spun" rivnut. See previous post on this. It wouldn't come out in the conventional way so had to be cut. I'd anticipated that, one day, I'd have to do this but at this stage it was just another imbuggerance to progress. Having got the panel off I was able to grip the back of one of the nuts and get the remains of the screw out.

I took the opportunity now - before I forgot - to get all the nuts cinched up using the bolt/nut/washer method. Far more effective than the hand squeezer. In fact I think that Alu-Cab probably used one of those during assembly and, quite frankly, I think they're a bad tool. The nuts are often set slightly out-of-true due to the leverage the operator can't help using when squeezing the tool, and this means getting the screw to start "straight" can be difficult. There's often some resistance to overcome on the screw even when the nut sets properly, so if it's not properly aligned then it's too easy to force the screw across the thread. It'll go in a few mils, then jam...and that little bit of extra force now spins the nut, jams the screw and you're stuffed!

Then there was the problem of where to put the jet. I want it almost in the centre of the panel over the door, obviously, but the Alu-Cab brace is double skinned at this point so there's no easy way to get the hose into the right place and connected except by drilling a rather large hole in the skin either inside or out. As I wasn't prepared to do that, I had to drill a 6mm hole right through it and run the hose along the surface. This could have been done on the outside but it'd be vulnerable and probably freeze, so I think I've got the best compromise. 

When I'm sure it works I'll put a plastic cover over it, probably a bit of electrical conduit painted black.

The place that it needs to be mounted isn't very "tall" either, and could get in the way of lifting the roof since the nozzle assembly is quite big. 
 

Mounted slightly off-centre because of the locator for the rear awning pole.

I mounted it as low and as far out of the way as possible, bearing in mind the top of the door has to clear it. If I did the job again I'd drill the hole about 5mm higher but I was worried about getting too close to the top edge on the inside and not having enough room for some kind of cover. As it is, there's only a couple of mil clearance. If it's turned slightly sideways it protrudes far enough allow the water to be directed to the right places. In future I might experiment with a smaller nozzle/jet assembly from some other vehicle. This might allow the hose to pass inside the cavity but there needs to be enough room for it to turn the corner. The hose spigot on the Defender nozzle is too long to allow this. Or drill another hole....

With the switch pre-wired - there's no way I'd be able to read the numbers on it if it was in the dash - I removed the radio, switch panel, gauge pod, 12v sockets, GPS mount, Ipod connection and accessory switch box...pauses for breath...before being able to remove the MUD console and cut a hole in it for the Carling switch mount. I then had to grope about in the rat's nest of wiring to find the wires for the switch I hoped would already be in place. They were, but two of them had been "commandeered" by the PO to power other things, like 12v sockets. 

I couldn't just disconnect these wires until I knew what they'd been doing so this needed a bit of sorting out before I could re-assemble it all, which caused me another problem. I hate electricity. I don't understand it well enough to be sure of what I'm doing. I have to be very methodical, label everything and move slowly, so it takes ages to do anything. It actually took 3 days to sort out this mess as I was working by torchlight a lot of the time, lying on my side in a very uncomfortable position and constantly losing track of what I was supposed to be doing. By the end of it, some things worked but others that had been fine before I started, now didn't. For example, the rev counter worked as expected until I turned the lights on, then it stopped. In the end I got so frustrated I made a new earth point and ran everything to that. All works now. For the moment.

Leaving everything hanging off or out of the dash, I went to the back and connected the wiper motor. Switch on...not a lot happened. Nothing, in fact. Checked the wiring again for the Nth time, nothing obviously wrong there. Back to the dash, check the switch wiring again, same result. Go away for 24 hours, return rested and refreshed to have another go. Same outcome. Retire to the laptop and the LR forums for help. Now, given that the 2 parts of the system that are brand new, just out of the box, are the wiper motor and the switch you wouldn't expect that there'd be anything wrong with one of them, right?

So what's missing from this picture? No prizes.

Wrong. To cut this long story short, the new motor has a fault. Took me 2 days to work that out by elimination and on-line advice....Grumpy of Grampian, or what? And this was the motor that took 2 weeks to be delivered. Harrumph! This one will be going back and I've ordered another, second-hand, genuine motor from a breaker. Avid LR renovators won't be surprised to read that the busted one came with a blue-label box. I had a look at some reviews, and I'm not the first to suffer this problem with this item. I'm also getting a bit fed up with stuff that's "BNIB" but "NFG"!

 So, yet another job is put on hold. To fill the time - this is getting to be a bit repetitive, right? - I had a bit of an experiment with a rear step that we'd had lying around since Daphne's days. The rear step attached to the towball works well enough, but to have it set at the right height for towing the trailer means it's too high for comfort as a step. We get around this by using a Wolf box as a "hop-up" but this is clumsy and an unnecessary extra "step" to get in the back. Sorry.
So, a bit of work with some (more) bits from the scrap pile and we have this:

It needs to be folded up when not in use or I'm almost guaranteed to reverse into something and bend it, but this solves the problem and reduces the height of the junk heap at the same time. Bonus!

This set-up compromises the departure angle, but we can set the ball higher now for off-road driving and still have a useable step. It doesn't matter if the bottom of the towing bracket digs in - it's a plough.

Also, while sorting out the wiring for the wiper I tried to get a replacement rubber tube that feeds the loom from the cab to the door. Silly money non-starter there, but a bit of digging around turned up a bit that I took from Sue's long-departed Ford Fiesta before it was scrapped...must be 15 years ago...which, with a bit of surgery, does the job just fine. I need to find something to cover the door end of it...a sliced up tennis ball, perhaps?

So now we wait for the return of Wallas and the Wiper Motor. Could be a catchy title for something? Suggestions?

"Gromit, we have a problem!"

  After some frustrating days of headaches and diesel mouthwash, we finally took the advice of Mr B, the supplier, removed the whole Wallas unit and took the back off...

 

"Come on, Gromit. No time to waste."

 At this point I was glad I'd thought ahead a bit more than usual and made it easy to get the hob out. Releasing two jubilee clips on the hoses, two quick-release plugs and 4 Allen screws and it lifts out easily. I'd been told how to get the cover plate off so within 5 minutes we were looking at the insides.

I went straight for what Mr B and I had suspected to be the culprit - the fuel pump. He suggested that perhaps the union wasn't tight and was leaking....

This was a "Eureka moment" -surely that Gromit grommet or O-ring should be inside the nut? Confident that I'd found the problem, I relaxed, despatched the findings to Mr B...

...and set about working out what the rest of the hob's guts consisted of. This is useful knowledge if it goes wrong while we're away somewhere and anyway, I like to know how things work.
  Unfortunately, I was wrong. The O-ring is only there to prevent the union nut from slipping along the LP fuel line during assembly. Another theory torpedoed. We all decided, at that stage, that this was a Return-To-Base warranty job...a good thing I'd saved the boxes.

A quick exchange of e-mails, and the re-packaged hob was picked up the following day, which was a pretty rapid response. With a weekend in the way, it took a few days to reach the workshop but once it'd been inspected it was found to have a defective pump. This is apparently unheard of - certainly I can't find anything on-line that complains about this - so, once again, we are in the unique position of being The First One. How exciting it is to blaze the trail! The duff pump was what we'd always suspected but I wanted to cover all the other possibilities first since the problem seemed to be a bit intermittent. Also, while the installation is pretty straightforward there was always a chance I'd screwed something up...put the hoses on the wrong way round or some other basic mistake. This in itself meant taking some of the kitchen apart to make sure I hadn't somehow swapped the hoses around behind the water tank. Wasted effort? Maybe, but perhaps the lesson learned is to photograph the final arrangement before boxing everything in...ho, hum.

Time for some reflection on all this, I think. The Wallas unit is expensive but the engineering standards reflect the quality of the manufacture. Having seen some of the cheaper options available the difference is obvious, and you definitely get what you pay for. I have some observations regarding the installation of the electrical side of things which we've already mentioned but apart from those the major issue has been identifying the source of the ignition problem. The fact that the hob would ignite but then flameout within a regular timescale suggested an automatic "shut down" signal was being generated somewhere. This and the erratic behaviour of the pump had us taking longer than necessary to do the fault analysis and get it sorted out.

MrB wasn't overjoyed that I'd shared my frustration here, but I reckon he can be proud of the fact that he responded quickly and effectively with advice and service. The bottom line, for me anyway, is that anything mechanical can go wrong at any time and it's how this gets dealt with and fixed is as important a part of the deal as the hardware itself. I doubt that the supplier of any of the alternatives would have been as quick off the mark as he was.

So now we await Wallas's return, and in the meantime get on with something else. Time to have a go at the problem of keeping the back window clear enough to see through.

"Tell ya what, Gromit lad. Let's have a nice hot cup o' tea, eh?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Quotes are from "Cracking Contraptions" and "A Grand Day Out".

Another glass of diesel, Mr Wallas?

Maybe not. I haven't ever had a glass of warm Dettol but I bet it tastes better than Heavy Oil....

 This afternoon I had yet another go at getting the Wallas to fire up. Wasted my time but not totally, I guess, as I've ruled out the fuel line as an issue! With the fuel line now plumbed into the main tank, I gave it a good sucking and received the predictable tasty mouthwash. Nice.

 As we'd planned, today centred on the Remembrance event at Roseisle and Findhorn Bay.

There was a lot going on, the single track access road was jammed with traffic so we walked the last mile to avoid the inevitable faff of trying to get out after it was all over. This avoided the embarrassment of admitting that our promised "NAAFI Wagon" refreshment van wasn't going to be presented as planned.

 The event itself was well attended and well worth the effort of getting to the beach. Very moving and, in our experience, quite unique.

Once home, I decided to re-attack the Wallas problem. I had misgivings about the routing of the fuel line - that over-the-top curve... It really shouldn't make a difference to the fuel feed, but we're clutching at straws now.

In desperation, I dismantled the hob housing and re-routed the fuel line so it had a pretty much straight run from the tank to the pump. 

 With the panel loosened and tie-wraps cut, I could remove the filter and re-route the inlet hose. This hasn't made any difference to the line of the hose into the pump but allows me the extra length to connect...

 ..the two ends together through the filter.
This required some more scrabbling around under the wing, dirt in my eyes and diesel in my hair. Joy.

To achieve this I had to remove the storage box, so I was grateful to myself for having made this easy. The feed for the fuel line is right behind the box. This would be the "natural" vertical position for the filter, but it's impossible to monitor for particles or, as we are now, checking for flow.

 With everything reconnected, we had another try. Didn't work. In fact, the filter wouldn't fill at all, hence my attempts to help it along with a good old fashioned suck. No doubt that the other end of the hose is in the right place, anyway. I can still taste it...and smell it too. The joy of facial hair! This is frustrating because the filter filled quickly during the last test and the issue seemed to be the "flameout" condition. Now there doesn't seem to be any draw from the pump.

I think I can hear the pump working but there's no indication that it's having any effect. While pondering this as I put everything back together, I noticed that one of the clamps holding the fuel line to the filter was bigger than it ought to be. 

Not a great photo as it was getting dark, but the lowest clip is clearly too big.

Three of them are correct and one won't tighten as much as perhaps it should. If the clamps inside the hob casing are like this......? I dunno. Frankly, getting very disheartened.... Hoping for some enlightenment tomorrow.