After levelling off the steering wheel as part of the track rod/drag link replacement a few weeks ago I reversed out of the garage, heard a sudden crunching noise from within the steering wheel as I turned it and the SRS airbag light came on!

I had crunched/snapped the “rotary coupler” (also known as a “clock spring”) which sits behind the steering wheel to allow the airbag, horn and cruise control to maintain connectivity with the wiring behind the dashboard as the steering wheel rotates.

I then sourced a used replacement (part number YRC100350) from Land Rover Spares for £37 including VAT and postage (seen above). Brand new ones cost over £200, so pulling one from an old vehicle seemed like a good idea in this instance.

Also, I suspect the following isn’t perfect, but upon investigation I think this part number is fine in the following vehicles:

• Discovery 1 (300Tdi and V8) from 1994-1998 (from VIN WA762769)
• Discovery 2 (Td5 and V8) from 1998-2004
• Range Rover Classic (Soft dash models) from 1994-1996
• Range Rover P38 (All models) from 1994-2002 (from VIN VA346794)

Please Post a comment if you spot a mistake in the above.

Anyway, I stuck the multi-meter on all the pins in the new coupler to check for continuity and I found what I thought to be a fault. Both airbag pins had continuity with both other airbag pins at the other end (both red plugs). Basically, the entire airbag circuit was shorted out.

It turns out this is normal (when it is not connected, at least)!

Inside the plug which connects inside the dashboard there are a pair of shorting “clips”. These are designed to prevent the airbag going off as the coupler is disconnected underneath the dashboard (I think!).

You can see them clearly inside the plug in the photo below.

As this particular rotary coupler was knackered, I smashed the plug apart with a hammer and extracted the shorting “clips” to check that they really were there for that purpose and seeing them outside the plug shows that they are indeed for this purpose!

So basically, as you plug it in, the plug pushes the shorting “clips” away from the pins to break the short circuit and turn it into two separate connections as it is shown on the vehicle’s wiring diagrams.

So, for those who need to know what the other plugs look like here are a few more pics.

Above you can see the horn/cruise control plug which connects behind the steering wheel in the dashboard.

Below is the other side of the same plug, showing which wires connect to which pins.

Below is the horn/cruise control plug which connects inside the steering wheel itself.

The above plug and the airbag plug connect directly to the plug shown below.

Above is the plug on the “outside” of the rotary coupler (already mentioned just above). This is the plug that rotates with the steering wheel and it cannot be unplugged.

Here we can see the red airbag plug which connects to the airbag itself.

This plug has a coil inside it, which I’m told is to filter out any high frequency noise thereby preventing unwanted discharge of the airbag (which is discharged simply by providing a voltage to it I believe).

Above you can see the plug from a different angle so you can see which wires line up with which pins on the plug itself.

“What’s actually inside the rotary coupler?”, I hear you ask…

A 14ft/4.26m (roughly) coil of ribbon cable which tightens and loosens as the coupler rotates back and forth.

The coupler will handle roughly 5 complete turns, but the steering wheel only does around 3 turns from lock to lock, so there is plenty of slack built into it (as long as it’s centred properly before it’s fitted).

Above you can see the steering wheel side of the coupler. This is the part that rotates with the steering wheel.

Here you can see the dashboard side of the coupler. This is the part that remains stationary and does not rotate with the steering wheel.

Above you can see the entire coupler opened up with all 14ft of ribbon cable spread out.

And finally the part number and barcode, the part number being YRC100350.

One last thing to mention is that I was of the understanding that on a Discovery 1 the SRS light does not reset itself automatically, unlike the Discovery 2 and other more modern vehicles. This turns out not to be the case with my vehicle. I’m told that the Discovery 1 was of a time when they were still playing around with SRS (“Supplementary Restraint System”) and early Discovery 1 models had different SRS units to later Discovery 1 models.

Therefore, as I have one of the later Discovery 1 models, mine is capable of resetting the SRS light automatically once the connections are all back in place, but earlier models must have the diagnostics computer plugged in to clear the error code in order for the SRS light to go out.

It is likely that my SRS unit will keep the error in its logs, but it figures out that things are fine again all by itself and turns out the light. Earlier models also keep the errors in their logs, but do not reset the light automatically.

As of 1 Jan 2012 I believe this becomes an MOT advisory, and after 1 April 2012 it becomes an MOT failure (in the UK, of course), hence me deciding to fix it!

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1. Land Rover Stripped LT230 Transfer Box Drain Plug Thread
2. Land Rover Wheel Alignment and Steering Wheel/Drag Link Adjustment
3. Off Roading in the Land Rover in Snow and Ice at Tixover and Yarwell Quarry!

It’s been a relatively eventful few months for the Land Rover!

First of all, the tyres (seen above) were worn down almost to their legal limit, so it was time for new ones!

I decided to stick with mud-terrain despite doing mostly road mileage because I thought, “what’s the point in owning a Land Rover if you end up getting stick when you really need it”! Also, the old tyres had worn slightly unevenly and caused vibration at 10mph or less which was marginally annoying when crawling through a queue on my daily commute!

I then planned to sell the old tyres cheaply with the Alloy wheels so I could buy some new wheels that looked a little less shiny and could take an off-road battering better than alloys (whenever I next manage to get to an off-road site, that is!). So… here are the new wheels and tyres!

They drive much better than the old worn-out tyres, but sadly I have still not taken them off road, so have no idea how they perform in their intended environment! This will happen eventually… perhaps when diesel prices decrease (as if!).

So, the new tyres, despite being the same size as the old ones, had much more tread on them (14mm to be exact!), so I thought I’d see how much they rubbed on the bodywork.

Hard to tell from this angle, but at the front, things are fine.

At the rear, however…

There is significant contact with the bodywork. The suspension is pushed up as high as it can go and is almost rubbing on the top of the wheel arch (which is normal). While in this position, the bottom corner of the wheel arch is pushed inwards and upwards by the tyre and therefore needs cutting off along the line at which it has bent. This fairly standard modification is known as the “camel cut” (because it was done to all Camel Trophy vehicles for the same reason).

I have not actually done the “camel cut” yet, but I will report back when I have done!

Since putting on the new tyres I thought I should have the wheels aligned to make the tyres last as long as possible. They did need re-aligning, but every was completely seized so I forked out for a brand new Terrafirma Heavy-Duty track rod, drag link, new balljoints and steering damper (steering damper seen below)!

I won’t go into the details on this because this really is just a case of lying under the vehicle, undoing 6 (difficult!) bolts, replacing the parts and doing 6 new bolts up!

Since doing this though, it does seem to like wandering over to the left slightly… maybe due to the suspension lift and i’ve never noticed it, maybe the wheels are still somehow out of alignment, maybe the power steering box is not centered despite me centering it by the correct methods or maybe I just need new trailing arm and radius arm bushes… who knows!

And finally, there seems to be a water leak coming into the passenger footwell whenever it rains, and I think it’s a wiring gromet that goes through the bulkhead into the engine bay underneath the windscreen washer bottle and behind the glovebox… it’s relatively inaccessible although I can see the gromet from inside the car, so that will hopefully be just a case of removing and treating the rust and making it good again!

Here’s a video of the leaky gromet is below for those of you who are really interested!

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2. A series of five more fantastic steam rallies – Part 1
3. The Warspite model has arrived, but a few bits are missing…

Just a quick post to let you all know about an EXCITING new video I’ve produced!!

Over the last couple of years I have uploaded 115 videos to YouTube. Some of the early ones are quite short and low quality (when I was recording on my old Nokia), but the more recent videos (March 2010 onwards) are almost all high definition (720p) and I’ve spent lots of time editing the footage to ensure only the best bits end up in the uploaded videos.

Amazingly (to me, anyway), my most popular video has had 484,073 views (as of Fri 4 Nov 2011) and all my videos combined have had 869,635 views, which I think is astonishing! Thank you viewers! I’ve also managed to gain 118 subscribers, so thank you subscribers as well!

I have uploaded a total of 12 hours, 11 minutes, 19 seconds of footage to YouTube, which has been edited down from around 50 hours of original raw footage. As you can imagine, not only have I had to watch all 50 hours of footage to produce these video, but lots of extra time has been spent editing the footage, rearranging it, adding titles, fades, transitions etc… so I cannot imagine how many hours it has actually taken to get to where things are now!

Anyway… I have recently taken the 12 hours of edited YouTube footage and cut it down further into a short video containing 3-4 second clips showing all the best stuff I have ever shot! The variety of stuff in this video, I think, is amazing, and I have done my best to make it as interesting and unpredictable as possible so you never know what’s coming next, so please watch the video below!!

If you can’t see the video above, click here to watch it directly on YouTube: YouTube – Best of “fishsponge” – Steam Engines, Land Rovers, Motorcycles, Off-Roading & lots more!

Also, if you liked the video you can either:

• Watch my YouTube Channel!
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• Subscribe to my YouTube Channel!

(this will keep you notified of all new videos I upload)

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1. Our Best Off Roading So Far @ Yarwell and Tixover
2. The Events of 2011!
3. A 1940s weekend, a broken down car, a new car, and yet more steam rallies and events!

The Land Rover is due a full service… theoretically done every 24,000 miles, but as the vehicle is 14 years old and has covered 160,000 miles, I’m going to try and do it every 12,000. Perhaps a bit paranoid, but for the sake of £40 of oil it may as well be done!

Unfortunately, however, as I write this post I am only half way through the service. After 7 or 8 hours working on the car (albeit slowly at a relaxing pace), it got dark and I ran out of time.

The reason I ran out of time? A stripped thread in the transfer box drain plug hole

Anyway… what I did get done was the following:

Handbrake travel, seatbelts/mountings, ABS warning system, instruments, switches/controls, horn, interior lamps, front wiper blades, front screen wash, rear wiper, rear screen wash, instrument illumination, direction indicators/hazards, lighting system, headlights, engine oil, engine oil filter, transfer box oil, battery terminals, washer bottle(s), brake fluid reservoir, power steering fluid, coolant level/anti-freeze strength, coolant hoses, auxiliary drive belt(s), crank case ventilation.

The most important ones in the above list are, of course, engine oil & filter and the fuel filter, so I am glad they got done!

Anyway… on to the important part of this post… the stripped transfer box thread.

To change the oil in the transfer box I was supposed to remove the filler plug (a 25mm tapered plug with 1/2″ square drive), then remove the drain plug (a 17mm hex bolt with magnet stuck to the end), let the oil drain out, put the drain plug back in, fill with EP90 oil until it dribbles out the filler hole and then put the filler plug back in.

Unfortunately it was not this simple. It took my 24 inch breaker bar and quite a lot of force to get the 17mm drain plug to come loose, which certainly wasn’t a good start. It did undo just fine though, and the oil drained out. I then tried to put the drain plug back in.

Just beyond finger-tight, it went very loose and wouldn’t tighten. It just kept turning and turning. It was up against the bottom of the transfer box, but would not tighten up. Upon trying to undo it to take it back out again it just kept turning and turning in the opposite direction and now wouldn’t release itself from the hole!

“Bugger”, I thought. My car is now stranded on my drive, undriveable, and there’s a bolt jammed in the bottom of the transfer box that won’t come out. “How can I get to my birthday dinner tomorrow?” and “How can I get to work on Tuesday?” were questions running through my mind. I needed a garage to come to me, but it was 4pm Sunday afternoon during August bank holiday weekend, so everywhere was shut until Tuesday morning.

I gave a local friend a ring to see if he had any time to spare to come and lend a hand, and thankfully he did. He knows a hell of a lot more about Land Rover maintenance than I do too, which is useful.

Anyway, after 2 hours (off and on) I managed to free the drain plug! Only trouble was, it took a lot of force to free it and it looked like it had snapped in half and left the rest of the bolt inside the drain hole.

As you can see the thread is knackered, but as we discovered while trying to drill the rest of the bolt out of the hole, it hadn’t snapped in half at all – the magnet had simply become detached and was wedged in the top of the hole. Seen below.

Our only option was to knock the magnet up into the transfer box, take the inspection cover off, try to retrieve the magnet, put the inspection cover back on (with a bead of silicone temporarily), re-tap the hole and put a new bolt in, so this is what we did.

The thread is (or was!) an M12 thread and the largest tap in my set was an M12. Thankfully though, the drain hole was only tapped half-way through, so we tapped it all the way through and put a piece of M12 threaded bar in with a washer & nut on the end to hold it in place.

This seems to have done the job, as you can see below.

The only trouble with this solution is that it is not a long-term solution. The inspection cover was put on with a “gasket” made from a bead of clear external-grade silicone, not proper gasket material, and the threaded bar does not have a magnet on the end to catch all the metallic debris to stop it from being dragged through the gears over and over again.

As a result I have ordered a new magnetic drain plug, a washer and an inspection cover gasket from my local independent Land Rover dealer.

I have also had to order a Heli-coil/thread-insert kit in order to put the original size thread back into the hole for the new drain plug to screw into.

Most garages have Heli-coil kits, but despite this thread being an M12 thread, it has a pitch of 1.5 instead of the usual 1.75 that a standard M12 thread usually has. As a result, no garages have a Heli-coil kit that suits this job, so I have bought one and will lend it to the garage so they can repair this knackered thread for me.

I could repair it myself, of course, but never having Heli-coiled anything before and knowing how leaky my oil suction pump is (which I need in order to put the oil back into the transfer box) I think I would rather pay for 30 minutes of garage time to have someone else do this one for me!

Once this is done, however, the transfer box drain plug thread should (hopefully) be as good as new, and I can get on with the rest of the full service!

See various other On-Going Land Rover Maintenance Photos!

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1. Land Rover rotary coupler internals & close-up photos (YRC100350)
2. Land Rover Wheel Alignment and Steering Wheel/Drag Link Adjustment
3. Fixing Land Rover Rear Electric Windows and Annoyingly Squeaky Belt Tensioner

Well, I’ve had another very minor mechanical exercise on the Land Rover! A simple wheel alignment this time.

I wouldn’t bother writing about this type of job normally, but as I’ve learned from it, I figured others may do too!

So, along to STS Tyre Pros I popped for a 4-wheel laser geometry test and to have as much adjustment done as they could do given that a lot of the adjustment mechanisms could well be rusted beyond repair on a Land Rover.

The results of this test, in case you’re interested, are below:

As you can see, the wheel alignment (“Half-toe”) was quite a long way out. The left wheel was -0.3mm out, which is fine. The right wheel, however, was +4.5mm out. This explains why the car tended to wander to the left whenever you let go of the steering wheel and why I had to hold the wheel slightly to the right to keep it in a straight line.

This also would not have been good for my tyres, effectively dragging them sideways down the road for each and every mile I drove!

After it was shown the blow torch and the necessary adjustments were made, the values were at -0.5mm and -0.4mm respectively. The car then naturally drove in a straight line without pulling to the left, but the steering wheel naturally rested in about the 11 o’clock position rather than the 12 o’clock position when doing so.

So the day after this happened I decided to try and get the steering wheel level again. I’ve learned (thanks to my forum thread on Landyzone) that on a Land Rover this is really quite simple.

First of all, there is one thing you should know if you are going to make any adjustments to your steering. Below is a photo of the bottom of the power steering box showing where the “drop arm” attaches to it.

At the top left of the drop arm (which is the closest part to the camera) you can see a U-shaped notch cut out with a small round hole drilled into the metal behind it. The hole is partially filled with sand (not intentionally!) and is only 2 or 3mm in diameter.

Anyway, as the drop arm rotates (when you turn the steering wheel), this notch slides around in both directions. When the car is driving straight ahead, the notch should line up perfectly with the hole as this basically tells the power steering unit not to do anything (as far as I understand it, anyway).

In summary, if your steering is all aligned properly, but that notch does not line up with the hole, your power steering unit is effectively working all the time for nothing. The details of this I’m not too sure about, but put simply – always make sure these line up when your wheels and steering wheel are in the straight-ahead position!

Anyway, back to the task at hand…

It turns out that the steering wheel position can be corrected simply by adjusting (lengthening in my case) the drag link, so I slackened off the two clamps holding the drag link in place, rotated it in the same direction the wheels travel in when driving forwards until the steering wheel was level and tightened up the clamps again.

That’s it. Job done!

Fortunately, once the adjustment was made, the drop arm notch lined up perfectly with the hole drilled into the metal above it.

The final task was to adjust the steering lock stops. Because the wheel alignment had changed quite dramatically, when I turned full-lock left, the inside back edge of the left wheel rubbed on the outside of the radius arm. In front of each swivel ball is a bolt (a 19mm socket will fit, if I remember correctly) with a locknut behind it. The further this bolt is undone, the less full-lock you will achieve because the bolt touches part of the axle before the wheel touches anything at all.

To stop the back of the inside edge of the left wheel rubbing on the outside of the radius arm, you need to adjust the lock stop on the right wheel and vice-versa.

I therefore undid the bolt on the right wheel by a turn or two and on full-lock the tyre did not rub anything!

Finally, for those who may not have understood the terms used above, or how a Land Rover steering system works, I went to the trouble of making a diagram!

The most interesting thing to notice here is the so-called “Ackerman steering principle“. In summary, this is why the steering arms are at an angle. In the case of the Land Rover, at least, they point exactly in the direction of the centre of the rear axle.

This is to allow the outer wheel to turn in less than the inner wheel when cornering to allow for the fact that each wheel must travel a different path when cornering and to reduce tyre wear during that process.

If you have any comments about this article or corrections, or can explain in more detail what the notch and hole lining up actually achieves technically, please leave a comment below! Thanks for reading!

See various other On-Going Land Rover Maintenance Photos!

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1. Steel wheels, new tyres, the “camel cut”, a leaky bulkhead gromet & new steering rack!
2. Land Rover rotary coupler internals & close-up photos (YRC100350)
3. More Steam Engine Maintenance and a Tow from a Land Rover!

UPDATE (5 Oct 2011): We got the World Record for “Largest parade of Land Rovers”, raising the record from 260 vehicles to 348!

From Good Friday (22 April) until Easter Monday (25 April) 2011, I attended the CONVOY for HEROES event at the Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon, Warwickshire.

This was a Land Rover specific event designed to raise money for the Help for Heroes charity and to attempt to break the world record for “Largest parade of Land Rover / Range Rover vehicles“!

UPDATE: The amount of money raised for Help for Heroes was £14,149.29! We are still waiting to hear back from Guinness about whether we got the record.

The entire weekend (from Friday lunchtime to Monday afternoon) was fantastic, with brilliant weather, friendly people and a good atmosphere all round.

The event had several displays of SAS equipment with several ex-SAS members present to chat about stuff including their experiences while serving in the regiment. They also brought along a few Pink Panther Land Rovers which were used in various desert missions over the years.

Here you can see Bob (kneeling down) and Paul doing a survival demonstration, showing various techniques for making beds, lighting fires etc…

I also took a few hours to listen to Pete Winner speak about both the Iranian Embassy siege and the Battle of Mirbat… both fascinating and horifying tales of human survival and suffering in extreme circumstances.

Also, as you can imagine, there were various SAS operatives present on the day, in full combat gear. If you knew how hot it was this weekend, you could really appreciate how unbearably hot it would have been in all that clothing. People were suffering with the heat in normal clothes!

And what is a Land Rover event without one or two extreme examples of what can be achieved with such vehicles?

As part of the event, we all had unlimited access to the Heritage Motor Centre. Here you can see a few MGs on display inside the museum.

And here’s a race car… I can’t remember the details about this one I’m afraid…

And a somewhat modified Land Rover!

Also at the museum they had a SciFi exhibition on, so I snapped a few photos. Above you can see something which I’m told is from “Lord of the Rings”!

And here you can see Predator… yet another film I’ve not seen.

Finally on to the convoy itself! There were roughly 380 Land Rovers in the end. Above you can see the front of the “queues” of vehicles ready to head out to the Jaguar Land Rover test track to take part in the record attempt.

And here you can see the view from the roof of a kind owner’s Land Rover Defender before we headed out on the convoy.

Unfortunately, no cameras were allowed during the convoy itself for fear of Jaguar Land Rover’s top-secret testing ground being compromised, but in the two videos below (the first one by myself and the second one by trailerfitter2) you can see the event from two different perspectives and get a great idea for what the weekend was like!

First of all, the video produced by myself…

And now the video from trailerfitter2…

Finally, here are links to both my photo albums from the weekend…

Land Rover CONVOY for HEROES Photos

Heritage Motor Center, Gaydon Photos

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1. Fitting rock sliders/tree bars to the Land Rover Discovery!
2. Off Roading in the Land Rover in Snow and Ice at Tixover and Yarwell Quarry!
3. Fixing Land Rover Rear Electric Windows and Annoyingly Squeaky Belt Tensioner

On Friday we set off, with the caravan in tow, for the Land Rover CONVOY for HEROES event (which you can read about in my next blog post).

First of all… my Land Rover Discovery has a 300Tdi engine and an automatic gearbox which, together, have done over 155,000 miles. We were going to tow the caravan for 2 hours non-stop (something which the Land Rover is built for, but not something I have done with this particular Land Rover). I wasn’t nervous at all, however, because I’ve driven many thousand miles in this vehicle now and feel like I know it quite well and after all – it was built as a workhorse, so a mere 2 hours with a caravan along tarmac roads should be no problem.

Anyway… the journey was going well until we were 10 miles from our destination.

For the previous 30 minutes or so, we had been driving up long, shallow hills with the engine revving quite high in comparison to our speed, so we could maintain momentum up the seemingly never-ending gradients. The engine and gearbox, therefore, were working harder than they normally would have to under normal conditions (i.e. with no caravan and no boot full of tools & camping stuff!).

It was up one of these hills than I noticed a sudden “rushing air” noise. It was constant while we were going up the hill, and it was loud. We could just hear it with the windows up, and it was definitely audible over all the other noises with the windows down.

I continued to drive for half a mile or so, trying to deduce what it was, and it seemed to only happen when the turbo was spinning fast. I suspected we had simply burst a turbo hose or one of the jubilee clips had come off, but a quick look under the bonnet confirmed that everything was just fine.

I also could not make the noise happen by revving the engine in neutral or by revving the engine while stationary with my head under the bonnet, so it must have been turbo related (because the turbo only spins when the engine is under load). Also, the engine temperature was fine and there were no lights on the dashboard.

I knew we were only 10 miles away from our destination, so we continued, cautiously… hoping we were going to make it there without damaging anything. The only other alternative was to call the breakdown service and be taken either to some random garage or home. This was NOT going to happen, so I continued.

Eventually, we made it.

Upon arriving, I let everything cool down a little and tried to replicate the problem around the field we were in. I could not, but that is most likely because I was unable to load the engine sufficiently to make the turbo spin fast enough.

I kept looking around inside the engine bay, around the turbo area, and eventually stumbled across a small hose which was only connected at one end. The hose was about 4 inches long and 3/8 inch diameter. Very similar to the vacuum hoses. This couldn’t be a vacuum hose though because the end that was disconnected looked like it should have been connected to the turbo boost hose.

You can just about see the disconnected hose in the picture above. We’re looking down into the engine bay (note the grass below)… below the large rubbery hose with a jubilee clip on the end is my finger, pointing at the disconnected hose. If you imagine where my finger tip is, you can see a thinner hose carrying on in the same direction as my finger is pointing. To the left of this hose (underneath the dirty jubilee clip at the top of the picture is the end of a very small hose which is disconnected. It looks jet black… and not like a hose in this picture.

I’ll try to take a better picture later on.

Anyway, I followed this hose in the other direction (back towards the engine) and it seemed to go into the crankcase. “Strange…” i thought… “why should turbo boost pressure be entering the crankcase?!?”.

Well… it wasn’t the crankcase at all… it was something I had never thought to find the location of before. The wastegate valve!

The turbo in the above picture is oriented differently to when it is installed in the 300Tdi engine, but imagine it rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise, so the exhaust manifold (currently at the bottom-right) is now at the top-right and the turbo pressure outlet (currently at the top-left) is now at the bottom, pointing out towards the left.

The blue hose, in my case, is what had become disconnected. It was still attached to the wastegate valve diaphragm (the large golden-colour cylinder on this picture), but had become disconnected from the T-piece (the golden-coloured nozzle shown at the top-left).

So, I simply reconnected this hose and all was good again!

That task of reconnecting it, however, took around 1 hour. It’s in such an awkward place that I had to remove the air filter, turbo inlet hose and mass airflow meter to get at it, and even then the turbo itself was in the way. A very, very fiddly task indeed which you ideally need 3 hands to complete, but there’s not even room down there for one of your hands let alone both hands with a pair of pliers in one of them!

Anyway… that’s what to check if your Land Rover (or any vehicle with a turbo) starts hissing when the turbo is spun up but all your air hoses are fine!

For those that wondered, what is supposed to happen is the turbo generates boost pressure, most of which goes off into the intercooler through the outlet seen at the top-left in this picture and into the engine allow combustion of the fuel. Some of it, however, is taken through the nozzle you see in the diagram to operate the wastegate valve if needed and operate either the turbo fuel compensator diaphragm or the EDC (electronic diesel control), depending whether you have a manual or an automatic transmission.

What was happening in my case, however, with this hose disconnected, was some of my turbo boost pressure was being lost through the nozzle and this is what was generating the noise I heard when the turbo was spinning quite fast.

I was theoretically lose a little power because some of the turbo boost was being lost, but as James pointed out on a forum I’m on the turbo is effectively low-pressure, high-flow so most of the turbo pressure was still getting through to the engine. The loss of power was therefore possibly negligible.

On the other hand, because there was no pipe going to the wastegate valve diaphragm, the wastegate valve was remaining closed, which means that nothing was regulating the maximum RPM of the turbo. This was potentially allowing it to spin much faster than it would under normal operation, thereby generating more boost pressure than normal and actually compensating (or over-compensating!) for the loss of pressure through the nozzle (at least when at high RPM). That probably made the sound much louder than it would normally have been too.

Anyway, if you have any questions or comments about this, please post a comment!! I’ll reply as soon as I can!

See various other On-Going Land Rover Maintenance Photos!

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1. More Steam Engine Maintenance and a Tow from a Land Rover!

The standard Land Rover Discovery 1 comes with side steps. The standard steps, however, are moderately flimsy. They’re fine for stepping up onto, but if you bash them once of twice off roading, you are likely to bend the steel that holds them in place and eventually snap them off.

This is exactly what I did.

I have therefore spent the last 4 months or so driving around with no side steps, and given that my Land Rover has had a 2″ lift, there’s a step up of around 22.5″/57cm to just get in it! This is fine for me (I’m quite tall), but it can be difficult or impossible for others.

I therefore decided to buy and fit a pair of rock sliders/tree bars. These will act as both new side steps and heavy duty protection should I happen to scrape along some rocks while I’m off road or slide sideways into a tree.

Above, you can see the new sliders fitted to my vehicle! It’s also difficult to tell from the photo, but they do weigh rather a lot, being made entirely from 3mm thick steel. I strongly suggest, if you are fitting any, get a second pair of hands to lend a hand! I made do with an axle stand, a bottle jack and a lot of manual labour, but a second person would have made it much easier.

The construction is basically a long piece of 3mm thick steel box-section with some 3mm thick steel tubing welded to the outside. A long bracket is then welded to the box section on the outside edge and the inside edge which surrounds the entire sill (excluding the top). Holes are then drilled, bolts put through, and job done!

Although still quite a leap, the step up into the vehicle has now been reduced from 22.5″/57cm to 18.5″/47cm – a reduction of almost 18%!

Above you can see the bolts which go through the sill behind the front door, and below you can see one of the bolts that goes through the sill behind the rear door.

I have yet to put one more bolt in behind the rear door, at the front of the bracket, but until I find a way of opening the rear door further (or perhaps taking it off), I am unable to get a drill in there!

Still… I think 5 bolts will be enough for the time being.

UPDATE!

I’ve now also bought some grip tape from my local skate shop, cut it to shape and stuck in along the top of the sliders, so they can be used as a step safely in the wet!

I should also mention that I bought the rock sliders/tree bars from http://www.rock-sliders.co.uk/!

See various other On-Going Land Rover Maintenance Photos!

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Related posts:

1. Off Roading in the new Land Rover Discovery!
2. Off Roading in the Land Rover in Snow and Ice at Tixover and Yarwell Quarry!
3. More Steam Engine Maintenance and a Tow from a Land Rover!

Since my last blog post on Winter Steam Engine Maintenance, I have been up the yard many times to help the owner out with various interesting (and mostly dusty & dirty) tasks!

I decided to document two of the more interesting days, one with time-lapse photography and the other in video form!

The first video you see here is a time-lapse of us putting the gear guard back over the gears on the rear-right wheel. Although it doesn’t look like it, the top half of the gear guard probably weighs around 70kg (150lb), is very top-heavy and has a center of gravity entirely on one side! It is therefore very difficult and awkward to move around.

For those that don’t know, the gear guard is obviously designed to guard the gears so (a) you don’t hurt yourself and (b) no stones of other debris get into the gears and cause damage!

Anyway… the second video is one I was looking forward to being able to make… You probably already know I own a Land Rover Discovery, and one day up the yard we needed to move the engine out of the shed, turn it around and reverse it back in.

Obviously we could do this under the engine’s own steam, but that would take all day and undo much of what we have spent the winter doing, so we decided the best and safest course of action was to use my Land Rover.

So, below, you will see a fair undramatic video which shows how effortlessly a 300Tdi (2.5l turbo diesel) Land Rover can move 12 tons around (at least if the surface is flat and good!

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Related posts:

1. Winter Steam Engine Maintenance
2. Off Roading in the Land Rover in Snow and Ice at Tixover and Yarwell Quarry!
3. Fitting rock sliders/tree bars to the Land Rover Discovery!

This post is theoretically going to act as nothing more than a list of events I plan to be at this summer. This will be a way of making you all aware of the existence of such events in case you wish to attend! I’m not going to list everything I’m going to, because not everything I’m going to is for the general public, but the events that the public can attend or have some involvement with I will list!

April

Cottenham Yesteryear Road Run (Sun 17 April 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Convoy for Heroes (Fri 22 – Mon 25 April 2011)

May

Rushden Cavalcade of Transport & Country Show (Sat 1 – Mon 3 May 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Jampot Spares Limited (JSL) Open Day (Sat 14 May 2011)

June

RDMCC Meldreth Manor Bike Show (Evening of Wed 15 June 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Classic & Vintage Motorcycle Day, Cambridge Museum of Technology (26 June 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

July

Hollowell Steam & Heavy Horse Show (Sat 2 – Sun 3 July 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, Swavesey (Sat 23 – Sun 24 July 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

August

Thurlow Steam Rally (Sat 13 – Sun 14 August 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

August Bank Holiday Steaming, Cambridge Museum of Technology (Sun 28 & Mon 29 August 2011)
Click here for videos of Cambridge Museum of Technology.

September

Haddenham Steam Rally (Sat 10 – Sun 11 September 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Bedfordshire Steam and Country Show (Fri 16 – Sun 18 September 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

Kettering Vintage Rally and Steam Fair (Sat 24 – Sun 25 September 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.
Click here for a video of last year’s event.
Click here for blog post of last year’s event.

October

Great Chesterford Steam-Up (Early October 2011)
Click here for photos of last year’s event.

October Steaming, Cambridge Museum of Technology (Sat 29 & Sun 30 October 2011)
Click here for videos of Cambridge Museum of Technology.

You will notice that on some dates there is a clash of events. In some of these instances, I’m not sure which events I plan on attending yet, and in the others I have already decided. In all instances, however, I have listed all of the events so you can decide which ones you want to attend, if any!

Needless to say, as Summer progresses, I’ll do my best to get photos, videos and blog posts online covering as many events as I can!

To be sure of receiving notification when blog posts are published, feel free to subscribe to my site for updates!

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Related posts:

1. The Events of 2010!
2. A 1940s weekend, a broken down car, a new car, and yet more steam rallies and events!
3. Cambridgeshire Steam Rally, Thurlow Steam Rally, "Gigantic" and my new phone!