Offroad-Express

fark that rack was massive! even in half its heaps big!

Thanks for the post up on the electronic speedo thats one I've been wondering about
Love this truck hopefully one day I'll have something similar lol

very nice truck you have done a real nice job. i am moving back to the home of land rover and will be going back to defenders, more than likely a 90 defender as it wont be a tourer.

I think i'm on a subconscious mission to protect the Alloy head

So far I have fitted:

Big new heavy duty cored radiator
New Viscous Fan hub
Auxiliary electric fan
New Water Pump
New Thermostat
Removed engine sound insulation cover

To keep an eye on things:

Extra temp gauge with sender in top hose

But apparently that's still not enough. I NEEDED a low water alarm

The idea behind the low water alarm, is to alert you that the water level in the cooling system has suddenly dropped and you need to shut the engine down and investigate the cause.

Even if you checked the water level that morning before you set off, a leak may develop during the hours spent on the road and go unnoticed. A hose might develop a small split, the radiator might decide to start leaking, or a sudden loss might occur. The alarm will alert you to any of these occurrences before they cause damage to the engine.

You would probably spot some of the above if the vehicle was driven around town and started and stopped a lot. You might notice leaking coolant. The problem is when your driving for hours on end on the open road. If something goes wrong and goes unnoticed, you might see the temp go up, you might not. If you loose coolant, the gauge will probably drop as the sensor requires coolant around it to work. Hopefully the gauge in the top hose might pick up the temperature spike as its lower in the system and more sensitive than the factory gauge.

Chances are though, by that stage you've cooked it, and its toast.

So hopefully the low water alarm will trigger before the above happens and the problem can be addressed before it damages the head.

There are a few DIY ideas floating round on the various L.R forums, some use R.R header tank caps fitted on the standard header tank, with custom electronics to run it built from off the shelf components. Others drill holes in the presurised plastic header tank and fit an off the shelf float switch and build their own control and alarm modules from off the shelf electronic components.

I didn't want shag around making my own alarm module and control module for the R.R cap, and especially didn't want to poke a hole in the plastic header tank and fit a float switch that's potentially not designed for heat and pressure, that things got to be good for 15psi and 100+degrees!!!

I found this little gem online:

http://www.coolantalarm.co.uk/shop/index.php

They do a nice simple kit for the 200 and 300Tdi:

http://www.coolantalarm.co.uk/shop/inde ... at&catId=9

So i got one. It was here in 4 days

Nice kit, everything included along with good fitting instructions:





It took literally half an hour to fit (still need to route the engine bay wire properly). I set the alarm behind the dash cluster, and put the red LED warning light beside the speedo so if it goes off there is no way I can miss it



The sensor goes in the tank on the radiator, which in some respects is not as good as if it was in the header tank, as the header tank is also presurised and is effectively the top tank of the radiator. The advantage of where it is placed is that it won't accidentally trigger the alarm when the vehicles on extreme angles.

The sensor:



It should do the job. Hopefully that's some cheap insurance, a snorkel for the cooling system so to speak

Like to see some pictures of the cream series 1 on the first page

S1V8 wrote:Like to see some pictures of the cream series 1 on the first page

Its in the shed in bits still

http://www.offroadexpress.co.nz/Forums/ ... 21&t=32180

I gotta get back onto it

Wasn't sure where this fitted in the forum, but because it's attached to the back door of my truck, i reckon it counts in here

We have always used a two burner camp master gas stove and a little 2kg gas bottle as our main cooker.

We also carry a single burner petrol stove as the back up machine. Its a cool old Phoebus, made in Austria

There are some issues around putting the gas bottle in the truck while it is in the container shipping it to OZ, and then also the problem of getting it filled. The further you go from civilisation, the less chance of LPG being available.

It got me thinking, why not have a petrol stove as the main stove also?? I had never really though about it. You can buy petrol at every petrol station, and you need to buy fuel for the truck, so you can top your stove fuel up also if required.

So i went on the hunt to see what was out there. Coleman do a dual fuel two burner stove, and that's about all these days. The design is the same as it was from way back in the 1940's

Liquid fuel stoves, and duel fuel stoves were quite popolar back then, but the lead in the fuel put an end to the popularity as you had to buy special stove fuel called Fuellite. Fuellite is not to be confused with white spirits though, its a completely different animal.

After lots of research, it turned out that i already had a suitable stove in my collection of junk that I had acquired on my journey through life, but had't actually realised what it was. It was just a rusty dirty old thing, but thought it was cool looking, so had never thrown it out. Lucky for that!!!!!

I took a crash course on the internet on how to service, rebuild and recondition the intimate workings of a really old two burner petrol stove from the 1960's. There's whole forums dedicated to the resurrection of vintage camping stoves. Sick fawkers

I managed to source some important new parts such as seals and pump cup washers etc from Caravan Camping and Marine in Christchurch.

Once it was working reliably, it was time to figure out how to mount it onto the back door. It was tricky, but I got there

So now we have two burner stove that will run on unleaded petrol or fuellite. No more reliance on being able to get a LPG gas bottle filled





Made an additional wind shield for it to increase its efficiency





To pack it down, it all just neatly tucks away inside the case



Fuel storage consists of three 750ml stainless drink bottles, $15ea from the Warehouse and a quick trip to Seal Imports for some seals that would withstand the petrol. Also thought that sometimes there are issues with filling random containers at gas stations so made them look official




The Coleman stove will get 4 hours of burning out of one tank at full noise, so i hope this stove should get about the same. If its run on half for most of the time, we should have 32 hours worth of fuel for it. If its run for half an hour a night to cook dinner, that's 64 nights use, or 2 months worth of daily use with out having to refuel. Sounds good in theory eh

I scored another complete stove the other day, so pulled the valve, pump and generator assembly off it, gave them all a rebuild and because they are the only working parts on the stove and pack down to about the size of a round file with the handle on, I stashed the rebuilt parts in the truck as spares. Ass covered

Hi Pete, first off I enjoy reading your posts and wish you all a happy safe Aussie Safari. ------- My experience with Fuel Stoves is --- no matter how good or sealed up they are and being very careful with your fueling they still stink of fuel, I have used one for years and anything that is near them ends up smelling of fuel. Do you intend to carry it in or on the vehicle ??, I don't think I would like to sleep with it beside me . Make sure everyone who is in charge of lighting it is familiar with the procedure, keep a fire extinguisher handy, the odd one or two has been known to catch fire.

HAVE A GOOD ONE,

FITZY.

SMOKEY wrote:Hi Pete, first off I enjoy reading your posts and wish you all a happy safe Aussie Safari. ------- My experience with Fuel Stoves is --- no matter how good or sealed up they are and being very careful with your fueling they still stink of fuel, I have used one for years and anything that is near them ends up smelling of fuel. Do you intend to carry it in or on the vehicle ??, I don't think I would like to sleep with it beside me . Make sure everyone who is in charge of lighting it is familiar with the procedure, keep a fire extinguisher handy, the odd one or two has been known to catch fire.

HAVE A GOOD ONE,

FITZY.

Cheers, good to see people still bother to read it!!!

In my experience, the smelly stoves are the Kero, Parafin and diesel stoves. The petrol ones are good, especially if running on white gasoline (fuelite/shellite). White gasoline has almost no smell at all. When using unleaded petrol, once the fuel has evaporated the smell goes with it. The only time we get a smell off the stove is immediately after turning it off as there is a small amount of vaporized fuel in the generator that bleeds out. The big thing is to depressurise the fuel tank after use. Remains to be seen though, but I am confident after the results of my testing so far.

Worst case, the fuel tank gets biffed out side at night. I think I would rather sleep with a liter of petrol in the truck than a leaking gas bottle

not sure how you've attached it to the door of your truck but I've seen a fair few of those white spirit cookers go up in flames over the years (mostly due to fuel spillage, over priming, over filling, hot refills or operator error ) and its usually a bit of reassurance to know that it'll only take one swift kick from a size 9 or 10 steel cap boot to send it flying and detach it from the vehicle in the case of an emergency

Quick release pins on the rear door

derk wrote:not sure how you've attached it to the door of your truck but I've seen a fair few of those white spirit cookers go up in flames over the years (mostly due to fuel spillage, over priming, over filling, hot refills or operator error ) and its usually a bit of reassurance to know that it'll only take one swift kick from a size 9 or 10 steel cap boot to send it flying and detach it from the vehicle in the case of an emergency

As I said in the original post it's not a white spirit cooker. A white spirit cooker is a quite different animal. Those MSR white spirits cookers are a nightmare for catching fire and exploding if not looked after. Usually a leaking seal around the pump and off they go! Not really the stoves fault, just negligence.

This is a petrol stove that runs on unleaded petrol or, as the Americans call it, white gasoline. It's design is quite different to the white spirit cookers. No priming or preheating required, pump up some pressure in the tank and light it.

But if it did do something crazy, you just turn the fuel off at the tank, just like turning the gas off at the bottle.

Maybe cold start video is required??

Pretty cold outside tonight



As you can see in the vid, it has two control valves, one of which is a cold start valve. You open that valve up and it bleeds air out of the tank and supplies a lean mixture for starting.

Other valve controls the fuel flow.

The second of yellow flame initially is the fuel exiting the generator in liquid form until it gets hot enough to vapourise. Only takes a second though.

Once the flame has settled down to a nice blue burn, you close the air bleed valve and your cooking, or Kooking ??

It's way more fun than just turning a knob and lighting a match gas stove styles

Don't see how it is any more dangerous than carrying around 4kg of Liquid Petroleum Gas contained in a canister at between 100 and 180psi. Booooooom

Yea, definitely not the same as my petrol burner. Pump it up, squirt out raw fuel, fill up the little tray, turn it off, light, wait, turn on fuel again, oh shit, to early, what do you mean I look like a big baby with no eyebrows?

That things mean. Since you have rebuilt it all, she'll be right. I was going to change to a kerosene primus because my petrol burner got dragged off in a noodle cooking race (first to boil cold water) but might need to look around some more...

DieselBoy wrote:Don't see how it is any more dangerous than carrying around 4kg of Liquid Petroleum Gas contained in a canister at between 100 and 180psi. Booooooom

That looks pretty easy starting that one, those msr multi fuel/white spirit cookers have an art to starting them without loosing eyebrows that's for sure

For ease of use the bbq sure is nice but you make a good case for being in the middle of no where and run out of lpg.

What's the deal with starting a wood fire over there? summer time i can see it would be a terrible idea but that's always a good backup if you have wood around

trucked wrote:

DieselBoy wrote:Don't see how it is any more dangerous than carrying around 4kg of Liquid Petroleum Gas contained in a canister at between 100 and 180psi. Booooooom

That looks pretty easy starting that one, those msr multi fuel/white spirit cookers have an art to starting them without loosing eyebrows that's for sure

For ease of use the bbq sure is nice but you make a good case for being in the middle of no where and run out of lpg.

What's the deal with starting a wood fire over there? summer time i can see it would be a terrible idea but that's always a good backup if you have wood around

And that right there is the other reason for binning the gas bottle. We are planning on cooking on an open fire 99.9% of the time, so no point carrying a gas bottle round. There are some Nat Parks where fires are not allowed, so a couple of liters of fuel for the petrol stove and we should be good

Not sure about the stoves, but I highly rate the petrol camp lights (have 2 of them). And you are quite right that they only smell when turned off and when the pressure is released.
Ours were hanging off the lounge lights for 2 weeks after the EQ's and were our only source of light.

Betsie found its way to the Expedition Center in Sydney



This is the last photo it will have its original roof:



The compulsory topless shot



The modifications begin. The lower frame has been fitted



More updates as I get them!!!!!!!

New roof fitted

Watch those aussies - they've nicked yur snorkle

Yeah, can't figure out why that had to come off

We were greeted by this, this morning


All done and ready to go


Well, almost.........

thats cool man

Good work, what about the roof rack?

We are heading up the daintree tomorrow for a look, your setup wil fit in well except that it doesn't have a Toyota badge on it!

Now its all done and ready to go

What a slacker, no updates!!!!!!

A post OZ clean up funny. All this stuff lives in the drivers side front guard. I didn't clean it out before we brought it home





These were lurking in there. Plus some charcoal from pushing through burnt trees

First on the list was to swap the injector pump for the brand new one I had saved from Dusty. Nothing wrong with the old one, but it wasn't freshly rebuilt like this one




My awsesome home made Land Rover Special Service tool for keeping the cam belt tention while you swap injector pumps. Saves stripping the whole front of the engine down and makes the swap take about half an hour

A special treat for Betsie from OZ, a set of Hi Tuff rear axles and heavy duty drive flanges. Oooooh yeah



Nothing wrong with the stock disco axles when removed, the splines where nice and straight. Running heavily loaded through a detroit too.

Next up was the suspension. I have been agonising about this one. I like the suspension soft and flexi. That means you have too travel slow on the rough stuff and have lots of roll on the corners on the road. This is how its been with the stock springs and the platform spacers

All the aftermarket springs I thought sounded to heavy.

I have tried Defender 130 springs in the front, but they weren't progressive and they felt to heavy for my liking. Currently in the front I am running V8 Disco rears with no spacers. They are progressive, and in between the 110 and 130 spring rates.

Stock 110 front spring on the right, disco rear on the left.



This what happened when I fitted them with the 50mm spacers still in



In the rear I have just replaced the original springs with some bearmach standard replacements and left the 50mm spacers in.

It sits pretty near flat, and the on road mannors are good. Looking forward to testing loaded up off road.