Landrover

What an utterly messy job - undersealing the landy. So good prep was needed, first a plastic sheet on the ground (an old dust sheet) and reverse the landy over it. This keeps it in place and helps to cover off any over spray of the gunk. Next step was to cover everything that I didn't want coated - exhaust, wheels, brakes etc. I did this with a whole bunch of old packaging paper and a bit of paper tape to keep it in place. The underseal can go anywhere, so make sure you have a good wrap of paper with no gaps.

For the underbody seal we used some stuff from Machine Mart - Tetraschutz. It's only 5 quid or so for a litre and you can use a standard compressor and underseal gun for it. With only the rear boot section to do I used a couple of litres and put two coats on the boot area and a single coat on anything else I could see. The only (and quite a big) down side is that I didn't have the time or kit to jack the landy up and take the fuel tank off. So there is a whole area above the fuel tank that has not been covered. This should not be too much of a problem though as most of that area I have coated with zinc primer and a layer or two of hammerite black. I also took the opportunity to spray some in the chassis and wheel arches and well just about anywhere that looked like the original underseal was starting to crack or fall off.

I've got to say though that the Tetraschutz went on very well and has clung to just about everything it was aimed at. It took a day or so to dry into what feels (and looks) like fresh bitumen. Only time will tell how well it stays on there and how good it is at repelling dirt and water.

One note though this stuff sticks - it seems to especially like any exposed skin and it mostly likes to clump together a group of hairs for fun. So wrap up well, then wrap up again over the top of it

Posted by Adrian Hollister

The rusty boot in my old Discovery 300TDI is not unexpected. Just about any Disco of this age seems to suffer. Anyway, old boot floor was taken out (see previous post) and a nice new one welded in by the father in law. To do this I drilled what seemed like a million holes in the new boot floor and he welded through them. This should give something akin to the spot welds originally used - they may actually be stronger as there are more weld points.



As you can see in this picture, there weld holes are a bit rough, but no one is going to see them so I don't need to grind them off. Everywhere has had two coating's of high zinc primer (80% zinc) and on the inside of the landy there is bit too generous coating of Hammerite.



You can see in the picture above the nice coat of zinc primer and the first coat of Hammerite black. Each of the weld points has this treatment as have areas that are likely to rust (gullies around the boot floor etc).



Areas not exposed have also had a coat of galv repair zinc spray (95%+ zinc) then a good spray of Waxoyl. This should help keep these areas rust free for many more years. None of it looks elegant though, but you never get to see it so who cares!

Now time to put the internal trim back together and replace most of the rusty screws, washers, nuts and bolts with stainless versions.

Posted by Adrian Hollister

The old Landrover Discovery 300TDI has a rust spot or two (well ok, a lot of rust spots) all around the boot area in the usual boot panel and under the wheel arches. Rust is such a damn nightmare on these older landies, and with the disco's boot floor up you can see why...



As you can see from this I've taken the boot panel out. What a darn tedious nightmare it is to remove all of the spot welds! Anyway, as you may be able to see in the picture, the underseal doesn't cover much, especially any of the crevices that water and muck just loves to stick. A lot of the panels around the outside have rusted as well and there are some very nasty rust spots in the wheel arches (big enough to get my arm in). I don't want to take the sills off yet, but I suspect they are in just as good a condition.

After a good clean up and a lot of angle grinder action we are back to bare metal and ready to weld on new bits. I've decided not to paint the chassis or cross members as the rust is only surface, so I've wire bushed off the worst and used a high zinc spray to cover the tops of everything. When I've put the panels back I'll underseal the lot and it should last for quite some time. More pictures to come of the boot panel going back in and the nightmare that is undersealing

Posted by Adrian Hollister

So, I've gone through my first full tank of Biodiesel from Thatcham. 90 Litres of the stuff. How did I get on? I ran very very low on the oil veggie oil that was in there to ensure that I had as pure a mixture as I could get and filled it to the brim in Thatcham. I've got to say that I've not noticed any difference from running on either straight Diesel or cetane boosted straight veggie oil. I wonder why we everyone doesn't start using this type of fuel? Mind you, a lot of diesel cars can easily run on filtered waste veggie oil which would be better still. Why have manufacturer's not picked up on this and started marketing their cars this way?

Posted by Adrian Hollister

So far all has gone well on the rebuild of the 300tdi. The new cylinder head looks to be good and has cleaned up well. Fitting the new pistons has been a little more difficult as they were very tight, but all went back together ok. Firing up for the first time was a bit of a worry. I'd glaze busted the cylinders and put the pistons in with a little grease as they were v tight, so when it finally did start to turn over it would have some lubrication. When it did fire up though a good deal of that stodgy grease burnt off with a bit of smoke. What the heck though, it fired up and I ran it for about 15 mins on tick over-1500rpm.

All sounds good eh, so why the 'but...' in the title, well after the 15 mins or so the starter kicked in (no joke it did) and everything sounded very bad. I turned the engine off, but when ever the key is in position II or III the starter engages. Suspects so far are... a trapped cable during the rebuild (though I can't see anything), a buggered starter, or switch/electrical. I'm starting with the leccy side of things as this is the cheapest thing to repair.

Posted by Adrian Hollister

With nothing much else to do in the snow, I took the my 300TDI dicovery engine apart. I have a new cylinder head to put on, so I dropped the sump off and took the pistons out as well... might as well replace the big end bearings and piston rings whilst I'm doing the head. There is some good wear on the bearings as you'd expect as they were in from new and had covered 130K miles. The only thing of note was that the piston from the number 1 cylinder had what looks like a valve mark in it.



So, I've a cylinder head from ebay in the hope that it's ok, new big end bearings and in the end new pistons (as it was only a few quid cheaper to buy them built into the cylinder.

When it warms up I'll try and put it back together...

Posted by Adrian Hollister

After a broken cylinder head, loads of simple work and now a pool of frozen water on the inside, I walked away from the landy last night, give it a kick on the flat tyre and said that it old girl your for the scrap heap.

When I got up in the morning I found out she'd by crying all night...

Posted by Adrian Hollister

With Adrian Hollister's stubborn 'it's better to reuse' mentality - I've been trying to keep my old 13 year old Landy on the road. This month it's been drinking water and producing vast quantities of white smoke (well steam) out the back. Most likely the head gasket, so whipping the head off and replacing is the way to go. On route I found a couple of cracks in the head just under the glow plug, I'm no mechanic but I'm guessing that this is not normal...



Click on picture for a better view. Gonna fit a few gasket etc to see if it sorts the problem, if not I guess I need to look for a recon head

Continue reading "Cracks in my 300TDI Cylinder Head"

Posted by Adrian Hollister

I've had my company car (a Toyota Prius) for four years now and it's going back soon. The car has been utterly reliable - it's never broken. The fuel economy is good, the noise it produces is very good, and it fits Adrian Hollister + family & dog with no problems. The down side is that it's quite expensive for a company car. To help me decide I've test driven a couple of other cars - the BMW 320d, an X type Jag, and one of the new Ford Focus slightly more efficient 1.6D cars.

The beemer was just boring. Boring boring boring. No sat nav, no... well anything. It felt like the seats were optional, the noise was terrible - tractors down my road are much quieter, and the fuel economy worse than the Prius (with the same driving style and roads). The Jag just felt cramped and the family decided against it. The Focus seems smaller than the Prius and again it came with no basic's (my personal opinion is that sat nav and bluetooth integration are mandatory and actually very cheap for the manufacturers to provide). Fuel economy was great, so overall it's OK but nothing stunning.

Disheartened by the marketing hype on the BMW and the massive cost of the add-on's for both the BMW 320d and the Ford Focus I gave up for a bit. We had a quick look at a C30, but it's too small and CO2 output is very high; the same seems to apply to most of the other cars we looked at that would fit our family.

So what was the decision in the end? Well we are getting another Prius. The reasons in order of preference: Sat Nav, Bluetooth built-in, not waking up the family driving away in the morning (cos it's so darn quiet), watching the tyre fitters trying to work out how to drive the car on to the ramp (seriously - this is a hoot), low CO2, utterly reliable and good fuel economy.

Posted by Adrian Hollister

It's been a while now since I've been running on waste veggie oil, virgin veggie oil and diesel in my Landy. The 300TDI engine is just so basic it seems to lap it up without any concerns, but about 10K miles on here is my summary to date:

My random notes:

a. I replaced my heater plugs as the starting was a nightmare - whilst doing this I discovered that none of the heater plugs were actually glowing or getting warm! and by the look of some of them, they hadn't been for some time (well before the veggie conversion I'm guessing). New plugs are in and everything starts first time - even on pure veggie oil at 3-8 degrees outside temp.

b. IMHO technically Waste Veggie Oil is much much much better. It seems to burn cleanly, give good performance and leave little smoke. Normal virgin veggie oil is ok and seems to give a performance akin to Diesel but I've only gone through a small amount of the stuff. Of course the best way to use veggie oil has to be by using local waste veggie oil - so I'm not sure if I'm evaluating my estimate of performance of the waste oil on my moral interest in localisation. Either way it does seem to be the best.

c. The glow plug part of the veggie oil conversion seems to provide the best boost in starting and early running performance. The hot water side helps later (but almost by then the engine is already warm and handles it much better anyway).

d. Best ratio of veggie oil to diesel so far: Warmer temps (+10 degrees C) 100% veggie oil no problems. Cooler (0-10 degrees C) 60% Diesel 40% Veggie Oil. Cold (-8 - 0 degrees C) 98% Diesel 2% Veggie Oil. There is nothing scientific about this - this is just what I've experienced. With my heater plugs changed it may well allow me to run higher mixes.

e. Be pragmatic - use an injector cleaner regularly, don't expect miracles, and don't expect to make all your money back in one or two tanks - it's about the environmental savings as well you know.

f. Last thing... getting hold of waste veggie oil is getting very difficult!

Posted by Adrian Hollister