Today I mostly .....

[excossack]

I do actually like land rovers......

but I also like being able to steer without damaging my elbow

You do get used to the lack of elbow room.. I have adjusted to it now!

[excossack]

Tonight I replaced the rear brake pads on the Landy. Just the front to do.

And..touch wood....I have sussed the leaking roof and the wet knee issue!

[excossack]

Well I hope this one doesn't. Mind you I still have:
Sunroof leak
Both rear windows that leak.

So the leak fixing isn't over yet!

[happiness stan]

I am not slighting them for their of road capabilities or their (lack of) charm and I wouldn't want anyone here to think that it is a personal attack nothing could be further from the truth and I bow to others (far) superior knowledge and experience - but compared to a Niva they are bloody ugly.
Muddy Hi-lifted 110's are common round here and I don't have a problem with them (apart from their looks), but what is more common is that stupidly massive tinted out window b*stard Range Rover monstrosity that I tend to run into as they pelt round a narrow country corner on the wrong side of the road (because they take up the whole bloody road) far to fast for a blind corner, the feckers And then they beep their horn as if it's someone else's fault that they happened to be on the same road. Don't get me started..........

[happiness stan]

Sorry Mr Cossack, I hope you sort your leaks out.

[excossack]

No offence taken at all, and nowt wrong with Range Rovers either......Its the same with any car, Motorbikes, Cyclists etc its the irresponsible ones that give every other owner of that type of vehicle a bad name.

[Neil Chowney]

Oooo water, i'm scared.......



.. Nice looking motor by the way John!

[excossack]

Cheers Neil. Landy hasnt changed much since you saw it last apart from the squeaking release bearing has been fixed, well sort of, still makes a noise when cold despite being replaced

[nitro_warrior]

Aaargh!!! Don't put a land rover that close to the sea! I can smell the rust from here.

[excossack]

Smell the rust, I've been tasting it while cleaning up the chassis with a angle grinder and wire cup, plenty of flaking rust!

[Zelandeth]

Set about dragging my old R/C car back into the land of the living. It's been languishing at the back of various cupboards for about ten years now - and in the back of the previous owner's garage for about twenty before that.

Sadly it's not a known make, nor does it follow a lot of design conventions (It's a Kangaroo Car GX - apparently built by some Japanese company the name of which escapes me, and nobody ever seems to have really heard of) - so a fair amount of bodgery has been involved. Main issue is rebuilding the whole steering linkage (the original one appeared to have been made of monkey metal and turned to powder at some point before I was even born, hence it getting stuffed in the back of the garage). Think the servo needs its pot cleaning as it's refusing to work properly when told to turn left - will fight with that further at a later date though. I'm not too worried to be honest if I have to rebuild the control system - though it would be nice to keep the original (MacGregor) system if possible - control part anyway, including the huuuuge blue anodised aluminium box controller and several foot long antenna purpose built for poking people in the eye.

Exhaust is proving a right pain as I don't have the adapter which originally sat between the exhaust manifold and the silencer - virtually everything these days seems to have threaded holes in the block and holes in the "downpipe" to bolt it to the block...this one's the other way around! Design also doesn't seem to fit with any of the diagrams on the manufacturer's webpage, just to help. It's an old Veco 3.5cc job and that I have had running in the last couple of years on the bench at least. An exhaust "adaptor" has been made up today using bits of modern high temperature coupling pipe, hose clamps and a couple of springs...Seems to have sealed at least, we'll see how it goes. Attempts to get it going today were aborted as the glow plug appears to have gone dead short. Discovered of course about half an hour after the model shop closed. Grr...Meant to pick up some spares while I was there but clean forgot.

Apparently there should be a belt-driven pull start system on this, which has long since vanished from my one. So starting involves flicking the flywheel over like the prop on a plane and praying that it fires. Makes it an absolute pig to start and tends to result in friction burns to your fingers when it does go. I need to come up with a better system for that, but am a bit baffled as to how to go about it.

Threaded hole at the end of the crankshaft is actually accessible through the side of the chassis - so I had a crazy idea about sticking a bolt in there and using a power drill as a starter - until I realised that the engine spins in such a direction that you would just unscrew the bolt most likely...and my drills both spin the wrong direction. Dremel (well...knock off of one) with the supply polarity reversed though sounds like a possible plan...Would just like a proper way to start it!

...Once I've proved it works of course, I'll then be completely stripping it down so I can clean up and paint the chassis which looks like something hauled off the Titanic at the moment.

Oh...and the body, which currently doesn't fit because the fuel tank's in the wrong place as it's a random replacement after the original one sprung a leak...New tank is plastic, and I don't fancy that sitting about 10mm away from the exhaust system.

Ah well, should keep me busy tomorrow!

[excossack]

Could you use an old Hard Drive motor to start the engine?, not sure if you have enough torque in one of those?

[Zelandeth]

That's my thought - I've managed to get a nice big chunky screw with the right thread on the end of the crankshaft, so hopefully it will be tight enough to stay in while starting. Engine isn't massively hard to turn over, so with a bit of luck that will stay put. Is the same thing that propellers were intended to be screwed onto in planes after all!

Exhaust system on this thing is a bit odd by RC standards in that it's got not one, but two silencers. One mounted on the engine as normal, and a further one attached to the rear of the frame. Wasn't sure it was functional originally, but the photos on the box and some I've found online have showed it in use...so guess it was intended to be used.

[Janko]

"Getdataback" or russian "HDD regenerator" usually gets the job done with excellent perfomance in my cases.. I've saved many many files using this two.

[Zelandeth]

Oh, not good. No up-to-date backups then? A lesson I learned the hard way too a few years back when XP fell over in the middle of installing a service pack and took the FAT and partition table with it.

I did, eventually (after several months) manage to recover about 80% of the contents of the drive, fair amount of stuff was gone for good though. Sadly including most of my photos of my Niva, Metro and all of my photos bar three very poor ones shot on film of my Renault 25.

Backups are run twice a week now - to both internal and external drives. Takes all of ten minutes to do (well...aside from the first time), and means that I'm pretty confident that my data is reasonably safe. There's also a harddrive which lives at my parents house which gets synced a couple of times a year to act as a recovery point in case something really dire happened.

Think it was a program called R-Studio I used to get my data back. It wasn't cheap but did the job well it seemed, was a few years back mind you so I don't know how much better the free utilities have become since then.

Wish you the best of luck with it!