Blog

Just a quick note to remind me to add some stuff about some of the projects I’ve been working on.

My Nissan Patrol is still sitting in the garage with the LS1 still not mounted. My new crownwheel and pinions are sitting there. Next Jobs are :

• make the engine mounts and fix into the engine bay
• make a new VSS sensor mounting for the output shaft of the transmission
• get the loom out and take out all the extraneous stuff
• Mount up all the accessories
• Install crownwheel and pinions and clean up suspension
• Fix rust
• paint
• put back together

SIMPLE !!!! y r

The Charger hasn’t made any progress, I’ve been searching for some drop spindles but I can’t seem to find any.

The Fiat 131R is running but I’ve had enough of the carburetor .. its black magic and needs to go, so I’m building up a VEMS ECU and putting a Croma injection manifold on. (I have the turbo motor there but it can wait for another day)

I’ve finally upgraded to the L322 Rangerover from my P38. I love that car !! The P38 is still around, my son has taken off with it as his Series 80 diesel motor decided to have the nut off the turbo for lunch, so the motors been out for a rebuild. So now I have a Series II, a Series 1, 2 and 3 Rangerover, a Series II Discovery TD5, the Nissan PAtrol, Charger, Fiat 131R and a Peugeot MI16. Not all of them go of course .. but one day !!

We’ve built a Suzuki 410 for my son Henare to go 4wd’ing, started as a farm vehicle, now with a cage, ARB suspension, bead lockers, new tyres, Toyota 4AGE and with the my old winch off the Nissan.

Tools wise, I’ve finished off my mates CNC plasma cutter, I was using a cheap Chinese plasma cutter, but the HF start is not reliable enough, so I’m looking for one to replace it.

My Mill now has a DR-350 Schumatech DRO. Great to use, but its taken a while to get there.

I’m keen on heating my workshop to stop my tools going rusty (and getting some extra time out there during winter). Its all plumbed in for underfloor heating, but he costs of a new boiler a little too much. So I thought using the existing one when the main house system is not using it. First thing I have to do is monitor the boiler duty cycle so I might as well monitor the temperatures as well to see how well the temperature PID controller is working. It does seem that often the house is too hot, and its expensive on gas use.

So I started building a Microcontroller to talk to once of my PC’s , then decided to use an Arduino with an Ethernet shield so it could talk directly to the internet and upload duty cycles and temperatures without using a PC. It hopefully arrives tomorrow.