Doh! Doh! Doh!

Ok, hands up, I screwed up!

Last time out I was complaining that the screen washer bottle and jets I’d fitted to the Sahara just weren’t up to the job and couldn’t reach the screen. Whenever you hit the screenwash button a rather pathetic spray would dribble onto the screen, and being honest, up into the back of the windscreen because of the low angle it managed.

I’d blamed this on the kit itself being designed for sport-type kit cars and therefore why would it be any good on a full size wind screen as they only normally spray up onto little aero-screens.

Last weekend I popped the bonnet to take a look at the pump to see if I could find out what sort of replacement size I might go for to replace it with and as I stood staring at the bottom of the water bottle, my left hand started a long slow rise up to my forehead where it opened up and slapped myself really quite hard….

Have a look at this picture and see if you can see why:

Those with not-so-eagle eyes might just spot that the pipe goes from the pump, loops up the photo then curls back round and…..gets squashed flat under the box next to it! (i’ve unplugged the cable to show how REALLY stupid this was….)

So I slackened off the slot head bolt, wiggled the pipe free and squashed it back into shape and then made sure it was out of the way when I screwed the bolt back down.

To check it was all working fine I then gingerly pressed the screen wash button….and watched as the blue spray shot clean over the top of the car and hit the garage a good 10 feet behind.

So, to my washer bottle and pump kit from Car Builder Solutions I offer my humblest apologies – 5 minutes with a sharp pin had the jets aligned properly and now I finally have a a nice clean windscreen whenever I want it.

So, as I noted earlier – DOH! DOH! DOH!

First off-road outing for the Sahara

Well, the day finally came – after many months happy tarmac driving to and from work, the time came to see how the Sahara would cope in the muddy stuff.

The chosen venue: the Land Rover Owner Magazine Spring Adventure in Driffield.

I have to admit I was incredibly nervous – partially because I couldn’t stop myself thinking “but I built this thing, who the hell am I to put something like this together, it will fall apart instantly and have to be trailered home at massive expense” and partially because my passenger/co-driver was none other than Ethan, our 4 year old budding off-roader.

So as well as worrying that I may have screwed the build, I was also being nervous dad!

After an hour or so of pre-flight checks (checking fuel/water/oil/breather pipes etc.) and loading up the boot with a moderate pile of tools and a jack etc. I bit the bullet and off we went.

First stop, the show itself – LRO Driffield is always a nice start to the year because it’s the first major show after the winter break and it’s always nice to wander around looking at shiny new bits that I could buy!

Ethan had a great time looking at all the Land rovers, but he also spent a good bit of time on the petrol quad bikes and the bouncy castle – I have a sneaky suspicion he may actually be a better driver than me….

Eventually I couldn’t put it off any longer and off we went to buy our tickets for the Off-road course – Ethan was incredibly excited, whilst I was still pretty nervous… Andrew from work had also come along in his Defender 90 and was ready too, so down the course we headed.

In the end of course, I really shouldn’t have worried – the Sahara was absolutely brilliant and performed fantastically.

Driffield is famous for it’s thick gloopy muck so i unrolled my Rugged Guide Winch and Wade Blanket to cover the radiator and headed off. Unfortunately due the fantastic weather it was largely unneeded – but it did prove that my Brunel Performance Radiator was up to the job and and the thermostat I’d fitted for the fan were set up correctly as without air flow the water heated up pretty quickly!

A quick stop to roll the blanket up (it has integral velcro so you don’t have to use mucky straps or anything) and off we headed.

Ethan and I spent a fantastic hour driving round the course which was fantastically bumpy with a lot of quite hair raising hills and drops, but never so much as to be unsafe. With the incredible ground clearance on the Sahara it didn’t bottom out of even snag once even when we headed down some of the Red and Black sections.

The only bit I did avoid was one particularly short sharp peak as I’m yet to sort out any major underbody protection and didn’t want to stuff a diffcase or steering on my first time out. (I’m off to LRSeries in the next few days to get that situation sorted though – just don’t tell Ellie…)

There was one very gloopy spot left on the course where apparently they had been bowsering water over all day and Ethan and I both had a grand old time plugging through it – so much so that I had no problem at all buying the pictures from the official photographers on the way out later on. I’ll admit that cleaning it all off after was a pain in the proverbial though…

As it was the first shakedown I was trying to keep a mental list of any bits that I needed to work on and although I did think of a couple of things it was mercifully short:

• I need to look into softer springs as the ride is a bit harsh – not surprising as the springs are designed for a normal Disco1 and the Saharas body is a LOT lighter.
• I also need to get underbody protection sorted too.
• The screen washers are FAR too weak, but I need to check the routing of the pipes as they may be a little kinked.
• I could do with thinking about a CB and also an aerial for the radio for a bit of light entertainment (and some decent speakers for the front passengers), but for now my ipod lead in the AUX jack is fine.
• Other than those bits, I’m really, really chuffed with how well the car behaved and we’re both looking forward to getting out there again as soon as possible – in fact Ethan asks almost every day if we can go off-roading again instead of going to school/work etc.

All in all a fantastic day

Some pictures of the Sahara

This gallery contains 6 photos.

I’ve had a few requests for some pictures, particularly of the rear seating, so please enjoy

The Sahara is finished and on the road!

Once again it’s managed to be a while since I last blogged, but in that time quite a bit has happened with the car!

To briefly sum up:

- I ordered 5 new 33inch Hankook RT03 tires on anthracite painted steel rims (with locking nuts!) from Chris @ Silverline Tyres (very helpful guy) and fitted these – they made a massive difference to the way the car looks. I remember Nick saying when I drove the demonstrator that the biggest mistake anyone can make is to not change the wheels – and I now see exactly what he means! Not to mention the car now rides about 3 or 4 inches higher than it did, so getting underneath to work on stuff is incredibly easy as you can now just slide under with plenty of room to spare.

-I got the Sahara trailered down to the DVLA inspection place where the inspector probably took al of 4 minutes to carry out the ID checks he had to do – i.e. check the VIN is valid and the Chassis matches it etc. – in fact, the whole exercise took about an hour and half, 1:20 of which was getting onto the trailer and down to the DVLA in Beverley, then back and off the trailer again!

Incidentally I used www.shiply.com to find someone who could do the trailering for me and it turns out it’s a really good site for finding delivery drivers etc. that works well.

It took the DVLA 3 weeks to get me the V5 during which time I finished off all the bits necessary to get it to pass the MOT – fitting seatbelts and mirrors, headlights, tidying up the engine bay etc. etc. etc.

Originally I fitted the original rear seat belts from the disco to the rear seats, but they are far too short so I bought a front pair for a late model Disco1 from ebay – I chose the late model because these have the “on seat” mounting plates which are vertical instead of the earlier ones that mount to the floor and therefore have right angle mounts so won’t work on the roll cage. You only need the belts though as the original center strap (the one with 2 belt latch receivers in) fits just fine.

Incidentally if you are building a 4 seater version, Nick came up with a hefty piece of angle iron for me that bridges across the 2 chassis seatbelt mounts and then you mount the single strap to the center of it. When you ask him for it though, ask for it to be supplied without the holes pre drilled as I found that although the holes lined up on the original chassis belt mounts, when I replaced them (as they were incredibly rusty!) they didn’t line up so I had to drill holes slightly further in.

Getting the headlights etc. all wired up as easy, I also fitted a washer bottle with pump and wiring from www.cbsonline.com but this is really quite small and I think probably too small when it comes to trying to wash mud spray off the screen from mucky off roading. Longer term I’ll probably replace it with a bigger one.

There was a lot of other small jobs to be sorted but by the time the V5 arrived these were all sorted.

I then booked the MOT and on the wednesday morning set off loaded down with a lot of tools and spare parts (in case of massive failure!)

Unfortunately I only got as far as the verge round the corner before the car lost all power and wouldn’t start again. At first I thought it might be low on petrol (as I had only shoved in maybe 20 litres) but after Ellie  drove me to the petrol station to get more it still wouldn’t start.

Checking the ignition system I found I was getting almost no spark so when I rang Andy @ Maltings to say I wasn’t going to get there in time for the MOT he said “I’ll bet its the coil amplifier, it usually is” – and he was right! I followed the diagnostics in the workshop manual and it showed the amp was pretty much dead.

Very luckily for me www.lrseries.com (which is based in the next town from me) happened to have one in stock and I shot round there to pick it up – this was even luckier because they were actually closing up early that afternoon as they were moving to a new building and would be closed for nearly a week, so definitely someone up there was watching out for me!

With the ignition all fixed, i made to a more local garage on the friday and the car passed first time – even on headlight alignment despite me only having aligned them by pointing the lights from my G4 on the garage door and then lining the Sahara’s lights up to match. In fact at first the tester refused to believe I’d done it that way as they were so spot on – so very chuffed about that one.

Since passing the MOT i’ve driven the kids out and about in it, also to work and back a few times – and a fair few people at work have been out for the obligatory joy ride!

I’ve still got quite a list of bits that I want to improve or add – such as underbody protection etc. – but overall I’m absolutely loving driving it.

I’ll add more info as I add more to the car but I’ll leave this post with a few suggestions for anyone planning a build:

1) Stick with a diesel manual donor – much easier!
2) Buy LOTS more convoluted split wiring hose than you think you need. No matter how much you buy (say from CBS) I guarantee it won’t be enough.
3) If you are doing a four seater, make sure you buy a set of front seatbelts to fit to the back.
4) You will use a LOT of cable ties, and Cable tie bases are a great way to hold them still. Rivet the base down.
5) Again, if doing a 4 seater, slice the treadplate floor in half before you fit it (along the line of one of the cross spars in the body) so that you can remove the rear section once the seats are bolted down. I had to do this afterwards when I suspected the fuel sender to be flaky. If you don’t do it you will have to remove the rear seats and these are bolted down using bolts way up above and behind the exhaust box and are almost impossible to reach!

I’m sure theres more works of advice, but i’ll leave it there for now.

Night all – and happy motoring

DVLA Conundrums

Well, a couple of weeks ago I got my arse in gear and rang up the DVLA to ask how I go about registering a change of Body type for the Sahara.  The first person I spoke to said just to note it on the V5, send it off and then a few weeks later 90% of people get an updated V5, but some get called for an inspection.

Brilliant I thought, dead easy.

But then after doing more checking online it was fairly obvious that DVLA class a Body change as a major change so MUST be inspected. I gave the DVLA another call and this time another lady told me that I would need to go through a full re-registration and sent me a pack containing a V55 etc. Amazingly enough this arrived next day so very impressed.

I spent an evening filling out (most) of the form but got stuck on a few points (like not having a clue what actual Body Type to put as there are NO guidelines for that bit!) so thought I’d pop into the local DVLA Office in Beverley and ask their opinion. I got together loads of photos, forms, proof of ID etc. Next morning I shot round there on the way to work and got there at 9:05. Very short waiting queue, very nice office, very nice people.

Even they seemed a little stuck as to what best to do but they gave Swansea a call and after a few minutes came back with the verdict:

• Yes it would most likely need to be inspected, but they couldn’t say if I would have to bring the car to them or they would send an inspector out.
• They kept all the photos I’d taken and handed over along with the V5 and made of note of the change I was requesting
• They would contact the local department who looks after these things and I should hear from them in the next couple of weeks

Overall, really really impressed with Beverley DVLA Office.

Good to their word I got a letter through the post on Thursday last week telling me that I needed to bring the car to them a week on Tuesday for an inspection, and they should be able to issue me a new V5 within 48 hours.

Ok, bum that I have to get it there – as I’m having to sort out a man-with-trailer as it goes to great lengths on the letter to say “THOU SHALT NOT PUT A WHEEL ON THE ROAD OR THOU SHALLT BE STRUNG UP”.

On the plus side, assuming all is well, in a few days time I’ll have a nice lovely updated V5 so as soon as the car is ready I can get it MOT’d and on the road!

Of course this has put the cat amongst the pigeons – unless I want my V5 to say something like “3 Door Soft Top, Number of Seats=0” then I now need to get moving and get the seats in quick!

Windscreen fitting and Air box choice

A little while back I had to have a new windscreen fitted to my G4 Discovery after a sodding great stone flew up from the back tires of a lorry after the bad snow and ice had cracked up the A63 – the saving grace was it meant that I finally got a working heated front windscreen!

While the guys were fitting the new windscreen I had a chat with them about getting the glass for the NCF Sahara sorted out and they said to give them a call once the body was ready and they would come and take a look and sort out a price for me.

As good as their word I gave them a call a few weeks ago and they popped round and measured up and quoted me a good price for both pieces of glass. In my Sahara there will be the main windscreen, but also a second large sheet of glass overhead as a sunroof. In a regular Sahara I believe there are normally 3 pieces as there is also one that sits behind you in the rear bulkhead, but I don’t have one as it will obviously be a 4 seater and the bulkhead would rather get in the way of the legroom for the rear seats!

I had a chat with them and they asked what I thought of doing about tinting the overhead glass – there’s no point leaving it clear as you would just bake on hot days. When Nick (NCF) built his one he used a stick on aftermarket blue tint and I was just thinking I would do the same, but they had a rather novel suggestion. Instead of regular film they knew a guy who was doing the dot pattern masking that you sometimes see on buses to reduce the amount of light that comes in. It’s basically a sort of dot matrix pattern that allows you to see out (well, up) quite clearly but reduces the light level to about 20% of the original so makes a huge difference.

They were booked to come round and fit it last thing on Thursday last week so I shot out of work early and hurtled home at speed – fairly excited I’ll admit as its yet another big step towards getting the car finished. About 5 minutes after I got back they arrived and set to work. The sheets of glass are pretty huge when you look at them and it took both guys to heave the biggest one up onto the roof but it was bonded in pretty quickly and the main windscreen followed quickly after. In total I think it took about an hour or so to get them both in and done and it makes a huge difference – you can really see the light at the end of the tunnel now. The dotted glass overhead looks particularly good as well – obviously I won’t really know until I start driving it out and about but so far I think it will work really well.

Air Box Choice:

For quite a while I’ve been trying to work out what to do about the Air filter and intake. Obviously I’m aiming to build quite a capable off roader, and therefore a snorkel is definitely something I want to aim for in the long term, but even to start with there is still a fairly sizeable issue to solve.

The original air box on a 300TDI/V8I Discovery is a rectangular box with a cone intake that then connects via a 4 or 5 inch long rigid-ish rubber pipe to the air flow sensor and then onto the intake on the Plenum changer. It sits right at the very front in the nearside corner. Obviously this is one of the first bits you remove when you start chopping so you need to start thinking about how you’re going to solve it. With the 200TDI (and possibly the 300TDI?) and the 3.5 litre V8 there isn’t an airflow sensor so you can just connect a long pipe directly to the intake and then you can place the air filter wherever you like – in fact that’s exactly what Nick did as you can see from the photo. In his case he just used an off the shelf air filter and a pipe from an old LDV van – job done.

The main issues I had was obviously needing to keep the air flow sensor (otherwise the emissions would never pass the MOT and the engine would constantly fault) and also Nicks solution isn’t quite the answer for deep wading – though obviously being fair, neither is my choice of a petrol engine with all it’s electrical wiring!

For quite some time I’ve been pondering this and spent quite a few evenings googling for possible answers. I’ve considered custom made air boxes, carbon fibre boxes designed for performance kit cars, even trawling random sites for boxes that would do. The biggest problem is the sheer volume of air that the engine wants. It’s the best part of 4 litres and also because of the injection it needs a good hefty supply – as I understand it a fair bit more than an equivalent Carb fed version. On top of that, if I want to fit a snorkel later then the box has to be sealed rather than just having an open end.

As is almost always the way the answer came when actually looking at some in person rather than just pictures and spec sheets. Ethan and I went up to the LRO show in Driffield for the afternoon and we were wandering around the second hand parts sale at the back of the show and came across quite a few cylindrical air boxes of various origins. Most of these were for 200TDI engines and my engineering sense felt that they just wouldn’t be big enough to shift the air the engine needed.

Then at the back of a stand Ethan spotted this bad boy. As far as I could see it was from a V8 Defender and didn’t seem to have been used – there was no dust or muck on it and the filter inside seemed completely clean. I was really happy with this, handed over £20 and Ethan and I carried it back to the car – stopping on the way to sit on the hill watching the arena. Ethan was particularly pleased the box and christened it “our friend” as it was sat between us, and being honest it was nearly as big as his body!

That evening after he had gone to bed I offered it up into the engine bay and it was immediately obvious that it was far, far too large! There was absolutely no way it was going to fit anywhere in the engine bay so I had to make the tough call to give up, stick it on ebay and start the search again. Also more importantly I was going to have to explain to my 3 year old assistant where his ‘friend’ had gone…

Once again a solution seemed to present itself – whilst searching on ebay to work out which category to sell it in I spotted  this air box and filter from a Range Rover Classic 3.9 efi V8 – exactly the same engine as I have.

Yes, it looked in a very much condition but from the pictures I was pretty sure it would clean up and with a fresh coat of paint be just the thing. £20 secured it and it was delivered next day. I was wrong about the state – it was structurally sound but very, very dirty! After a bit of cleaning though it came up quite nicely and more importantly it fitted the existing air flow sensor perfectly.

It took a bit of head scratching and a good idea from Liam and I even worked out where it would go in the engine bay. With the long bar that I mounted across the top of the radiator there was now plenty of places to ‘hang’ hardware so it will go across the top of the radiator, sat slightly back and down, so it tucks in neatly above the top of the auxiliary drive belt.

I’ve now removed all the old brackets from it with a Dremel grinder and made up a couple of template straps from 1mm steel to mock up where it will sit. These along with the box are now down with Johnsons who are making up the actual final straps and mounting brackets to mount it to the box section and hopefully I’ll be picking these up on Wednesday. I’ve also just recieved the new K&N air filter from MM4x4 who were incredibly helpful in tracking down the right filter. Having spoken to a LR parts desk it would seem that his air box wasn’t around for long and LR seem to have disavowed all knowledge of it so it is a bit of a rarity – lets just hope that’s not because it was a poor design!

The really great news is that Ethan saw it on the way to school one day and announce that he liked his ‘friend’ even though it had gotten smaller – I told him I’d had to get a new one as the old one was just too big and he actually seemed even happier with this one, so thank heaven for small mercies!

I’ve bought a snorkel from Devon 4×4 but I suspect this will be a project for later on in the year after the car is finished and back on the road as it will definitely require some thought on how to route the pipe from the foot of the windscreen to the air box as the wings lift out the way when you open the bonnet so you can’t pass the pipe in that way… Anyway, thats for another month.

Next time : The main front to rear wiring loom!

Seats and giant gaps in the floor!

After the success with the engine I was really inspired to crack on with the (quite large) list of jobs.

First thing was to order the seats – I chose Corbeau Targa in Black but with a blue centre panel – because Blue is Ethan’s favourite colour and he’s really enjoying helping put it all together. I spoke to Corbeau about seat bases and they dont’ do one for a Discovery but they gave me the dimensions for their universal sliders and I worked out with an adaptor made out of box section that I could get them to fit. They have the same length as the original seat sliders, it’s just that the width is narrower.

I decided to order the front pair from Toys4Cars largely due to the price and it did take a few phone calls to them before I managed to get the right answers, but once ordered they were delivered next day so very fast service there. (I’ve since ordered the back pair but Corbeau are out of stock for a few days so they are on backorder)

As noted before I can’t weld so I found a local engineering company via google called Johnsons Motor Radiators and drove round to speak to Derek who was incredibly helpful. That evening I made up a template bracket using 25mm square wooden battens with a couple of pieces of ply at the back to wrap around behind the back of the seat mounts. If you imagine a large rectangle with a pair of cross struts about 10cms inside the widest edge forming a sort of inner square then that sort of covers it. The outer edges bolt down onto the original mount and the inner cross struts bolt up into the seat sliders which in turn are bolted to the base of the seats. I know I keep saying this but I’ll try and get some photos done soon.

Next morning I dropped these down to Derek who was a little surprised I’d got on so quickly (but then I’m dying to get the seats in!) and after a few minutes doing sketches together on the back of an envelope – the way proper engineers think things through in my opinion! – he couldn’t beat my design so said I should pop back next morning and they would be ready made out of 2mm box steel with perfect seam welds and 3mm steel plate for the rear wrap around brackets. Fantastic service.

As good as his word they were indeed ready next morning so I picked them up and that evening did a test fit. After drilling and fettling the bolt holes the seat fitted beautifully so I took it  all back out and dropped it back to Derek on the Friday morning who then got it powder coated for me. I picked them up the following Tuesday (day after the bank holiday) but it turned out they were actually ready late on Friday – once again, great service, I really cannot recommend them enough.

Before I could fit the seats into the car I had to get on and fit the floor repair panels and get them sealed as obviously these sit under the seat so it made sense to get them in and painted first.

Very easy job – basically offer the panels in and use an angle grinder to chop out a few nibbles so it fits round the edge of the seat base and then bolt firmly to the body. Drill through into the floor and then bolt to that as well. I actually used large penny repair washers for these as I want to make sure there was no chance of the bolts pulling through under stress. The 4 smaller panels required a little snip and twist to get them to fit but easily done and then screwed in using self tappers.

As I was in there I also made up a small bracket out of 10mmx10mmx1mm angle bracket to hold the rear brake pipe bracket in place an riveted this to one of the cross struts and that finished the brake system. (For those keeping track of these things I just screwed the front brake brackets to the front suspension mounts as suggested in the build manual when I put the new body work on)

Next evening saw me out there with a large tub of ’underbody sealant’ from Andrew Page and spread it liberally all over the new panels from on top and also underneath. Once I’ve got all the cabling and brake lines etc permanently clipped in place along the underside of the body I’ll probably run the car up onto ramps and paint the whole underside as I’ve got quite a bit left.

Once the paint had dried I reassembled the seat onto the base and dropped it back into the car and loosely bolted it down – and then promptly did the legally required “broom broom” test – where the car builder sits in the seat for the first time and plays with all the seat adjustments and then grabs the steering wheel and pretends to drive it!.

I then took the second seat and put it in the back behind the drivers seat and tried sitting on it to make sure it would have legroom back there. Looking at where it needs to be placed and where the cross braces are in the NCF body I can’t think of any better way to mount it than to just use the same universal sliders as in the front. They are exactly the right length to span 2 struts and also allow the seat to be slid backwards (slightly) or forwards depending on the passengers legs. Having 4 seats in a custom built off roader is pretty unconventional, and having all 4 adjustable is definitely new but so what, it’s my car

At this point the car is now nicely sealed in (at the front anyway, as the back is still a large gaping whole where the floor will be!) and the drivers seat is in. I’ve since realised that I will need to take it back out again to find somewhere to fit the seatbelt harness, but one thing at a time!

In the next update – Windscreen fitting, air box choice and running in the main rear wiring loom