What have you done to your Landie today.

miktdish said:

I get the impression that these days MOT centers look to add as many advisories as they can.
I think they see it as a money making oppertunity ...

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I have to agree as a sometimes maybe but for my Ninety the door mirror is (& soon to be was ) cracked in a corner (but not really noticable) and the steeringbox had a bit of backlash - nothing frightening but I actually like to know how life-threatening my cars are (especially considering how dangerous a good Landy is )

^^ theres a pair of new mirrors in the rear loadspace / boot anyway so it's not a suprise

Rich

miktdish said:

I get the impression that these days MOT centers look to add as many advisories as they can.
I think they see it as a money making oppertunity ...

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I think a few places prefer to put advisories on to cover their behinds as well, can imagine them being on the radar if too many cars are being passed advisory free even if its legit. I remember an old vitara i had which mechanicaly was spot on but looked as rough as they came from the outside. Guy who did the mot said he was shocked at how decent it was but had to put an advisory down for surface rust on chassis (barely any for year) to make it believable!

I’ve broken mine
Successfully fitted electric windows and central locking back to the AS10 module (Technozen modified) and when ignition turned on, wipers moved a couple of inches then stopped (wiper stalk was up). Got voltage on outgoing side of fuse and wiper relay ‘clicking’ as it should when operating, but no movement on wipers Investigation starts tomorrow, thinking I may have dislodged an earth or something. (2011 hard top)

Not technically today but late last evening decided to give the recently welded sill a coat of Hammerite in the wind! Needless to say spiralling hammerite most of which i wore

Tek screwed the plastic step/trim onto the sill, hate those plastic fasteners

I washed mine and started looking over it as it'll be time for an MOT before I know it. All the lights work, as do the wipers front and back. I can't measure the exhaust as they do at the test centre but it doesn't look too dirty. At a later date I'll jack it up and take the wheels off to have a look at the brakes and wobble all the wheel bearings, suspension bushes and ball joints. Oh, and take the handbrake up a turn or two. It's needed surprisingly little maintenance over the last year. The headlights started flickering just after the last MOT but this was cured with a new headlight switch. Aside from oil and filter changes that's been it. Not bad for a vehicle that was made in 2006.

I've renewed my driving licence on the Government website and got the new one in the post today. It says I'm supposed to send back the old one 'with a covering letter'. I wonder what they want me to say? 'Please find enclosed my expired driving licence' seems a little terse. Perhaps I should tell them about how it's served me faithfully over the previous decade and how impressed I have been by its clean living habits and how it's kept itself untainted by any traffic offence and how sorry I am to see it go. Maybe I'll also wish the DVLA officials and their loved ones well for the forthcoming festive season. That should pad it out to half a page or so, which won't look so sparse.

Brown said:

I've renewed my driving licence on the Government website and got the new one in the post today. It says I'm supposed to send back the old one

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Photocopy it as proof as they (Dvla) loose things and have the 'it's your responsibility to provide proof' attitude - especially when licences & entitlements are concered.....

Rich. (NOT a fan of the dvla)

Brown said:

I've renewed my driving licence on the Government website and got the new one in the post today. It says I'm supposed to send back the old one 'with a covering letter'. I wonder what they want me to say? 'Please find enclosed my expired driving licence' seems a little terse. Perhaps I should tell them about how it's served me faithfully over the previous decade and how impressed I have been by its clean living habits and how it's and kept itself untainted by any traffic offence and how sorry I am to see it go. Maybe I'll also wish the DVLA officials and their loved ones well for the forthcoming festive season. That should pad it out to half a page or so, which won't look so sparse.

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'As requested, I enclose my expired DL .
I assume this will be returned to me once you have declared it invalid so that I can keep it as a memento of my excellent driving career to date.'

More MOT preparations today. It seems to have stopped raining, so I cleaned out the back and checked the seat belts on the rear side-facing seats still work. Nobody's travelled in the back over the past year, so I was wondering whether the inertia reel mechanisms and latches would still work. Yes they do. I jacked it up and took the wheels off one by one to have a look at the condition of the brakes, and give all the bushes and ball joints a good wobble to see if I could feel anything untoward. The suspension still feels tight. The Superpro brand polybushes I fitted around nine years ago seem to be lasting well. There was a tiny bit of slack on one of the rear wheel bearings but I eased the nut around a few degrees and it disappeared. I found the nuts where the propshaft joins the handbrake drum were about half a turn loose. Usually they're quite well behaved, so I'm not sure why they suddenly decide to undo themselves. Plenty of meat left on the brake pads and no sign of the pipes chafing, corroding or kinking. I tightened up the handbrake. The adjuster now seems to have reached the limit of its travel. It can be applied in three or four clicks, so it'll do for now, but next time I'll need to renew its internals. So I think we're nearly ready. I need to give it a good clean underneath so it doesn't look so oily, and that'll be that. Also, I want to do an oil and filter change in the next few days but that's not an MOT issue, it's merely time to do the autumn service.

MOT passed this morning. Nice clean sheet with nothing on it. When I went in the garage office to pay, I saw they'd got other customers' certificates all lined up neatly on the desk and others had not been so lucky, with lists of faults, major and advisory. 'Oh, we knew yours would fly through'. On getting in to drive home, I noticed that a bird had disembogued on the steering wheel. Makes a change from oily finger marks I suppose.

Just done a little tinkering, seeing as it wasn't raining this morning. I dismantled the instrument console to have a look at the heater blower switch. On this weekend's trip to Wales the blower wasn't working so I had to keep wiping the inside of the windscreen. Interestingly enough, once I was on the motorway with the engine up to working temperature I was getting a little warm air through the vents. It must have been blowing in through the grille on top of the front wing and past the heater matrix. Anyway, no live was detectable on any of the terminals on the switch with the ignition on, and a quick look at the fusebox revealed that the corresponding fuse had disintegrated. I put a new one in with some difficulty as the legs of the old one were still in the slots. But it works now. I also got a new plastic escutcheon/trim piece to go round the door lock button. The old one wouldn't stay in. The new one snaps into place with a satisfying click, so I hope its little tabs will keep it in place.

I fitted a new super heavy duty truck battery in my TD5, before removing the battery I connected my C-Teck battery charger (set to supply mode) to the under seat fuse box to live connection where live cable comes in from battery and negative to a convenient earth bolt, I then slackened off the battery terminal clamp nuts and removed the securing bracket, I turned ignition on and off and immediately removed the battery connection clamps and replaced battery and connected clamps.
I removed the C-Tec power supply and everything up and running radio working without need to find and enter code.

Fitted new rear shocks to replace the Terrafirma ones that broke ...
Took the front wheel off along with the eyebrow ready to fit some relays for the lights - a simple job (i thought) only take an hour or two ....... should get enough time to finish the the offside today

I've just been thinking about how well some of my components have been lasting. Once upon a time my Land Rover used to burn through propshaft universal joints very quickly, but I haven't had to replace any of this sort of thing since Christmas 2019/20. How on earth have they lasted this long? Similarly, at the same time I replaced my windscreen wiper spindles and wiper motor, and nothing's gone wrong with them since. Over the preceding six years I'd been locked in mortal combat with my windscreen wipers and seldom got more than a few months trouble free wiping between major repairs. How on earth has this disturbing level of reliability come about?

Brown said:

How on earth has this disturbing level of reliability come about?

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2 things either its the love/ maintainace its getting, or its about to bite your bum soon.

J

marjon said:

2 things either its the love/ maintainace its getting, or its about to bite your bum soon.

J

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Yes, it's actually resulted in less love and maintenance, because these bits and pieces are lasting a lot longer than they usually do. It's becoming quite a terrifying experience driving on those smart motorways with no hard shoulder these days because the Land Rover has run for so long without a major breakdown that it's bound to happen imminently.

Brown said:

I've just been thinking about how well some of my components have been lasting. Once upon a time my Land Rover used to burn through propshaft universal joints very quickly, but I haven't had to replace any of this sort of thing since Christmas 2019/20. How on earth have they lasted this long? Similarly, at the same time I replaced my windscreen wiper spindles and wiper motor, and nothing's gone wrong with them since. Over the preceding six years I'd been locked in mortal combat with my windscreen wipers and seldom got more than a few months trouble free wiping between major repairs. How on earth has this disturbing level of reliability come about?

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Something must have lined back up. Or, global warming means less salt on the road It's certainly a strange one! Are you still doing your long distance road trips though? I had my first UJ go about two years ago. The prop shafts and UJ's were the original 1996 ones. Because of their age I thought I might as well replaced both shafts. The other three UJ's turned out to be solid and there was no movement on the splines. Should have just changed the UJ

Al2O3 said:

Something must have lined back up. Or, global warming means less salt on the road It's certainly a strange one! Are you still doing your long distance road trips though? I had my first UJ go about two years ago. The prop shafts and UJ's were the original 1996 ones. Because of their age I thought I might as well replaced both shafts. The other three UJ's turned out to be solid and there was no movement on the splines. Should have just changed the UJ

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I'm fairly generous with the Dinitrol so the various Land Rover maintenance issues I have are not rust related. That reminds me, it needs touching up in a few places when the weather gets a bit drier. Looking at the Met Office graph for January (as a fairly representative winter month) there doesn't seem to be any appreciable trend over the lifetime of my Land Rover:

So it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to rely on climate change as a maintenance aid anytime soon, unless there's a dramatic change in the trend line.

I haven't had a big day out in the Land Rover for a while, because instead I've been going over to my piece of land in Wales, planting trees, building sheds, digging holes and so on. I'm still averaging about 12,000 miles a year. It's just been exceptionally well behaved lately.

marjon said:

2 things either its the love/ maintainace its getting, or its about to bite your bum soon.

J

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More likely 'lockdown non- usage' ....