I was browsing the mod section on this forum and saw WINU's contribution to 29 April 2013 - WOW where did he get that fantastic roll cage!

Further on there was a very sexy winch mounting being fabricated. Are these things available commercially? Or are any plans available [to buy?] so I can explore fabrication over here?

HTR

Hi

Tornado Motorsport have done cages for freelanders in the past. Look for user called Real Beale, he has a rally freelander with tornado roll cage.

As for the winch mount, there are a few guys on here that have designed and fabricated there own, do a quick forum search and see if the come up.

Hello,
This is original camel trophy cage by Safety Devices, you can still order it but it's a little bit pricey ~2200 quid with fitting.

Look for user called Real Beale, he has a rally freelander with tornado roll cage.

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This is Safety Devices too

John (Mataciabo) created a winch bracket for Td4 (mainly facelift) , and have some for sale IIRC. Version for 2.0L-series (98-00) and pre facelift 1.8 (98-00) is still in developing. Fronts are different and some changes to side mounts of bracket are required. Will be available soon

Yeah there's some winch brackets available, should get loads of parts on a pallet for air freight to you HTR

Hmm, think I'm a better shopper than a salesman! Gotta get the toy running before I add other goodies to it.

HTR

htr said:

Hmm, think I'm a better shopper than a salesman! Gotta get the toy running before I add other goodies to it.

HTR

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You'll get the engine sorted easy enough. My 4 pot K series looks like this at the moment.

I was very interested in your comments re elastopolimer and MLS HGs. I didn't realise that the original ones were still available. I'll have the head off in the next day or so and I've borrowed a digital set of callipers to check if any rods have been bent. I'll measure from piston crown to top of liner. I'll try to measure the height of the liners above the block face too.

Below is a pic of the spare head. It has marks where they have checked its hardness. I came off a motor that hadn't long been overhauled! I'll check it carefully to see if it needs to be skimmed again. If its been done how can I tell if it can be done again. I does have faint 'fire rings' I hope that's not bad?

Looking at the pic below it it seems different from a VVC head in that the cylinder top [where the spark plugs come through] is not a concave shape. It's more a shallow V and there doesn't seem to be any lip / recess around the valve seat to smooth out. There could be some improvements to be made on the inlet and exhaust sides. I'll get it striped and have a look in behind the valves themselves.

One small upgrade I'm definitely going to do is to open up those coolant apertures. Some are tiny and you can even see where some factory erk has attempted to chisel bits off to open then up a bit - and failed miserably!

HTR

Gasket wise, I feel the MLS gasket requires the engine be assembled to much tighter tolerances. The elastopolimer gasket is more forgiving of liner hights.
The VVC head is different in lots of ways. It has larger valves and larger ports. The chamber shape is also different.
This is my old 143 bhp VVC head.
The 158 VVC head is different again.