Andy Cunningham

Tuesday 6th – 21:30 to 00:30 Towed around 7 cars and a truck up the Owlsmoor Road.  That included a woman in a complete panic trying to get back to her 8 month old baby, and two BA staff coming home from LHR.

Wednesday 7th.  Go to work to ensure office was opened.  Came home again.  Took in-laws to Gatwick for Thursday flight.  Assisted with clearing blocked Owlsmoore Road and attempted to tow an articulated lorry.

Thursday.  Worked from home.  Evening spent 4 hrs transporting care workers for Wokingham Borough Council

Friday.  Made it to work with a colleague.  Took another colleague to hospital after falling off his bike.  Got accosted by hospital’s ambulance service and took two patients home while waiting, plus arranged contacts with local 4×4 response and an additional driver.  Then spent 4 hrs in the cold and dark helping said driver fix a diesel leak.  Towed SWMBO’s car into our street.

Saturday 9th. Out before 7am to transport care workers again.  Home at 2pm, after stopping to pull a crashed car out of a ditch.  Driver escaped with no injuries and car seemed to be sound as well.  At 16:30 at Royal Berks Hospital to transport two patients home.  Towed neighbour’s car into the street, but demoted it to second slipperiest road in Berkshire after Alexandra Road in Reading.  23:00 pickup for Southern Counties Ambulance in Wokingham!  Home at midnight and a bit.

Sunday 10th – Assessment day for new members.  Left home at 7:30am. got home at 2:30pm.  Slept for 2 hrs, then 2 hrs doing accounts for the group.   Arranged to pick up a colleague en-route to work in the morning as well.

Oo-er missus!

100′ Versatower on a trailer, shown fully upright and guyed here with the Disco to scale.   Three hours later it’s flat on the trailer and ready to take “home”.

Take a look at this.

I’ve driven up that slope… it’s every bit as steep as it looks. Good fun though!

I’d heard about this a while ago from a Land Rover trainer, but had forgotten the details.

The quick version.  Set you multi-meter to read DC voltage, put one probe in the brake fluid in the reservoir and the other to a good ground.  If it reads more than 0.3V, you need to flush the system with fresh fluid.

Found here.

The Disco shows 0.18V, so is good for checking again in another 6 months.

The Dakar shows 0.5V, so I’d better get cracking on that one (it’s the easier one to do as well – no fancy ABS system to deal with).

One of the reasons entries here have been a bit thin over the past few weeks is the time I’ve been devoting to the Abingdon 4×4 Festival.  I volunteered as their webmaster, and spent most of the weekend either working in the photo tent printing photos for people, or out and about with a camera taking them.

Unfortunately this means I don’t have any photos for here, but I hope to have a selection on the Abingdon site soon.

There’s lots of positive feedback on the event, so I’m eagerly awiting the results of the fundraising to see how much money we’ve made this year.

Freelander slides 250ft and stays upright

If it was a discovery you could have just driven it back up.

Don’t you just hate it when you take chunks of car apart and discover you need a bit you haven’t got?

I’d planned to replace the brake pads on the Disco last week, and discovered the nearside rear disc was badly scored so ordered some discs as well.

When I pulled it all apart I discovered that the calliper was sticking and very uneven wear on the pads (the outer one was down to the metal, hence the scoring on the disc).  I’ve freed up the sticky guide pin, ordered another one, and am waiting for it to arrive so I can do it all over again.  At least this time around it’ll only be the one wheel to strip.

Taking half the dashboard apart to get to the Parrot serial port: 1/2 hour.

Flashing the ROM on the Parrot: 5 minutes.

Putting everything back inside the dashboard: 1/2 hour.

A working Parrot car kit and Windows Mobile 6.1: priceless!

HUGE thanks to Just Car Kits in Slough for answering my questions and supplying the cable promptly. 10/10 for service.

That’s strange, methinks, as I arrive home last night: when I got out of the car and the electric cooling fan was still running. Since I haven’t been doing anything strenuous, I decided further investigation was needed. By the time it had cooled enough to look it was dark, so I had a quick check this morning and saw the coolant level had dropped. Not enough that the temperature indicator had moved, but enough that the cooling system was working hard to keep it there.

Having bunged some more water in, I drove to work and was sat in the car for a few minutes chatting on the radio before going into the office. When I got out there was a sizeable puddle forming near the front offside wheel: coolant!

Oh bugger!

A quick bit of investigation showed the water was oozing out of one of the hoses, and a replacement has been ordered. A quick trip to somewhere at lunchtime should furnish me with some repair tape to keep the existing hose going until it arrives on Monday/Tuesday.

Update: I thought that replacing the clip on the end of the hose with a jubilee clip had fixed it, but it merely slowed down the rate of water loss.  Replacing the hose took far longer than it should have done, but has stopped the water loss now.   I think the old one has perished inside (it looks perfect on the outside) letting water travel up along the cords that form one layer of the hose.

I’m confused, though.  In Halfords, 5 litres of “ready to use” OAT anti-freeze is £15.99.  5 litres of the full strength stuff (which mixes with water to give 10 litres ready to use) is only £13.99.  Clever marketing?  Stupidity?  Mis-priced?  Or assuming gullible customers?