Treewolf

In that situation the tractor driver would properly face charges of causing death by dangerous driving.

Does anyone know what powers the Police or LA have to close a flooded road seemingly on a whim? Normally it would require a Traffic Regulation Order I would have thought, and evidently most flood closures dont have one. Also who decides when a road becomes "unsafe" to drive? The Wellney road evidently wasn't unsafe, since the bloke in the LR drove it without drama (as for that matter did the bloke in the tractor who incidentally wasn't criticised despite the fact that if it was unsafe for one it must have been unsafe for both). God help us if it your everyday car driving Bobby, since it is becoming very evident that they are utterly incapable of negotiating floods - just about every news clip of a flood lately has had a police vehicle stuck in it. It really irritates me that we have a situation where people of obviously limited ability can arbitrarily assume that everyone else has even less ability and make rulings on that basis. Incidentally and contrary to the trend, I was impressed by Devon & Cornwall police during the floods round Barnstaple before xmas 2012 since they were turning cars back from flooded roads but at least 3 roadblocks allowed me (in a well-equipped Defender with snorkel) through after advising me of the extent of the flood and asking me not to take risks. In every case the police officers were sensible, respectful, and courteous. If all were like that I'd have no complaint!

Hi Jon, what arrangement for locking the hub nuts do you have? Early vehicles had two nuts with a tab washer between them. to set these up, the first nut is tiughtened to get the correct end float on the bearing, then the second nut locks the fist, and the tab washer stops either nut moving. On later vehicles this arrangement was modified (to make factory assembly cheaper) and there is a spacer fitted between the two bearings' inner races within the hub. With this setup there is a single hub nut which is tightened very tight and then a collar on the nut is staked into a slot in the stub axle. The change was midway through TD5 production, I believe. Either is very reliable if correctly assembled, but many folk don't like the later arrangement becuase it cannot be adjusted for wear, and if you change the bearings you can have trouble finding the correct size spacer. It is quite possible to convert the late type to the early type by ditching the spacer and reverting to the two nuts plus tab washer, but if the spacer is removed and the single later nut used, or the wrong type of tab washer, the bearing can work loose. It might be worth checking that you do have either type but correctly assembled. Set up properly, they shouldn't work loose regardless of how you use the vehicle.

On my Defender the same warning light is used for handbrake and fluid level. Unless the fluid level is right up to the full mark, the light flickers especially if you brake going downhill.

Why is there a very tiny person standing on your mirror arm? On an 08 plate my bet is that that's an insurance write-off, but please let us know. Glad everyone was OK! Did the trailer tyre actually run up over the front of the Defender then drop off into the position shown?

Sounds to me like he parked it where he did because it is illegal for it to be on the road, so he needs somewhere quiet to dump it. Legally dumped vehicles like this can be a nightmare. I had issues some time back with a car parked across the end of my drive, making access almost impossible but no quite. The car was road legal, and research and advice I sought at the time revealed that the authorities were not interested (no crime, road traffic offence, or parking offence had been committed), however if I moved the car at all, I was committing an offence (even moving it 10 feet on skates is "taking without the owner's consent"). Interestingly if you are blocked in your drive, then no offence is committed. If you are blocked out of your drive, then it is likely that an offence of obstruction has been committed and the police can intervene, if they have nothing better to do of course. I did hear of someone who ended up with a car in their front garden after an RTC, and the police were apparently unable to trace the owner or driver of the car. The owner of the garden could not legally move the car until she had obtained a court order, since the owner's permission was required but no-one knew who the owner was, and unsurprisingly the owner wasn't forthcoming. It took weeks and cost £££ to get permission to pay someone to take it away. At times the law can be an ass.

I've known it to be caused by worn suspension rubbers allowing the axle to move as well.

Sure you're not confusing a cat with a DPF? A DPF has connections to the engine managament system and generally can't be removed (would also fail MOT I think). Cat removal is generally unlikely to cause problems and isn't an MOT issue, but there may be other side-effects on running since the turbo will spin up quicker. It seldom causes problems. If you park over a pile of dog poo you're less likely to have your cat stolen!

The Husky 8000 is great for most purposes, however the competition boys don't like it because it is quite slow, although this actually makes it better for most normal winching operations. 8000lbf line pull is also quite enough for most applications (no point having a winch so powerful it will rip itself off the vehicle). The old 8274 is great for competition use because there are so many ways to modifiy it, such as fitting twin motors etc, and it is also a fast winch. The Husky is unique amongst current light electric vehicle winches in that the gearing is by worm and wheel (using substantial phosphor bronze components) which give two big advantages. One, the winch doesn't need a brake, it will hold the load naturally (since the wheel can't drive the worm), and therefore there are no problems lowering a load with it, and two, the gearing arrangement means that the speed difference between no load and full load really isn't that great. On nearly all other winches the drive is through a series of epicylic gears whcih means that they run much faster with a light load than a heavy load, and also since the gears are reversible there has to be a brake of some kind. Most winches use a friction device for the brake which means that the winch will overheat very quickly indeed if lowering a heavy load, and I have seen the drum on a Warn XD9000 get hot enough lowering a load to melt a plasma rope - not good! I have several Huskys (two on the Series 1, and 1 on the Defender) and the build quality is very high. It doesn't matter how long they've not been used, they always work. I have a Warn XD9000 on the Disco, and by comparison the buld quality and the quality of the internal components is rubbish. It also doesn't like not being used. The paint has also gone completely from the aluminium parts whereas the older Husky still has a good finish. The downside of the Husky is the price (of course), but the build qulaity is high enough to mean that a good s/h Husky is in my view a better bet than a new inferior winch. For value for money at the moment, the TDS Goldfish seems to have a good reputation. I have never actually met one nor examined one, and bearing in mind the price it must be of pretty cheap construction, but those who have them seem happy and if you want a "value engineered" winch (ie cheap but not total rubbish) they have to be worth a look. For me, the Husky is the only electric vehicle winch built to a proper industrial design and standard. It inevitably also has the industrial price.

Unless you're into competitive winching (when a modified 8274 wins hands down) the best general purpose electric winch is the Superwinch Husky. It is the only one built to industrial standards - I wouldn't think of putting any other electric winch on a working truck. The only downside (as usual) is the price.

IIRC it was about £100. I have a caller ID device on the line into the house (so it records all incoming calling numbers upstream of the Truecall), and it is is really interesting to see the number of calls which now never make it as far as the phone. Probably stops about 5 to 10 unwanted calls a day, and that's to a TPS-registered number. Best gadget I have bought in years!

I use one of these - Trucall call blocker Works really well on a domestic line.

I have several times had to point out to my local supermarket forecourt staff that the petroleum spirit regs don't apply to diesel, since it is legally oil and not petrol! They still don't get it! You can legally carry up to 1000 litres of diesel in any kind of can in the back of your truck. More than 1000 litres you need a transport licence. It depresses me that people whose livelihood and profession is selling fuel have no clue whatsoever about the law as it relates to selling fuel!

There is one significant exception to the light goods vehicle reduced speed limits (which have existed for years, btw) and that is a vehicle which is a "Dual Purpose Vehicle" as defined in the Road Vehicles (Construction & Use) Regulations 1986 (as amended). Speed limits are set by the Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984 (as amended) and this makes it clear that a vehicle which falls within the C&U regs DPV definition is subject to car limits. The definition of a DPV is a bit complex, but any vehicle with an unladen (note not kerb) weight not exceeding 2040kg and full or part time all wheel drive is definitely a DPV. Your Ranger is probably in this category in which case you should contest the ticket. This subject has been discussed on this forum before.

Recorded it but not watched yet. Because the people who loot are not very bright! Bet it would really happen!

This is a complex area, and the pitfalls are many. Your post appears to contain several popular misconceptions! Firstly, no device is "designed to fail at xx overload". It is designed so that it is guaranteed not to fail below xx overload. Secondly, you should never under any circumstances exceed the design SWL on a piece of equipment, so the percentage overload that won't actually break it is immaterial. The shear pin on a Tirfor is there to prevent the user from being able to overload the device, since there is no other way to achieve this. It is in effect the equivalent of the SLI or Overload Indicator on a crane, and if it shears the Tirfor hasn't failed, it has worked as intended! A Tirfor is rated as a lifting device, and as such will have a much higher factor of safety than a pulling device. Unfortunately I don't recall the Safety Factors required by UK standards for various classifications of device, but ISTR that a winch for lifting, such as a Tirfor, has a safety factor in the region of 5 to 8. The means that a Tirfor TU16, rated at 1600kg, must not fail (ie release the load) if loaded to something like 8000 to 11200 kg. This of course has nothing to do with the shear pin, which is designed to prevent you overloading the winch in the first place and can therefore fail at 1600kg. A vehicle winch is not rated/tested as a lifting device and therefore has a much lower SF, in the order of 2, and this is the reason why a 4000kg vehicle winch uses SWR of a similar size to an 800kg Tirfor. In any winch system the components must be selected so that none is overloaded. If you are using a 1.6T Tirfor and need a pull of up to 3.2T, you will need to achor the Tirfor to a fixed object with a shackle rated at at least 1.6T SWL, run the cable from the Tirfor round a block or snatch block rated at at least 3.2T and with as sheave (pulley) of a suitable diameter for the cable, and then anchor the cable end with another 1.6T shackle. The snatch block must be attached to the object you're pulling with a shackle etc rated to at least 3.2T. The mechanics of the winching system are not necessarily complex, but you need to be aware of the max load on any compenent and rig so that no component's SWL is exceeded. Never work on the basis that because it has a SF of 2, it can be overloaded to 1.5 times its SWL.

For road-based operations I reckon that that is pretty cool! I bet it is very, very expensinve, though. On rough terrain it would be a non starter, and the Mog is still king.

Driving your own motorhome won't need a CPC since it isn't a job. If you were employed by someone soleley to drive their HGV-size motorhome, you would, however if you were employed by them as a butler and one of your incidental duties was driving the motorhome, you wouldn't. To drive the Mog you won't need a CPC provided that driving the Mog isn't your main job. So if your principal job is felling/cutting, and the Mog driving is incidental to that (even if you are transporting the arisings) I don't think you need a CPC. If you are employed to drive the Mog but also help out loading, then you do. As usual, clear as mud and both expensive and unnecessary. I have been told that the idea of the CPC was to cut down on the number of drivers operating in the UK with total inadequate overseas training and licences, but as usual it is the Brits who suffer. What is the purpose of the C or C&E test if not to assess if you're competent to drive an HGV? If you are competent and pass the test, what's the purpose of a CPC?

Really useful info, thanks everyone. I hadn't really considered a Honda, but the price is very attractive and Honda engines are generally very good, so an interesting suggestion. Hmm, decisions!

Thank you, very helpful! I think that you probably mean the Husky 545RXT or RX, but I am having trouble spotting the difference! I can see that one comes with a "Balance X" harness and one a "Balance XT" harness and I am guessing that that is the only difference, but how the harnesses differ is not clear. Jonesie's prices are as usual very good indeed.

The time has come to invest in a new brushcutter. If anyone could make any recommendations based on their experiences I'd be grateful. Simple requirement really, I need a machine which will run happily all day with a 12" three-edge mulching blade in rank grass, bramble, etc. Probably Stihl or Husky (unless anyone can suggest a better alternative), I have no real preference between these but the new Stihl spares policy probably makes me favour Husky. Any suggestions for machine and best place to buy will be appreciated. Thanks.

I think he must have had a few questions about the brake. He's now added the following:-

I've always found Stihl oil to be on the runny side and tend only to use it during winter when the ambient temperature's low and the lower viscosity is an advantage.

Very, very cool! Just right for a Bonsai forest.

The Nav seems always to cause problems with insurers if not commercial. Does anyone know if there are any problems if you have a Navara which is 100% private and not used for any business purposes but insure it on a commercial policy? A friend of mine has one and has had trouble finding private insurance for it, the insurance broker simply recommends going for a commercial use policy, but strictly it isn't a commercial vehicle. What is the downside of this?