Treewolf

That's an interesting one! Make sure that you really are comparing unladen weight though, not kerb weight. Kerb weight usually includes vehicles fluids, a 90% full tank of fuel and a 75Kg driver, whilst unladen weight does not. Even a Defender 130 DCHCPU comes in at just under 2040 unladen based on manufacturer's figures for kerb weight on this basis. Mind you the Navara is a heavy old beast.

There seems to be a widespread problem at the moment that police and VOSA at the roadside are misinterpreting the rules. Vehicle registration and vehicle taxation have no bearing whatsoever on speed limits. Vehicle design and construction however does. The definition of a Dual Purpose Vehicle is (as stated in my post on P3) determined by Regulation 3(2) of the Motor Vehicles (Construction & Use) Regulations 1986. Provided that your vehicle meets this definition then it IS a DPV irrespective of tax class, registration description, etc. Speed limits in the UK are set by the Road Traffic Regulation Act (1984). Schedule 6 Part IV paragraph 2 of RTRA(1984) states inter alia:- In this Schedule— “agricultural motor vehicle”, “articulated vehicle”, “dual-purpose vehicle”, “industrial tractor”, “passenger vehicle”, “pneumatic tyre”, “track-laying”, “wheel” and “works truck” have the same meanings as are respectively given to those expressions in Regulation 3(1) of the Motor Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1978; (Note that C&U(1978) had the same definition of a DPV as the later C&U(1986)) So, if your vehicle is a DPV according to C&U(1986) then it is also a DPV as far as RTRA(1984) is concerned. The actual speed limits are set out in Section 86 and Schedule 6 Part 1 of RTRA(1984) and the list is fairly long so I won't reproduce it all here. The important bit as fas as DPVs are concerned is that it states that passenger vehicles, dual purpose vehicles, and motor caravans (none of which exceed 3050kg unladen or have more than 8 passenger seats), and "car-derived vans" not exceeding 2000kg max laden weight or having more than 8 passenger seats are subject to 70, 70, and 60 mph limits on motorways, dual carriageways not being motorways, and single carriageways respectively. (Note that lower speed limits of course apply if you are towing, and lower still if you are towing more than one trailer or a trailer which puts the overall length over 12 metres.) So the bottom line is that it doesn't matter what it says on the registration document or tax disc, if it meets the definition of C&U(1986) for a DPV, then car speed limits apply, although the person who's stopped you at the roadside may not know this. JimM, I have no idea if a serious factual error on the NIP is grounds for dismissing the case, you would need to talk to a solicitor on this. What I would say is that exceeding the speed limit by 22mph will be considered more serious than exceeding the speed limit by 12 mph, so the driver must contest this. Seek proper legal advice without delay if you have not already done so. Disclaimer: the information above is the result of significant personal research and is provided in good faith and is to the best of my knowledge true and accurate. Note however I am not a solicitor and my view is no substitute for propoer legal advice. If you are nicked, don't blame me if this info doesn't get you off!

I imagine that quite a lot of people didn't get their deposit back!

There seem to be arguments for and against, but with no clear overwhelming case one way or the other. It is interesting to bear in mind that when LR fitted the transit-derived Puma engine into Defender they reverted from the DMF (Transit) to solid flywheel and sprung clutch (Puma), this must have been for a reason. OK, so they messed it up and the early clutches were rubbish, but there is no doubt at all that the clutch and gearbox on my Puma Defender is infinitely nicer to operate than the clutch and gearbox on my TD5 Disco 2.

Reverting to the OP's question, then:- 1) there is no legal requirement for the seller of a top-handled (or indeed any other type of) saw to ask for any proof of CSxx certification or indeed any proof of competence at all. It is entirely legal to sell any saw to any adult. 2) Any seller of any object has a legal right to decline to sell to any person provided that this is not on the basis of illegal discrimination. So you can decline to sell a saw to someone because you feel that they are unsuitable or untrained, but not because thy are black/female/Asian etc. 3) Any person can operate a chainsaw of any type legally in this country. There may be things you are not allowd to do with it, but you do not need any qualifications or training of any kind at all to operated a top-handled saw entirely legally, however... 4) If you are employed by someone, or self-employed, the employer has legal obligations under HASAW, PUWER, etc to make sure that their employee(s) only use(s) equipment which they have been adequately trained to use and are adequately competent to use. 5) There is no legal definition of what adequately trained or adequately competent means, and for this reason the arb industry has generally adopted the practice of the CSxx qualifications to demonstrate competence. If you have CS39 you are considered competent, but if you don't there is no legal basis for presuming that you are not competent. If an employer has other means (for example in-house training) of demonstrating competence and training then that, provided that it is sufficiently robust to withstand scrutiny, is legally satisfactory. For example, it is probably entirely satisfactory to argue that if you can demonstrate that a person has been using a top-handled saw up a tree for 40 years without incident but has never had any formal training, then they are competent (mind you they've been up the tree a rather long time)! 6) Because of the difficulty of establishing suitability and competence, the majority of retailers (usually under pressure from the manufacturers who naturally feel that reports in the press of people sawing their own limbs off or killing themselves are not good for business) adopt a policy of requiring proof of competence at time of sale. There are various ways this can be done, most commonly by showing CS39 (or whatever) certification, by having a handover discussion. In the case of a top-handled saw being bought by someone without CS39, I would like to think that if the salesman or possibly the manager would have a chat to establish whether the prospective purchase was a suitable and competent person. So what is in reality a fairly simple situation (anybody can legally buy and use any saw) is made complicated by the fact that everyone is desperately keen to cover their arse against being sued by someone for something! In this mad world we have created, you can bet that if a dealer sold a topper to Johnny Householder, and Johnny then cut off his leg because he was an idiot, before long he would be suing the retailer with the help of a parasitic no-win-no-fee lawyer on the basis that the retailer hadn't told him that it was dangerous to use the saw one-handed whilst standing on a stepladder balanced on a table under the tree, whilst 'tweeting' with his other hand. In reality unless the law changes to make it a specific legal requirement to hold CS39 for a topper, you will never be able to stop the unregulated resale of toppers. Since they are not generally used for crime, accidents are generally rare, and the present system works fairly well, this is unlikely to happen. It is tough for the experienced person without CS39 tyring to buy one, but there are ways it can sensibly be done. I should point out that although this is my assessment of the law based on a thorough study, I am not a lawyer nor am I a dealer.

If you visit the bridge's website, 11foot8.com, you'll learn that there's a 100-year-old main sewer just below the road surface under the bridge, so lowering the road would cost as much as raising the bridge. If you look closely at the clips it's apparent that there's a very strong protection girder across the road before the bridge, and it is the girder not the bridge that is being whacked. There are some interesting photos on 11foot8.com's French equivalent site, 2m40.com but unfortunately the text is all in European!

No it's not just you, it is pig ugly and just looks wrong somehow! It's an interesting conversion though. I don't understand though how the trailing axle manages not to have ABS if the rest of the vehicle does It seems to me also that the revenue weight on the V5 is very low. By the time the unladen weight is subtracted, the payload is going to be very low.

Yup, don't rate them much myself. If you tow a vehicle with one of those fitted backwards any distance throught deep mud you run a very big risk of destroying the rad and intercooler as the steering guard shovels the mud up between the grill panel and cooling group. I have seen the whole of the engine bay filled almost solid with mud in this way, not good!

When I rechassised my Series 1 I bought one of these, £5.70 well spent:- GNP3 Cable Puller from Vehicle Wiring Products (Scroll to bottom of page)

There's clearly a lot of emotion and feeling in this thread, and some very polarised views! I think that there is unquestionably a problem brewing with the uncontrolled expansion of the world's population, and I don't understand how anyone can fail to see this. I can understand why no-one (especially politicians) talk about it, after all it is hardly a vote-winner. We can't solve our own national problems, and if you look round the world as a whole there is zero chance of a global agreement on population control. It is also easy to understand how unwittingly it has come about. In the hunter-gatherer days we ran after our food or collected it, and if we failed we died. There were (probably) no fat people, they died (or more likely couldn't get fat in the first place). There were no seriously ill, or crippled people (at least not for long), they died. If there was a famine, everyone died! Tough, but entirely natural. It had the effect of meaning that the healthiest people, the successful hunter-gatherers, bred, thus making it likely that the next generation was healthy. Strong babies grew up strong, weak babies died. All very tough and unfair, but nature's way. (A few years ago I watched a female wolf give birth to a litter of pups. She then moved one pup across the den away from the other and left it. She knew it was weak and wouldn't survive, so there was no point expending any effort on it. Very sensible, but the cold logic is unacceptable to humans. We did, incidentally take the pup to try to save it but were unable to and it did die, the other grew up strong and healthy). This is how nature works. As we have evolved and become "superior" to other creatures we have changed. We no longer need to be fit nor healthy, and are now able to cure diseases that would once have killed us, save babies that would once have died, and so on. People who would never have survived into adulthood now not only do so but can breed effectively (and often with a disproportionate vigour). We can feed ourselves and our families without any problems, and without any physical effort or fitness. Fat people can live as effectively as skinnies. We have removed most dangers and hardships from our lives, so stupid people no longer kill themselves in bizarre accidents. We reward profligacy and idleness to the extent that there is no longer any incentive to work. We have transport infrastructure to mean that there is great mobility of people and produce, so that natural disasters like famine, flood, and earthquakes do not have the same mortality rates as they once would. We also use teechnology and mechanisation to means that fewer people are needed to support society, so more people can sit at home, watch daytime TV and have unintentional pregnancies (which we then reward with more "benefit" payments)! The consequence is that the population is increasing rapidly at a time when the need for people is decreasing. Since bored people breed, the rate if increase is itself increasing. We now have the means to implement huge changes to our environment if we think it will help us, whether it is building new roads, or more drastically altering nature in ways that bring consequences we cannot begin to predict. we think nothing of eliminating other species if we think they are a "problem", such as the extirpation of wolves in the wild (look at what happened post 1924 in Yellowstone), or the extirmination of badgers in the wild. We don't even know if badgers are the cause of bovine TB, and have no idea what the effect of having no badgers will be on the ecosystem, but what the hell, let's kill them all anyway! We eliminate smallpox only to find something worse then emerges. We dish out antibiotics like smarties only to find that we then have antibiotic-resistant infections. Wow, there's a surprise! None of this is necessarily a bad thing (well, some of it is very bad), but with it comes responsibility, the responsibilty to see the problems that change will create and takes steps to prevent them. In the past there have been many events both natural and man-made which have done something towards keeping things in check. Nature's way is famine and pestilence - the Black Death for example, Spanish Flu. Now we can react fast enough to produce vaccines for most things and limit the death toll. Nature's reaction to this is to evolve nasties which mutate faster and faster, like the Bird Flu. Or we have wars, like WWs 1 and 2, in which of course the people most likely to die are males of peak breeding age. Modern warfare (at least between advanced nations) increasingly will be fought by machines and technology and human casualties are likely to be reduced, however the likelihood of war between such is less than the likelihood of war between less advanced nations, which will most probably be more traditional. Where will it end? My view is that most of the "green" things we are encouraged to do are actually pretty pointless, like peeing on a bonfire, unless we can agree a global strategy on populaton. I personally don't think that humans are capable of managing the human population of the planet (except through war) and ultimately are doomed to self destruction. War seems pretty probably, most likely a religious war (aren't they all). If we can't do it ourselves, then nature will wipe most of us out with a flu epidemic or similiar. It is also worth remembering that there have been several mass extinctions in the millions of years before we evolved, and a meteorite strike could wipe us out tomorrow and there is absolutely nothing anyone could do about it. Bottom line, the human race is doomed. Live for today, enjoy life while you can, don't take it too seriously, and when the time comes to pass on do it with grace, dignity, and gratitude for whatever you've had. And please note that this post is not intended to offend anyone, it is just my foolish ramblings intended to stimulate hopefully constructive thought and debate.

Here is the recovery vehicle being recovered some time later. Not the nice shiney machine it was to begin with.

Anything here any use:- Gas Struts and stuff

How come?

With a galvanized chassis and all the other upgrades it will be a scorcher when it's done. Don't forget to tell your insurance company though because it'll be worth more than a typical tdi of that age afterwards. Shouldn't cost you any more to insure (risk's the same) but you'll get more back if anything happens.

No offence intended and I'm sorry if it sounded that way. But let's face it that chassis didn't get that bad overnight. In that condition the vehicle is a danger both to the occupants and other road users and it is the driver's responsibility to know the condition of the vehicle. If you'd been stopped at a VOSA check in that you would be in serious trouble, and pleading ignorance won't get you out of it. Still no harm's done and you will have a much better Landrover afterwards. There's s lesson there for everyone.

So all that rust and rot appeared in the last year only and a year ago the chassis was OK? Been driving in seawater?

The root cause of the flooding "problem" is the same as most of our other problems - too many people. The one problem that no-one is prepared to address. Why do we need all these new houses? Why do we need such intensive farming? Why do we build on flood plains (there's a clue in the name)? At the other extreme, the rivers Misbourne and Chess in Buckinghamshire have hardly been seen for about the last 25 years in their headwater reaches. Why? Excessive abstraction from the Chiltern aquifer - too many people. And especially too many stupid people!

A pre-owned Danarm DDA110 - weighed a ton, had no chain brake, no anti-vibe, none of the stuff we take for granted these days. I think I still have it somewhere and even though it hasn't been started for probably 25 years it is/was in reasonable condition, so if there is a bona fide collector of vintage saws on here who would like it and can collect from the Poole area, send me a PM. It makes no sense to keep it, but I probably couldn't bring myself to throw it out.

I have to admit that now you can get trainers and shoes with steel toecaps but which still look like normal trainers and shoes I tend to wear them most of the time. You never know when you're going to crush your toes!

Could be I suppose, but if you take the plug out, reconnect it and lay it on the head, there's a respectable spark when the starter is pulled. Think I'd better get the spanners out.

We have a well-used Stihl FS85 which starts easily when cold and runs well. When it's hot though it is almost impossible to start. The spark seems OK and there is fuel getting through (and it doesn't seem to flood) - it just won't fire when hot. It feels to me as though there is not much compression especially when hot, so I am thinking maybe worn piston and bore. Before I rip it apart doers anyone have any suggestions or come across anything like this before? I vaguely recall reading about some exhaust fault that can make these difficult when hot. Thanks!

... the M-132D minigun, courtesy of Mythbusters!

The check that was introduced was that if the vehicle left the factory with a cat fitted, there must still be a cat fitted, but this check only applies to spark-ignition engines (ie petrol), it does not apply to compression-ignition engines (ie diesel). There is no legal reason why you should not remove the cat from any diesel vehicle at present, and you cannot fail the MOT for doing so.

There's more, in episode 2 he nearly breaks his knee and STILL the tree is standing! [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXmYDPe3F9M&feature=BFa&list=ULI0zUAOrzu7E]D.I.Y. Tree Felling - YouTube[/ame] How on earth do people this stupid manage to survive to adulthood?

This is the road from Sturminster Marshall to White Mill (between Wimborne Minster and Blandford for 'furriners') at about 08:00 this morning. This flood is about 1/2 mile long and at its deepest it was about 2'6" and the current is strong. Perhaps more worrying I had to stop and turn back the driver of a van (Escort van sized thing) who was about to attempt to drive through it, what are these people on! It is amply deep enough to float a vehicle of that size. The water is once again flowing through the ground floor of the mill. I can only remember it being this high about twice since I moved to the area in '87, and never in July!