kevin the chicken

A tank that size will hold around eight gallons or 37 litres when full so a quarter of a tank would be about 9 litres

Dry here but car in bits and got to work in the garden. Overslept and wasted some tinker time

Have reversed it and it worked fine out of the tank but only showing just over empty with half a tank of fuel in. Obviously needs a bit more tweaking. Got loads of other jobs which are more pressing but I won't be beaten so out it comes again first thing tomorrow. At least one that works in reverse is correct at one point.

When I got my licence back after losing it through illness it had the reduced weight towing on it and no 7.5 ton entitlement or HGV. I knew the HGV was going to be lost for 10 years but nobody could explain why the other two things had gone. The only way I could get them back was to retake the tests which I refused to do, I was Ill for gods sake not inept. This hit us quite hard as we did a lot of towing, taking various tractors to shows and moving machinery around. Taking a second look at the licence showed the tractor entitlement was still on there with no restrictions so I went out and bought a four ton unimog which with an air braked trailer can tow twenty tons behind. Even better as it says agricultural machine on the logbook it doesn't need an annual test and road tax is free. Interestingly recently I heard that if you passed your HGV on a bin lorry or fire engine which had an automatic box you can now apply to have it upgraded to manual as we'll as DVLA now consider that if you drive a manual car you should be able to cope with manual lorry too, a couple of the drivers from our station have done this.

I just had another look and that is exactly what has been done to the old one, the box has been turned the wrong way up, although the float is still the other way up. I think I will attempt the same although I will cut the stops off and make some new ones and reverse the float wire and then it should work exactly the same but the right way up. Thanks for that, it sometimes just takes another person to point me in the right direction. I can only assume that revotec changed the direction in recent years as my gauges are a few years old

It came from rally design, the only place I could find one that supposedly matched the gauge. You don't think the gauge is wired incorrectly for it then?

I have finally got around to sorting out my fuel gauge problems and after being unable to work out if the gauge was faulty or if it was the sender plumped for the sender because the fuel pick up pipe which ran through it was loose and leaking so it needed changing anyway. The new one doesn't have a fuel pick up in it so I am going to use a redundant pipe which comes out of the bottom of the tank plus the new sender is smaller than the old one which means I have had to make up a new plate to go over the large hole to mount the sender in. In short a couple of hours work has turned into a days and now nearing completion I checked the sender before fitting it in to the tank only to find it works in reverse! It is the correct revotec sender for the gauge so I am wondering if the gauge was wired the wrong way round to suit the old sender? The gauge has three wires fitted to it, one of which is twinned so I am presuming that would be a looped power feed? The other two, one red one black ( earth?) vanish in to the loom. Thoughts please gentlemen

My employer has insisted on seeing my licence to check for any points I might have. As I had lost my old one I applied for a new one, got it after about four days which I thought was good but no paper part so no list of convictions. Not that I have any. Nowadays you have to look online to see any bodies driving record. Just like I told them but nobody listens. You would think that a firm with as many drivers as royal mail would keep up to date with this sort of thing.

I think gbs still sell the archer one for about a fiver. Mine has already found a new home

As per title. It's my wife's spartan, needs stripping out and starting from scratch. The chap who was going to do it hasn't turned up again, no phone call no text so he can take a running jump. I certainly won't be recommending him even though I know he is good with electrics. I have a new fuse box, instruments but no wire. It is a very basic car with dizzy ignition, no ecu or anything like that. Donor was a mk 4 cortina. If anyone is interested get in contact and we can talk about payment. Ideally I would like it done soon as my wife would like to get it back on the road for the summer. Not had a good day today waiting in for sparky to come, mended my shredder but broken my lawn mower, could have been out in the hood. Pass the cider.

Plumped for a set from CBS in the end. I looked at the ETB ones but found in the end that I would only spend an extra 40 quid if I bought the set from CBS which would have an electronic speedometer, a tachometer and voltmeter as well as fuel,oil pressure and temperature gauge. This also solved the problem of the speedo not matching. Trouble is I now need to make a new dash!

I have used them a lot. I know that if I have a problem I can phone them up and talk to someone who knows what they are talking about. That's why I got the gauges for my wife's car from them this week. Ordered them online Thursday about 3.30 and they were here Friday lunchtime. Can't praise them enough.

As dave said its a good day out, so many cars you wonder where they have all come from. I have already booked in, this year I will be having a good look around rather than looking for an escaped greyhound who will be staying at home!

I need to buy some new gauges for my wife's spartan kit car and I wondered if anyone could recommend some good but keenly priced replacements. I need fuel, temperature, oil pressure and an analogue clock I think although this will probably change when I ask her! The current set are a mix but we want to go with black face with white lettering to match the speedometer which is staying. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated..

Is there another gearbox that could be used other than the ford one? Although I do seem to have a picture of front drives coming out to one side In my head. Probably because I have a vision of landrover boxes with transfer boxes attached.

A bit of extra weight too, as I tell my potential passengers as they eye up that second doughnut. Surely the whole point of the car is that it is light and pointy. An interesting engineering exercise though

I like it! What about green walled tyres?

That's exactly how I did my red top and it cured all my problems. In addition I drilled a small hole in the thermostat so that any air pockets were eliminated

I looked at the diesel but thought it would be painfully slow pulling nearly three tons around so opted for a petrol. As it was to be an occasional use car fuel economy wasn't really too much of a concern so went for the 4.6 auto. Bought one which was fairly straight but needed a few jobs doing, which I am slowly working through. Only cosmetic ones left now. One problem I did have was that the battery kept going flat. I was lucky enough to find a 4x4 garage that knew what they were talking about and they plugged a laptop in and disabled the key remotes so that I have to lock it manually. Job done, apparently some other cars can upset or fry the receiver so that the control unit doesn't hibernate. Whatever it was it worked. I find it another car that puts a smile on my face but in a totally different way from my robin hood.

You could do what I did and buy a car that needs restoring, I bought it as spares or repair cheaply. There was plenty of work in that for me but it allowed me to put my stamp on the car before it was put on the road. Aside from the actual engine block and the gearbox just about everything else was dismantled and cleaned or overhauled/replaced. There's still plenty to do especially with regards to the bodywork but at least it's usable now

Spent some of today changing the o rings on the heater matrix of my old range rover. Thought I would have a look at the workshop manual last night and after about five minutes decided the job was beyond what I cared to tackle. The official landrover manual says you should remove the centre console, steering column, instrument panel, fascia, radio, heater controls, wiper motor, disconnect the air con and so on. There would be nothing left inside the car! Apparently the main dealers allow 12 hours to replace these two o rings. A quick look on the Internet found a site showing an alternative method with photos which I followed. Took me about four hours to strip it all out and replace the rings. Left it overnight full of water to check for leaks and I reckon I can put it all back together tomorrow in less than two hours. That's a grand saved then

I checked mine with a speedometer app on my smart phone. It was free!

It's in the status updates

We, that is our retained fire station and one from a neighbouring town had a tip to one of our local engineering firms as part of our ongoing process to keep abreast of local risks. I have been there before but had forgotten the sheer scale of some of the jobs they do and the machinery they operate. They work mainly in stainless steel, hence their name Stainless Metalcraft but there other jobs with different materials ongoing too. They have lathes, turning and milling machines the size of small houses and everything seems to be on a massive scale. At least one of their machines is salvaged from a defunct shipyard and although a lot of it is some years old it has been adapted to computer run systems. One job on the go was a stainless flask about five foot high for waste nuclear fuel with side walls about 50 mm thick and another a circular thing made of stainless and mild steel for the RAF of which nobody knew the purpose. On of their bread and butter jobs is components for MRI scanners of which one part alone commands 230 hours work, 80 of that on one machine. Bet there can't be many companies left in the UK that can do this sort of job

I wrapped mine and it made loads of difference to the engine bay temperature. Yes of course if you stop the heat coming out in the engine bay it will make the exhaust run hotter but I would rather have a hot exhaust outside the car than heat cooking more delicate items in the engine bay.