Dr Mark's Tardis

 The old bumper was always rusty and bits rusted away even. Despite layers of rustoleum on the outside, they never stopped the rust eating away from the eds and insides. But not large sections have dropped off. Time to do something. ... and that's the good side. It was a strange story. After months of research I'd narrowed it down to two options that were both going to cost me about £1000. Import a new one from China or get the old one rebuilt in the UK. I'd identified T and G Promech as a company in Poole willing to take to on and T&J tubes who would bend up sections of the 60mm diameter tube. There are only a few companies witht he capability to put custom bends in 60mm tube - and most of those are not interested in a small job. Technically it is called rolling rather than bending and uses different tooling compared with putting in a fixed radius bend. The day before I set of to Poole, with a wallet,  got a call to say that someone was selling a reasonably good bum...

Having been parked up for a year now, a long list of jobs has gradually been completed. Engine mounts was the hardest. New Bose speakers from an Audi, was the most satisfying.  Just for the record here is the long list to June 2020: ........

Who designed these heater controls? I could never imagine anything so complicated. But it has to combine three control wires and switches. Mine had no control for windscreen vs. feet, and the fan worked intermittently. I was ready to put a new, separate,  control wire in the dashboard. But the a genuine Iveco one came up on eBay What a bargain at £25.99 And what a horrendous job to fit .

Not having interior lights was a "feature" It meant the battery could not go flat ! However times change, the roof panel was undone to fix the LED bar, and I had a ex Iveco light unit to use. Some things to consider It is wired to the vehicle side lights so that it could not be left on just by having the door open. LED lights to reduce current flow, increase life of bulb and more reliability because the bulbs are soldered in. £4.95 for a pair of BA9 bulbs (I only use one) and £4.98 for a whole set of panel lights. The LED bulbs have a polarity. Now filament bulbs can be wired either way. Usually the case is negative and the nobble is positive. But the interior light cluster is designed to be switched by the earth so the polarity is wrong. I needed to rewire it.

That worked out well. I bought a compressor off eBay for £30 from a BMW E53 X5 with air suspension. I'd wondered if it would perform better than my tired old one and be cheaper than even a refurb kit would be. It's great.Waterproof too, with a 10mm pipe for air intake. Quickly got up to my normal 4 bar pressure.and now adjusted up to 8 bar, so that should be good for the pneumatic seats if I ever get to work on them. I fitted an air filter: RangeRover P38 (£5.99 from Ebay) on the end of the inlet pipe.Which sits about 300mm above the chassis rails.

Wow that's bright. It is actually very hard to chose ad LED light bar. The adverts exaggerate the power and the brightness figures are usually missing. On the bright side ha  ha ... the reviews are always pleased with how bright they are. It was tempting to get one the full width of the roof, but for me the unflated power levels were a turn off. A high current draw is bad for me and severely limits how much I could use on without the engine running. So I bought a 30" 198W bar from Wow LED on Ebay. I did not wnat curved ones and preferred post mounted rather than end mounted. Wiing is not trivial. It needs a relay and a cable from the battery feed at 30Amp (actually even a 10 Amp fuse was fine - so much for 198 Watts). Wires to the roof, but a switch inside. Not rocket science, and eventually completed. I went for mounting on the cab roof. I had considered the bumper. Low is supposed to be better for snow and bad weather, but mounting on the bumper would make it more vulnerable...

A very satisfying project. How to improve the music in the cab. With a cheap ldi radio and tinny mismatched speakers things coudl only get better. The Radio I used to have cheap radios, like you get from Aldi or Lidl for £20 to £30. With the front cover broken I searched for a new one and was persuaded to up my budget to about £100. Excellent advice. Still a mean old git I bought a refurbished unit from used car stereo on eBay.   SONY MEX-N7300BD / DAB+ / FLAC / Bluetooth / USB / AUX / microphone for  £89  Great buy, and a good company to deal with (I bought another one from them for the camper). Good points: The sound is great 55W per channel. I definitely need more than 30W in the noisey truck. DAB radio that's a nice to have. Microphone for hands free phone calls - I had not appreciated how good that would be. Can load the CD without moving the fascia (that removes one frequent failure mode) Takes input from high quality bluetooth codecs and Android mode. U...