Stu

Another +1 for Victron - have been using lots of their products for years with zero issues. I figured out our electrical wholesaler gets discount through the Victron importer which helps.

Engine bay shot - still needs a bit of tidying up but its getting there

As per usual its been a while since updates. I did a pretty shit job of taking photos of the work done since finishing the engine assembly too which doesn't help much . I finished assembling the engine and also gave the gearbox a birthday. I pulled the suspension arms out to clean, repaint and rebush them. Also gave the steering rack a once over, paint, and fitted new boots. Then threw the engine back in the hole I had some help, although what he's fixing under there Im not sure The engine fired up fairly easily and sounds good and strong. It drives really well and is potentially up a bit in power with the extra compression, will finish the tune off at some stage but for now its driving pretty well. I took the rear bumper and side skirts off and painted them in bumper black, finally fitted all the seat belts and clean up the interior a bit, mucked around with the coil over heights a little bit more, cleaned all the glass etc. I swapped the wheels off the 4agte car and took some poser photos: Not sure what to do with this thing now as Ive accidentally made it reasonably nice - may just look at moving it on, TBC.

In the G4 ecus sometimes the CAN isn't enabled even though the connector is there. Last year I had USB connection issues with a G4 Storm so sent it to them and they enabled CAN at the same time for free. You can hit up Adam on the Link Support facebook page or chat with them on their website - they are extremely helpful which as mentioned above is a huge reason to use their products

Thanks! Pretty awesome to hear of a few others around, post up some photos! Continuing on from above I also made a box between the head of the mattress and the side of the caravan which formed a bedhead but was also a convenient booze cupboard. Anyway the plan for the box was worked out which I decided to split into two - a smaller part to hold the small LPG bottle with lots of vent/drain holes so it can also be a wet box, and the larger for tent poles etc. I cut up a mix of treadplate and sheet to form the box: Then started to press them into shape: This was all going fine until something in the press controller decided it had done enough work for the year and it completely stopped. No amount of probing with my multimeter could solve what went wrong so at 3 days before xmas I thought the game was over. Luckily, one of our suppliers that we use for oversize sheet folding came to the rescue and pressed the last few parts for me. The sides have folds at the bottom and the base plates rivet in place which was the first step: Tack welded the inside then tig welded the corners and lids: Then fitted some piano hinge and made up some flat bar spacers between the two boxes so the lids cleared each other, and bolted together. Bolted this to the draw bar and fitted some latches: Fitted the jockey wheel, loaded up and we were on our way to Shelley Beach on boxing day. I was worried about too much tongue weight so only filled the boxes with light bulky items like camp chairs etc and it towed pretty well even up the winding roads from Thames to Coromandel town. It was a bit wet and wild for a few days but had a great time all except for the canvas awning splitting in the high winds which Ash sewed back together during the storm! Here's us in Thames on the journey home. Saw a couple of much longer Liteweights on permanent stands - one of them was 8m! All in all a good trip with the only issue being the awning needing to be restitched which we will sort soon. Future plans may involve changing the interior around a bit and putting the queen bed at the other end and reinstating the couches - TBC.

Nah m8 just 6 of these

So good to see another EP71 tragic! Can't wait to see the build and was awesome to see this at the drags!

After a few coats of the finest black paint I got on with replacing the brake hard line and refitting the LPG line. I 3D printed some clamps for the lines which got dutifully fixed into position, because OCD. Then by some miracle it got a clean sheet WOF! The front of the caravan has a couch area that forms into a bed like such: But as you can see it doesn't fill all of the area and make the bed a bit small. We never use the area as a couch as its always setup as a bed, so while I had the caravan at work I made a few changes: This is an interim solution and long term will replace all the tops to one big panel that will hinge up on some struts for easy storage access. Will be picking up a queen size mattress for it and maybe building a head board/storage area as the space is longer than the mattress. Also applied some black vinyl to the corner of the front windows to elude the peeping toms Have most of a drawing done for the box on the draw bar so will try to get build that before Christmas in amongst all the other projects.

I continue to be in awe of your work!

Such excellent tales, please continue!

Many camping trips later... Its that time of year when I vaguely entertain the idea of getting this thing ready for the holidays. I haven't actually bothered with a WOF for a couple of years but I might feel generous and get it one soon. The draw bar was a bit neglected and been showing its age. Its been in the back of my mind how much of a bitch it would be if it let go somewhere remote.. So I took it to work over the weekend and the front fell off: On close inspection the steel wasn't too bad but it was probably a good thing to replace it - better for my piece of mind anyway Ghost bar Then got some 75x50 duragalv, a new braked coupling etc and after a couple of hours: That aint going no where. I had a good poke around at the rest of the chassis and its mint so that's good. Towed it home and got to work with the black paint: Picked up a roll of brake line today, and am 3D printing some clamps for it and the LPG line, then assembly time followed hopefully by a wof. Plan is to make some sort of box on the front instead of having the fibreglass fairing which does wreck the original vibe, but the extra space will trump the looks. Will be something like this but custom made because I'm a sucker for punishment: Lovely.

Quick update: I pulled the head off the old engine to re-use on the greytop bottom end. It ran fine other than the bearing fail so I'm fairly confident it will be fine - if its not I have a few other heads to chose from. I flipped it upside down and left some glycol in the cylinders overnight, nothing leaked past the valves so that's good enough for me. It was pretty filthy thou, which wasn't good enough for me, so some all brite to the rescue: It came up pretty reasonable - not perfect, but will do the job. It also got a good internal degrease and clean up. I took all the buckets out, cleaned them all up, lubed them up and refitted. Then using a TRD gasket I torqued the head on: Cams, pulleys, timing gear etc etc all underway and starting to look the part. I need to give the gearbox a birthday then its pretty well ready to lift back into the car.

Narva sell a fairly big range of tail lights and Im sure some look like those. They still stocked the lights off my caravan and they were dirt cheap and I just fitted some LED bulbs.

On other non engine related updates I managed to get a sweet Si badge And then I got mildly distracted and built a parcel tray as the car didn't have one originally. Started out measuring and drawing the tray up, then cutting a sample from ACM Drew up and printed some strengthening bars that also retain the solid bar that the tray hinges on Tested fitted this in the blue car and it fitted pretty well But being ACM it was a touch too flimsy so recut again using aluminium this time: Then changed the design of the bars to have captive nuts and re-printed from CF filament. Assembled those and got some carpet so glued that on I had some very basic 6x9's floating around so designed and printed some basic covers for them Nearly done Looks good enough for this guy And test fitted into the blue car again The parcel tray equivalent of hella flush?

Dredge time: Was expecting some sparkly oil and while it wasn't a full glitter bomb, there was some flakey goodness going on Whoever put this engine together originally used aaaaall the gasket goo On inspection and as predicted, #3 bearing had started to leave the chat, damage wasn't too bad but was enough that the engine needed to come out As per standard I decided to make it all way harder than it needed to be so picked out a couple of other engines from the stash, then proceeded to spread 20v internal parts all through @kpr 's shed. Don't listen to his comments, he really does love 20v's! Anyway beer and KFC for lunch persuaded him to help measure everything and by some miracle everything measured up really good, and even weighed up pretty much perfectly. We ended up setting up some blacktop pistons onto silvertop rods which I now dub as the grey top. I smoothed some oil passages and fitted some new oil pump gears to the oil pump and assembled the bottom end with all the usual new bits, and now have the block ready to go in when I get time Ive got a trd head gasket sitting waiting and I have pulled the original engine out, but haven't gone any further yet.