That's right, I first kicked this site off as rrpub.gjcp.net on the 29th of December 2015. As has been discussed to death in the past, it kind of sprung from a discussion Gilbertd and I had in the pub when he was up in Glasgow working, and a certain amount of "How Hard Can It Be...?" thinking. Since then we've got about 80 very active users posting in over 700 topics and nearly 13,000 posts in total. I was going to plot some nice graphs for you all to look at but they look like a slightly wobbly line going up - it's surprising how steady it's all been.

But it's you lot who come here who make it what it is, so I'd like to thank you all for your contributions to the site and all the help, advice and bouncing about of ideas that make it such a fun and friendly place :-)

Happy New Year, everyone!

Sticking that fuse in would put the transfer box in neutral, which would rule out the gearbox but not the transfer case and propshafts.

Have you tried jacking up both wheels on the driver's side and giving them a bit of a spin to see what happens? You'll need both up because of the VC trying to lock the front and rear together, or you could drop the front propshaft - you should be good at this by now ;-)

Sadly member #2 is no longer with us, having been knocked down by a car earlier this year (despite the roughness of the farm track some people seem to take it as a personal challenge to get up through all the gears before hitting the tarmac road).

Glad to have you here. I should probably stick a "warning label" about Hotmail accounts on the signup page, they filter quite aggressively.

As an aside I have not had to ban any "real" users in the not-quite two years this site has been running - quite a few spammers, but no real people.

This should not be taken as a challenge :-D

(Edit: not two years for a couple of days, it was started just before Hogmanay, not Christmas).

(Edit edit: Damn me, I should have kept quiet about spammers)

got both Gordon and me a ban from RR.net and started the idea for this site in the first place (that, and considerable quantities of alcohol).

The Devil made me do it but it WAS my idea :-D

Nollaig Chrideil agus Bliadhna Mhath Ùr.

My 4.0 V8 has always accelerated pretty poorly. Even on a slight hill it'll drop down to 2nd to accelerate from 30 to 40mph. Even at about 50mph it won't really accelerate on a hill. Now here's the thing, everyone says the cams wear really quickly but every description I have found of a worn cam is that it'll accelerate just fine at low speed but run out of puff as it gets up the rev range, and that makes sense.

Mine goes like a bloody rocket above about 3000rpm. Give it a hefty bootful and once it's moving it just pulls and pulls, especially on LPG. It does sound a bit rattly at about 4500-5000rpm in "Sports" mode but it's as quiet and smooth as you like below that - except there's an irregular "slappy" rattling from somewhere down below. I thought it was to the back of the engine but I'm coming round to the idea it's at the front.

Could it be that the cam is actually okay, and that the chain itself is excessively worn and stretched? I don't really know the engine's history, since it was bought second-hand as a replacement, but it seems clean enough. I put a set of second-hand rocker shafts on because the originals were badly worn which makes me wonder about the cam, but when we had it apart to fit it, everything looked pretty much okay. Eyeballing the rockers as the engine turns over they all seem to move about the same amount. A leakdown test showed about 20% evenly across all eight cylinders, which isn't great but isn't particularly horrible either - certainly not enough to make me want to pull cylinder heads off!

I'm about to do some front end surgery on mine, and while I'm in there I'm going to replace the front brake pads. Looking on Island 4x4, they appear to have a wide variety of pads for a fairly narrow range of prices, going from 13 quid for Britpart (probably not, thanks) up to £36.50 for EBC Green Stuff. Somewhere in the middle are the 17 quid Delphi pads I've always used (and can't really complain about), 21 quid EBC Ultimax ones and 30 quid Jurid ones (OEM for BMW according to my BMW-owning mate).

Anyone used any of them, particularly the EBC ones? Am I going to feel I got my 20 quid's worth fitting Green Stuff rather than Delphi?

Get a 19mm socket, stick it on top of the circlip and give it a whack with a hammer, tapping it in the way. Then try tapping the bearing cup in away from the circlip. That ought to break it free.

There's an NRV for the tank, an NRV for the "up" valve and an NRV for the "down" valve. The reason the valves need them is that they're only held shut by the air pressure "behind" them and if the air pressure against the seat ("against" them) was greater then it would just blow past them.

Can confirm, I put Boges from Island on mine and they were great. They did take a bit of settling in though.

You can get a special tool that's a 7/16" socket on a "necked" extension that makes getting the propshaft bolts out really easy, and you should get new nuts to put back on. Also you should really do both UJs on the propshaft while you've got it out, and actually while you're under there you might as well do both ends.

So that's four UJs in total.

You'll be good at them by the time you're done.

Don't get under a vehicle that's only supported by the EAS, make sure the chassis is well-supported in case it drops.

What I thought about was getting a set of small inline NRVs and turning them down on a lathe to fit inside the valve block where the "normal" NRVs go, with a groove to hold an O-ring at each end to seal the gap and hold it in place.

Free on Kindle Unlimited, not sure I have that but for the sake of three quid I'm going to buy it anyway!

That does actually sound too good to break.

No, I haven't done a rebuild on mine, I just bought a 500 quid engine from a breaker, dhallworth and I threw it in, and it's been pretty okay ever since.

Very down on power below 3000rpm though, that's another thing I need to look into. Like, absolutely no torque until 2500rpm, then a wee bit, then above 3000 it's off, not exactly like a scalded cat, more like a fairly fat lazy cat that's had warmish water dripped on it, but at least it's off ;-)

Right, so the bolts I'm seeing are indeed the cross bolts. As it happens I've got to get the exhaust manifold off to stop the heatshield rattling and replace the gasket, so I'll look then.

I've got coolant dripping down somewhere on the passenger side near the front. I can't quite see where it's coming from, but it seems to be near a small bolt with a flanged head into the side of the block just above the sump. Is this a block drain or something? It seems too far down.

Any thoughts on where it might be coming from?

I find I get far better fuel economy in "Sports" mode when I'm driving on twisty roads than normal mode, because the engine isn't slogging away at low revs to try and keep moving.

Yeah, the track topic button doesn't really do much yet... ;-)