So glad you were just poking fun with the unboxing vids 🙂. I have a pneumatic riveting gun, and its riveting to use, can access quite difficult areas too. It really helps when your hand shake hand has RA, and theres lots of the little bu££er$ to install. Looking forward to more of your proper landy solutions, like the hinge nipples which really do work very well and make total Landy Sense 👍
@@chriswalker4272 That Laser tool I bought for 12mm rivet nuts which I used to make a tilt for my big trailer. I put a new rear floor in my Disco and had about 200 pop rivets. It was a breeze. There was plenty of access however. Expect boxes to keep making fleeting appearances in odd places in next videos in the series just to keep viewers on edge. It will be more obvious that I'm poking fun though. There's plenty of technical comment to come but not enough time to make the videos.
Thank you for taking the time to make these videos and share your practical, experienced based, no nonsense advice. Far too much of the content in the online “overlanding” space falls under what you refer to as “ignorant smart asses sharing controversial opinions”, or what one might also call “edgelords dishing out hot takes for clicks”, in the parlance of our time. Much of it seems to me to be little more than misguided people worshiping at the alter of consumerism, which seems to be the dominant religion of the day. Your hard earned insights are a breath of fresh air. Real world advice for real people more concerned about where they are going than what they use to get there. Brilliant. Thanks again and happy travels!
Your an inspiration Bill Sir, to us all. Thank you for sharing, and your time 🙂. Now I must get back to servicing the front axle, welding the YRM bulkhead feet and lower footwells in Peggy the 300 TDI Farmy Pick-Up girl. She is working to help me and others restore woodland habitat at the foot of the Cairngorms. Not as exciting or exotic, but your welcome to come and camp here Bill. Between seven with our small parts, we are restoring app 80 acres of what used to be a farm. Twenty years on it's thriving, and a wonderful place to camp out and work. So my 1997 Land Rover 90, and 1974 88" S3 are essential to me, and a pleasure to restore, maintain, and drive every day. Which makes your you tube videos a most valued resource. I have just installed grease nipples on my new hinges, for example, and must thank you for such a brilliant useful idea and how-to 👍
@@chriswalker4272 Welcome to the club. I would also like to thank you sincerely for the invitation to camp on your property in the Cairgorms. Maybe a bit nippy up there? Earlier in my career in the oil industry I worked and lived guess where. I had a great time but tend not to go back that way too much - my radar is trained further afield these days. My mother's family were from Oban so I will always have a fond connection there. Follow my new series about upgrades to the 90. There's a lot of basic work being done but the videos will come out a bit slowly owing to time pressures
The problem here isn't LFP batteries. Several youtubers, including Will Prowse, have taken apart DCS batteries and found they are using inferior and even used reskinned cells. The Australian government also tested the batteries and discovered they were far worse in longevity than every other battery they tested. All the other tested LFP batteries did good.
Thank you for your detailed explanations with examples sir 👍 I've always believed in replacing like for like. To cut out any corroded metal and replace with fresh metal of the same thickness, I do use galvanised steel for repairs when I can. This would normally be thinner parts like bulkhead repairs, but I think the galvanised steel gives a little protection to the weld from corrosion. However respiratory protection from the poisonous gases are more hazardous than normal welds so good ventilation and respiratory face mask are essential. I also find my cheap plasma cutter is great for cutting out the rotten steel to good steel. Much easier than using a cutting wheel in awkward spaces too.
I love your videos. Straight to the point, with a purpose. There's too much of what I would call "luxury" off road builds and it's a breath of fresh air to see someone building things to be used with a serious eye towards actual utility and reliability, not just flashy features.
@@FeedMeAQuarter Preaching to the converted. There's one video channel (of many) where the guy has fitted every possible accessory to his Defender and he only does a bit of gentle greenlaning. Well it keeps him happy I suppose.
@@defendermodsandtravels as i thought. I have a 235/85/16 on the bonnet of my 300Tdi and on rough roads (plenty of those here is Australia) it takes a hiding and i'm guessing a matter of time until there is a major failure at some point when I'm 2,000 kms from anywhere. i regularly check for cracks or metals fractures. I also have a rear mounted one on a swing-away Front Runner mount as it is prudent to carry two spares here, so have really run out of options (trying to keep weight low) unless I just carry the tyre carcass and change rims when required, but I'm too old for that sort of work ;-) .
4 important things in life - Health, Family, Freedom and Integrity. We've only got one shot on this marble so we've got to make it count. Keep moving forward Bill and take care. The best of British luck to you.
@@angusabbott5615 You mean the engineering videos? I don't actually do any dumbed down videos whatever the topic. I try to look at things a bit differently rather than following a well used formula. If by "popularity" you refer to the box opening, I hope you realise I was poking fun at the box openers (who do seem to command large audiences for some reason).
Those compressors are ok, I have two of them and I do recommend you have a spare pair of brushes for it, also the head can get extremely hot so don't melt the battery cable insulation that's running over the top of it, on a side note I do use a small tank with mine because I run on tubeless tyres but I do know you use tubed tyres so that's not an issue for you.
Thanks for the tip. I will make sure the battery cable is clipped to the side of the box. These are exactly the types of risk I am trying to eliminate. If it can go wrong on a big trip it will go wrong as I have demonstrated many times.
I normally buy "fit for purpose" rather than "top of the range" but in this case I went for a high end Viair compressor which supports a 100% duty cycle. When travelling to hotter climes you can't afford to have compressor failure (the footpump is an emergency contingency only).
@@defendermodsandtravels I have the same compressor and it has served me (and the rest of my group!) extremely well in the Tunisian Sahara. Because it is hard wired and easy to use, it gets used a lot. As you pointed out, if it's hard to use or slow many people will skip airing down. Even though everybody on the expedition had some form or another of compressor, I offered the use of my air line to the rest of the group and it made all of our lives easier!
There are lots of decent LFP 12v batteries out there. Lithium chemistries just can't handle under bonnet heat. All you need to look as is Nissan Leaf battery packs where degradation can be greatly accelerated by use in hot climates. This is due to the packs having no active cooling. I have a respected branded LFP battery in my 4wd and just did a capacity test after 4 years of heavy use. Still had 98AH of original 102AH when tested new. They can work well but buyer beware in terms of quality and thermal management. The behaviour of DCS is so sad as the only outcome will be bankruptcy and a lot of unnecessary hurt.
I’ve welded loads of truck & semi trailers in a fab shop in Australia , we would fold them in a large 250t press , then Weld them up , ALL straight joints. Mainly Kenworth and Mack .
Hi bill , enjoyed your recent video regarding stephan and dcs i see andrew at 4xoverland weighing in as are others with a platform. Well done bill , i enjoy your down to earth advice. I am planning on visiting northern spain and Portugal in early 25, would you recommend the channel tunnel route or the ferry to northern spain. Any advice greatly appreciated. Keep the videos coming. Cheers stevie here in scotland.
I know the backstory to the 4xoverland video. It took them a long time to jump on the Stefan vs DCS bandwaggon didn't it? I think they wanted to see which way the wind was blowing before committing themselves. I have done the trip down to the Alentejo region of Portugal, where I own a property, many times and have used both routes. I get very cheap travel through the Channel tunnel as an original shareholder in Eurotunnel which skews the picture for me. If you take the tunnel it's a long journey through France so allow plenty of time. I use a mix of routes nationaux and Autoroutes - if there's a decent RN for a segment of the journey I use that. The Bilbao or Santander ferry gives a more relaxing start to the journey but it doesn't save too much time, in my case maybe 1/2d. If there's a bad storm in the Bay of Biscay the ferry isn't much fun. If I am towing a trailer I use the tunnel for financial reasons, or if I am driving solo it's a toss up which route I take. If you are starting from Scotland it'll be a hell of a drive either way.
Australia is a big country and any equipment with a problem should be outed ASAP mainly because in remote areas women and young people are required to go long distances for even their mail. One little girl used to drive about thirty miles to the front gate of their property to pick up deliveries. Everybody has to work. A woman almost lost her life when the vehicle's heater stuck on in severe heat conditions. Lives depend on reliability.
Oh dear why didn't the woman rip out the cables to the heater's fan? She probably didn't know how which nearly cost her life. I drive to remote regions without backup and agree that reliability is a fundamental requirement. For this reason I am further simplifying my Defender. I am at a loss to understand why so many overlanders in Australia load up their vehicles with a lot of complicated and expensive kit which is likely to fail under harsh conditions. If you don't have it it can't go wrong 🙂
Your videos are so refreshing sir, and your self reliance is like a mirror to myself. The needle descaler is a great tool for unhiding the full extent. It both scares me and reassures me to find any thin weak and deteriorated metal. I found the drain cleaning attachment for my karcher pressure washer is quite good for giving the inside of the rails a good blast out. I fitted a new Sparks wiring loom in conduit on top of chassis and use the big holes for the loom to access inside. 5 litres of lorry chassis rust treatment, and the same wax injector as yourself with waxoyl.
I drive an old Land Cruiser 70 series about the same age as your Defender. Whilst the fit and finish is a bit tighter they still need TLC and regular maintenance. Any vehicle in Borneo will suffer. You have probable the best engine ever fitted to a Defender, did you get it in Australia?
Hey, regarding 12 Volt in a Defender, I am using an idiot proof 2 Batterie System with just 2 NATO switches to manually connct, disconnct or splt the two Batteries. No Sterling or what so ever. Happy with it since more than 20 years, never let me down.... car is a series chassis with 300 tdi engine. All the best and happy building. Niko
This is a subject of great interest to me. There is no doubt that a smart split charge system is the best way to ensure that each battery is charged correctly - neither over nor under charged (I did a video on this a while back). However this requires electronics and can fail as my Sterling unit did in South Africa. The contingency plan is to use a jumper cable or manual switch to join the batteries. On balance I think I'll install a new Sterling unit since the wiring is there already and I have so many other tasks to do, but this is last chance saloon. I already ditched the low voltage cut out which failed twice (and the inverter and fridge have their own cut outs).
The MAIN ISSUE , IN THIS DISCUSSION, is the fact that the person who put this video up , hasn't addressed the fact that IF THE WELDER WHO CARRIES OUT THE WELDING IS NOT CERTIFIED ,TO AN ACCEPTED STANDARD THEN THE WHOLE ISSUE IS A NON STARTER.
The purpose of the video is to demonstrate that straight cut butt welds are just as strong as the slant/Z joint profiles assuming a competent weld in each case. The focus isn't on the weld quality but clearly if the weld is defective the whole thing is a non-starter. Things like welder qualification requirements are country dependant and way beyond the scope of the video. There are plenty of welding videos but very few (If any, apart from mine) which take an engineering approach to mods etc. I suggest you view the many welding videos if that is your interest.
Good luck with your mods. I'm interested to see the likes of how you mod the clutch for bleeding ect, and I bet that steel adapter ring weighs rather a lot!
I really suffered with trying to bleed the clutch in Namibia - the bleed nipple was damaged and it had an Imperial hex head which needed a stubby ring spanner which I didn't have. This time I am going to install a single person bleed nipple with a spring loaded non-return valve. Oh yes, it will have a metric hex head too (I carry a reasonable selection of metric spanners but very few Imperial spanners).
I use my old caravan for camping off grid and in parks too, she's a 1993 sprite and I've kitted her out for off-grid use with 3 x 100 AH measure batteries. With the lantern wind turbine and solar they do a good job and are cheap. With the MPPT charge controller they are keeping well also. Having looked at LiPo - just too expensive and never worth it for me. I would go and contribute now if they took PayPay, but I don't like entering my card details on other companies 'secure' websites, and so unfortunately can not. But I see he is going to achieve the target being at 70K of the 90K target. I hope he wins and the big small company has to pay his legal fees and expenses 🤞
Thank you sir, for your bloody marvelous idea 👍 Land rover have no interest in utility anymore it would seem, their newer vehicles being made for less practical repair and use it would seem. So to keep these old proper ones going becomes more important for future generations to see where we lost our spirit of spannering for ourselves. I have new hinges for my wonderful 300Tdi farmy Pick-up, and also a range of nipples, lucky me, with some I think are a perfect fit for your B'y Marvelous design. I will paint 2K first with pin out then fit as you do. I hope your still getting away on adventures thank you for your time and knowledge 👍
100% agree, work with Stefan to help fix the problem rather than sue him, I have seen issues with this battery in the past, by sueing him they are basically admitting that they are at fault.
In Australia we have a lot of ridiculous rules for modified vehicles which do not pertain to actual safety but rather to someones "belief" of what is acceptable. In many instances rules are hypocritical to what is acceptable on new vehicles. In general the existing rules for modified vehicles need to be thrown out and a new standard be put together which actually ensures safety for vehicles and allows for modification. However as this comes under a government body it is extremely unlikely anything sensible will ever get done.
I'm new to overloading and really appreciate this point of view. I'm planning to drive the panamerican highway and have a hard time justifying the weight of a winch.
@@johnlee8318 Well don't try to justify a winch. If you are using tracks which are also used by the locals then any competent 4x4 will be able to make it too. You see locals getting to the most inaccessible places in beaten up old saloon cars. Good luck with the trip. I am headed in the same direction next time.
I work in the automotive design industry and I have to admit that I'm guilty of using scarf joints in chassis design. Our justification was that, in the case of weld material being weaker than the base material (which is common when using higher strength materials, up to and exceeding 100KSI), the longer weld would be stronger than a shorter weld. I often used this technique because I was taught it was effective but I never actually did the math. Thanks for exploring the subject, I'll will do some more research.
It's a fundamental tenet of structural design that the weld metal (and the HAZ) is at least as strong as the base metal. You can find suitable welding consumables for any grade of structural steel. Although the video looked at the static strength (because most welding guys state that their fancy joints are "way stronger) in reality failure is likely to be fatigue emanating in the top / bottom flanges. This is particularly true for higher strength steels which will be designed to take higher working stresses. Remember that the fatigue damage is approximately proportional to the cube of the stress range. Good luck.
All this fiasco has done is expose the arrogance of the owners of these bully boy companies. My message to any of the companies whose products I find flaws with and slag off is "come and have a go if you think you're hard enough". Great video btw.
Glad I went with my gut 3 yrs ago and decided against DCS batteries for my caravan, my spidey senses told me no. My $4k went to Custom Lithium instead, another small Australian company who has proven to have excellent customer service and warranty. DCS suing Stefan so fits with their high and mighty attitude in my initial dealings with them.
Good on ya mate....We Aussies appreciate your support and your commentary and hope this court case gets thrown out as it should. It's very un Australian.....
