Roger K

I presume it's the same with the Adaptive Cruise Control. When someone pulls out of the left lane in front of my Skodiak, and it applies the brakes to maintain the distance, I have often wondered if the brake lights are coming on. I guess they must be, for obvious reasons. It's a very disconcerting feeling when the vehicle takes over - I usually leave as much of this cr*p switched off as I can.

That sounds right to me - on other cars I have often found a parallel hole, with a taper thread on the component fitted to it.

Nah, doesn't come close to a classic Land Rover. EP everywhere, can leak from all four wheels, steering swivels, diff casings, gearbox, transfer case, L/H ratio box, overdrive....

I once stopped off at my parents' house late one night whilst they were away on holiday because the low fuel light had come on on my 3-month-old Audi Coupé's dashboard and the local filling station was closed. Pulled a couple of red metal cans out of the garage with 'PETROL' written on them in white Humbrol and poured the contents down the filler. Ran fine to get home to Cambridge, but would it start the next morning? No chance.... I could just get it to idle, but it died with the gentlest throttle application. After idling for 10 mins it was warm enough to run round to the nearest filling station to brim with 5-star, thereby diluting the PARAFFIN to safe levels. Never trusted his cans again after that...

Aha - that's where being a retired dentist comes in handy... A big vote for the carburettor exchange, who did a beautiful job on my old Land Rover's Solex.

Oooo, that's clever, obvious really...

Boom boom....

I understand all that - but you don't normally preload tapered bearing sets in wheel bearings. Why the difference, I wonder? Maybe because the wheel bearing relies on grease, whereas the axle bearing is running in oil, so lubrication is better?

The little Screwfix workshop heater's quite impressive - you can point it up or down, it'll give 2.5kw max and has a thermostat. The fan is pretty powerful and it was only 40quid, but not up to your showroom door heaters by the sound of them!

It's certainly cold... I'm in the middle of sorting out my newly-purchased GT6's underside. I have it over the pit and have removed the entire rear suspension (it had a 1500 spring, wrong camber), diff, complete axle etc. so it's down to bare chassis allowing full access to the body underside. I've stripped this of all old underseal and paint etc., repaired a few slightly over-zealous old welded repairs and removed all the old seam sealing. Luckily I've found no significant rust - probably a legacy of it spending the last 44 years in a heated garage, and doing 97k miles in that time - so before Christmas I applied a surface converter and replaced the seam sealer with Sikkaflex 221 (I have an air applicator for this, otherwise it kills your hands). Yesterday was the planned day for the Terotex 2000 application (application temp: 10-25˚C), so I had to head off to Screwfix to buy a second electric fan heater for the workshop. It was certainly cold in the pit, but 2-3 hrs of running the heaters got it up to temp. I avoided glancing at the electricity meter yesterday... I got the stone-chip applied fine, and it's now had 24hrs to dry so I'll go and shoot some Carmine Red over it today. Then it's a blast of Dinitrol 4941 and I can reassemble the rear end, with the 'new' 3.63 diff, on which I've replaced all three seals and the output bearings and fitted a drain plug. Hopefully I haven't disturbed the pinion bearing preload too much. It's a little bit warmer today, but drinking coffee and finding a book or two to consult definitely appeals more than trying to breathe through a mask in a 2˚ workshop with the heaters running!

Please don't spend too much time looking, Colin - it's not a job I'm doing right now (at least I hope not!). I'd like to know for future reference more than anything as my original 3.27 diff has definitely run the pinion bearings - the pinion flange has a definite roughness when turned, and the diff whined very noticeably when I had it in the car. I was planning to do a bearing replacement to see if that cleared the whine, but none of the books I have found tell me how to do that on a diff with a collapsible spacer in place of the earlier shim pack.

Ah yes, the old Land Rover steering swivel test!!

I was only changing the pinion seal on a 3.63 (1500) diff, not the bearings as these felt OK as far as I could tell and I really don't want to get into CRP setup at this stage of the job. It's a s/h diff so I've no idea if it was noisy or not before I started. I centre punched the pinion shaft, nut, flange and casing so got all the marks lined up for reassembly. Just half a flat off alignment, it started to go properly tight, so I got it all lined up and everything feels good. I won't know if it's OK for ages as today I've been spraying the underbody with Terotex 2000 after masking up the chassis with the entire rear end stripped out, so it'll be a week or two before the axle goes back in - then I've the front end to do before I drive it.

Thanks Colin!!

Can you point me in the right direction? Can't find those at all!

Thanks - now how on earth did I miss that myself? Doh... the LH one's not too bad due to little use. Thanks for the offer Paul, I think I'm sorted now, dependent on Rimmer's accuracy on stock levels...

Thanks Pete, that makes sense.

Thanks for that, Colin - very helpful. I'd be grateful if somebody could clarify the torque settings for me. The ones that are confusing me are the setting for the setscrews joining the main diff cast casing to the main rear casing - I thought that might be 'hypoid housing to rear axle housing', but if that's the case, what's the setting for the hex sockets which hold the rear axle output housings to the main housing? Just finger tight, lean on a hex wrench best you can, or??

Thanks Rob, Useful pointer - I've just had a look at the Securon site and they do metal straps, stalks or webbing for the buckle. My GT6 has the rigid black box buckle style, which bolts direct to the floor. They don't do anything quite the same but the metal strap as not far off, and actually the webbing style would look OK too. I'll also talk to Quickfit once they're open again as I've had a few belt systems supplied by them, and they do a lovely line in silver grey belts with proper chrome buckles, but the GT6 needs black. More research needed! For inertia reels, I presume the reel mounts on the floor by the sill and the belt goes up to the top of the B post? Is there plenty of room for the reel on the floor in normal use?

Yes, I guess it would... I don't plan to hitch up my Brian James Transporter to the GT6, though. I think it'd kill it. I'm thinking just taking the red wires off it and joining them together would do it - need to find it first, though.

Does anyone with a late GT6 Mk3 (or any other car with one fitted) still have the night dimming relay in circuit? Back in the eighties, I vaguely remember bypassing mine as it seemed daft to deliberately have dimmer brake lights at night. Now that so many people drive around with their lights on during the day, I wonder how many realize that this little box (I seem to remember it is yellow?) is rendering their brake and indicator lamps difficult to see in daylight, because it has 'assumed' the lights will only come on in the dark? Roger

Slightly annoyingly, I've just bought a new workshop manual for Triumph GT6 Mk1,2&3 and Vitesse 2-litre, because I wanted to know the settings and assembly detail for the diff internals - and I needed a new one anyway. I find the addenda for Mk3 simply gives a diagram, no info about the collapsible spacer, torque settings etc. Have I missed it somewhere? - or do I need to buy a book for Spitfire 1500 just for a couple of paragraphs?

Yes, I've seen those - they still have the bendy wand buckle mount though, which I'd like to avoid - but I don't think that's going to be an option.

The seat belt sockets on my GT6 are pretty tatty, cracked and split, but just about work. What have folk used as replacements? I'm perfectly happy to stick with black static belts (don't really like inertia belts in a classic), but would like to avoid the 'bendy wand' style socket with its bright red button. Is there anything closer to the original Britax that would work? Thanks, Roger

That's the chap. So the hole needs to be 1/2 BSPP - parallel hole to take a tapered male thread. Thanks, should be all set now. Roger