Pauls Blog

Series1 Restored Chassis and Bulkhead

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:53:00 +0000

After lots and lots of cutting out and welding in new metals the chassis is at last finished and was painted in 3 coats of Bonda Rust primer and 3 coats of black hammerite , the axles were derusted and fully rebuilt with new seals and bearings

The bulkhead took lots of work to rebuild and it was severly rotten and as the veicle is over 40 years old none of the parts are to correct size due to old repairs and modification

As i am going to use this vehicle for green laning and generally running around i decided it doesnt have to be rebuilt back to original spec as i have another series one that i intend to rebuild to as new specification

With that in mind the bulkhead has been restored to its original sizes etc and doesn't have the look of a very accurate replacement but was much cheaper to repair than replace and it means it wont bother me as much if it get knocked about a bit on its green laning excursions or winter use

Long time since last post

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:27:00 +0000

OK so its been a long times since i posted anything on any of my blogs , that mainly due to the fact that i have been mega busy on projects of my own and helping both my lads with theirs and much much more

Restored the chassis on my series 1 to a rolling chassis stage and rebuilt the very rotten bulkhead and painted it in shiny bronze green

Purchase a good cheap second hand chassis for my lightwieght which i have fully restored and painted to rolling chassis stage

Helped my son with his series 2a which he uses to compete on ccv events with Buxton and District land rover club , including repairs and fitting full roll cage after a roll destroyed the truck cab

Helped my youngest son with his V8 Hybrid with lots of welding replacing rear cross member and rebuilding suspension and new roll cage up to competiton spec

This is without all the normal running repairs on the lads everyday cars and other building work comittments

My main area of interest is now the light weight which is being fully rebuilt to compete with in CCV alongside my eldest lad James in BAD events , i have rebuilt the bulkhead , a custom truck cab and now building the roll bar lots of pics etc to follow along soon

Cloned Landie

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 13:50:00 +0000

Well lots being happening since last post the new landie turned out to be a cloned vehicle , the police seized the vehicle and after some weeks investigation it turned out to be a very cleverly cloned Landie despite a basic HPI check

After spending many moths with this the best advice i can give anyone thinking of buying a land rover is to actually physically check the chassis number

According to the police this is the only way to check the identity of the vehicle you have to get the sellar of the vehicle to scrape off the mud and underseal and check the chassis number

BE Warned make sure you do this or you will find yourself losing your vehicle and your money as we did!!!!

Latest Landie Addition to our Collection

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 11:08:00 +0000

We have added yet another land rover to our collection as Will is now 17 his first car is a good old land rover 90 , fitted with a 200 TDI engine and power steering , it is currently undergoing a few repairs as the diff had lots of free paly in it and it was replaced with a cheap ebay find

Unfortunately as a result of taking out the diffs worn halfshafts were found and as he intends to trial the landie almost a full rear axle rebuild has taken place

The front discs are being replaced with the new cross drilled and grooved ones sold by paddock along with a set of EBC pads again once the hubs were off all front wheel bearings were in poor condition and so they are currently being replaced once paddocks open that it

A new steering box has also been fitted to take out the play that was present in the old one and new modulars and tyres will be fitted very soon

Buxton & District Land Rover Club Playday

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 20:12:00 +0000

James having fun with MEG

Buxton and District Playday September

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:29:00 +0000

Well despite my car transporter trailer being out of action , Jame decided that he was going to Drive Meg to the BAD play day at hartington quarry to take part in the play day

We followed along in my defender with a few tools to cover any repairs he may need , it was a nice pleasent drive through the countryside taking the back roads , MEG the series 2a looked in her element on the tight country lanes

Meg was the oldest land rover there by far and i reckon the only series vehicles despite this she had no problems at all going almost everywhere that the defenders went indeeed she did out perform a few defenders

Video coming soon on youtube

Offroading with the Landies

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 21:18:00 +0000

Spent a few hours a couple of Weekends ago setting up a bit of a course on some of the rough land on the farm , Will got to play with his V8 Hybrid "Rhubarb" whilst James put his Series 2A "Meg through her paces

I have to Say Meg performed very well for a simple leafer running the standard 2.1/4 petrol engine and went place i am sure she has never made it before , i have to say i made it clear round on my first attempt in both vehicles

Always good to piss the kids off being a better driver than them but for how long i can only guess

Fuel Duty Petition

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 08:38:00 +0000

I think it is fair to say that we are all feeling the effects of the rising cost of fuel and we all know that the price of crude oil has risen vastly over the last 12 months but lets face it the problem with the price of fuel here in the UK is the Duty (TAX) that the goverment puts on it

Fuel is a Cash cow for this goverment which year on year consistanly increases the duty content to pay for what ever it wants to waste OUR money on but the point is the chancellor has been raking in big increases in the VAT content whilst the price rises just look at the rough examples below to see the huge increase in revenue the VAT has been bringing in

96p VAT Content 16.8 pence
£1.30 VAT Content 22.8 pence

Thats an increase of 35% in VAT Revenue

Now let the goverment tell you they cant afford to drop the fuel duty by a few pence

There just ripping us all off

Everything we buy be it goods or food etc has an element of carriage in it EVERYTHING and this means prices will keep rising unless something is done

Sign the petition below and at least protest peacefully but let them know that we cant continue like this

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Lowerduty30/

Update at Last Lots of Landy Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Mon, 19 May 2008 18:43:00 +0000

Well its been ages since i was able to sit down and find the time to post to my blog been too damn busy out in the real world with lots of projects on the go plus been helping out my 2 lads with there projects mostly landy related of course

We bought a cheap well used and very battered hybrid V8 land rover some months ago for Will to get some experience driving before he hit 17 and is set loose on the highway , its a bit of an oil burner but boy its it one heck of an off road beast

Work has stopped on the lightweight hybrid as it doesn't appear that simple to put the air portable body on the shortened range rover chassis much head scratching going on at moment if you have experience at doing this swap please contact me with any help you may have

A old 3.9EFI range rover was sourced on eBay for a couple of hundred quid as a power source but has been flogged around the rough farm a few times for fun

More landy stuff coming soon including video

Ipaq Bluetooth Dial up Problems on SE Mobile Phones

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:50:00 +0000

I have for a number of years used an Ipaq to keep myself in touch with my email , documents and office related stuff , this has been especially useful when on the move

but on upgrading to a newer model i came across a familiar problem that i have had a number of times ever since i changed to a Sony Ericsson mobile phone

I was trying to set the ipaq to dial up to the internet using the mobile access number given to me by my ISP, but although i followed the networking wizard the ipaq would connect to the mobile phone no problem but would not actually dial a telephone number

Much head scratching was done and although i remember having the same problem every time i reformatted my ipaq in the past i could not under any circumstances discover how to connect the ipaq to my mobile phone and make it dial up the access number

A few hours searching the internet and i found a vague post that made me remember what you have to do amazingly its so very very simple

So for anyone with a ipaq or pocket pc device that cannot get it to dial up to the internet with a sony ericsson mobile phone heres what you have to do , go into the dial up settings then Advance /Extra String commands in here put the letter z

Now try again and this should cure the problem , simple but effective i would think this works for most SE phones (Sony Ericsson) but definitely works with mine which is a S600i

Bike Radar MYB Post

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 12:25:00 +0000

I have for a year or so been a member of a great mountain biking website called Bike Radar

this morning i received one of there routine weekly email newsletters which contains the details of new gear and bikes been tested etc , but what really caught my eye was a post by a guy calling himself Old Git on a Bike

The gist of the post was that he had put on lots of weight due to self imposed lack of activity and that he had become very unfit as a result , he age was remarkably close to mine too

Reading the post made me think that i should take the advice posted by other members in relation to this thread and get out and replace my aging steel framed MTB for the GT Avalanche that i have been longing to buy since my old Raleigh showed signs of falling to pieces last year in my summer rides to help with my fitness and back problems

Using a bike to recover my fitness seems the best way to go as my back problem coupled with too much weight has left me unable to run any longer

I wonder with dedication how long could it take to loose 3 stone and recover a good level of fitness i will monitor this progress and will post up to date info an any progress on my fitness blog

A Return to Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 20:39:00 +0000

OK so its been a long long time since i posted anything to any of my blogs , so long its almost a year on this blog and even longer on some of my other blogs

Why you may ask well its not that i am never on the old PC in fact i am often on the PC in any spare time that i may have but the plain old fact is i have been really busy over the last year or so with many new projects and some old ones

My web site which this blog is hosted on is undergoing a complete rebuild and rebranding with a whole new look , work on my freelance webdesign business has been increasing and as ever i like to offer my paying customers effective services which takes a lot of research but more importantly but this has paid off with a number of 1st page listings on google for clients

If a surfer cant find your website via google then theres little point having one !!!

Anyway lots more to come

Yet Another Stealth Tax Sign Petiton to Avoid

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 11:37:00 +0000

Here we have the government trying to slip through yet another tax on the motorist in one of the most heavily taxed countries in the world most of them hidden of course , well here is yet another one that Tony and Gordon are keen to get through

Please read below and sign the petition , this is not a scam and was reported on the national TV news on Friday evening

"Not one to winge about spending money, but just thought you may all be interested to hear that the government are trying to introduce a new pay as you go tax for all drivers. They have hidden the petition on the government website (link below) and not told anyone about it. It will evolved fitting monitoring devices to all cars and people paying a monthly charge. They have already trialled it and the cheapest bill was £38 a month and the most expensive being well over £300 a month. The deadline for the petition is the 20th February 2007 and so if you want to sign it and forward this email on to everyone you know, that would be brilliant."

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/traveltax/

Recovery from Back Problems

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 10:59:00 +0000

Like many others i have had a reoccurring back problem for many years both in my upper and lower back, the upper back has been easily treated with a few visits to the chiropractor , the lower back also has needed treatment from the chiropractor but it has taken much longer to get better than the upper back problems

Some 12 months ago i hit the lower back problem and started visits to my Chiropractor and initially progress was made i i had to visit him ever 3/4 weeks but after 3 months the treatment started to work and i was visiting almost every week

The treatment worked for about 5/7 days and then i would have the problem again it was quite debilitating as i could not go out walking as i was in pain after walking a 1/4 or a mile or so and even standing hurt it considerably

I have done a lot of reading on the Internet above living with back pain etc and just before Xmas found a book by Sarah Keys that has defiantly helped improve my condition this and changes in my working life have helped to improve my condition

I will be posting more on this very soon

Cheap Website Design

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 12:28:00 +0000

Been a while since I have posted to my personal blog due to so many thing happening, one of the things I have been working hard on is starting up my own web site design business

Many people that know me will know that I have done web design for many years and have created sites that have done very well in the search engine rankings; I particularly enjoy the challenge of having sites score high on Google, Yahoo and Msn

Also I have many friends that have had sites built by other independent website designers and have been amazed at the prices some have been charged for what I would call very basic web site packages

Because of this I have started Affordable Webdesign where I tend to specialise in offering a full web site design and hosting service at a cheap price, now many people have the view that cheap means rubbish and I a very aware of this fact working full in a manufacturing industry

Cheap Website design does not have to mean poor quality, I keep the costs of designing and building a web site low by keeping the design very simple, easy to navigate and avoiding unnecessary bloated content such as intricate and frankly unhelpful flash intros/movies and complicated menu systems that hinder your search engine ranking and ultimately mean less visitors to your web site

Obviously I work from home and as a result my overheads are very low , I also build search engine optimisation into all sites a I build and take a pride in the fact that I currently am able to have all the sites I build and run score high on there relevant search engines

My cheap web site design is perhaps better described by the phrase Value for Money, which in my view is what everyone today is looking for or as affordable webdesign mission statement says Affordable and Effective Web Media Solutions

Rock Climbing

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Thu, 11 May 2006 18:14:00 +0000

Well I managed to get to the indoor wall at Easter and this was my first visit for about 15 months judging by the expiry date of my membership at the Edge in Sheffield , climbing last year was very sporadic and very few outing were made infact I think I only climbed 3 times outdoors in the whole of 2005

A plan was hatched to take a trip to Stanage on the may day bank holiday weekend Saturday with the kids , it must of been 18 months since I climbed at Stange and we duly arrived early in the afternoon and set out for the High Neb area

We chose some low grade routes as My sons G/F was a beginner and so it made sense to look for a couple of easy routes such as Diffs and V Diffs etc , a simple Diff route was chosen for starters and I have to admit it was much harder than I thought it would be

It only goes to show just how out of shape you can get from a lay off , 2 years before that I started my season climbing VS's but I suppose I was also climbing throughout the winter at the indoor wall

We all climbed another Diff and 2 nice V Diffs that were hard but well protected , next stop will have to be Birchen Edge to reclimb some of the climbs I know so well to build up the old confidence and to push back up to the VS levels

Oh and I forgot to mentions I am carrying about 20lbs more weight and this sure doesn't help in the sport of rock climbing, so i will have to work on loosing that by running but that a whole new blog post

Lightweight Land Rover Chassis Replacement

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Wed, 03 May 2006 09:38:00 +0000

Been a while since I posted to my blog due to the amount of time I have been spending on hands on projects rather than sitting in front of the PC for a change

As in my last post I have been working on the range rover chassis that we purchased on eBay some time ago , originally it was cleaned up with small angle grinders and flap discs to remove all rust and to treat any dubious rust patches with rust treat ment and then it was painted in Bonda Rust primer 2 coats

Whilst working on this chassis for our new hybrid V8 powered lightweight land rover I noticed that the previous owners welding repairs were looking to say the least not very pretty and in most areas the repairs appeared to be very poor and so I took the view that I would remove some sections to check the structural integerty of the chassis repairs

As anyone will tell you repairing some one else's previous repairs is more time consuming that don't the original repair and this was the case , the area where the chassis had been shortened for use of the land rover where very poorly done and no closure plates were welded over the join to spread any load

All plates were removed and surrounding areas cleaned up the join was then actually welded and then ground down with large plates welded over the joins overlapping the join by several inches in 3mm steel plate as you can see fro the pictures the welding is now very strong the last thing we need is for the hybrid chassis to come apart on the join

More details on the light weight landrover chassis repairs are on the main area of the website

Next is the rear tub repairs

Series One Land Rovers

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Thu, 09 Mar 2006 18:02:00 +0000

Many people often ask me what is the fascination with the Old Series One land rovers and indeed when I first bought my series one I used it almost daily in the summer with the hard top and door tops removed lots of people thought I was mad as I had a more modern car also at the time but it was a cheap way to own a convertible

The attraction to the Series 1 landie is simply from childhood a farmer friend of mine had a very early series one landrover with the 1600cc engine and the chain pull gearbox and I was always attracted to its fun drivable and its simplicity , I also like the quirky looks of the series one plus the shorter wheelbase and narrow track make it a very useful off roader

The spares are still very easy to come by and there are a lot of spares that are interchangeable with the Series 2 and Series 3 landrovers , most parts are cheap and there is a great dealer network around for these series spares including the excellent Paddock spares that are local to me

Also with all landrover owners there is a camaraderie and almost a feel that every owner of a land rover including the modern defenders are part of this club , often when driving my land rover defender 110 twin cab I get a wave from a fellow land rover enthusiast or owner there is no other vehicle that has this friendship experience , a good mk1 or Mk2 escort will attract similar respect from people but not to the level we see in the landie owners

They are so simple to work on and to keep running , this is a big bonus to anyone interested in mechanicing including youngsters that are too young too drive, as the Series one was conceived in the late forties and in real terms it was designed as an agricultural tool to replace tractors for a big export drive for the then Rover Cars it was built to be maintained in countries where there is not the knowledge or skill or even equipment and spares that were available in the UK at the time and so they are so good for car enthusiast learning there trade with the spanners

There are some statistic that land rover produced a few years ago that show that over 80% of land rovers ever produced are still on the road today no other car can boast those figure and the land rover also is the first car ever seen in over 60% of the developing countries of the world and has been voted in top gears poll as the greatest cars in the world

And this was all started by the stop gap filler Series One Land Rover

PC Security and Virus,s

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 18:51:00 +0000

How many people do you know that bought a PC that came with a limited virus package that have never paid for updates or have not even bothered to install and Anti Virus software on there PC,s at all

With all the Spyware and malicious Malware out the on the net now especaily as most people now how broadband access and as a result most PC's are left connected to the internet for long periods or indefinitely the chances of a security threat is now very common

When ever I am asked to help sort out a friend's PC, be it a simple windows problem or a complete reformat and reinstall of Windows. I always take along a CD with a couple of programs . One is Av Antivirus from Grisoft, the other is Microsoft Antispyware now called Defender both programs are FREE and so there is no excuse for not being protected at home

This is especially important if like me you have a home network that has several PC,s connected to it, as one infected PC will infect all others on the network very quickly. Often malicious code can be downloaded very easily from the internet with even knowing, one of the main areas for infecting your PC with Spyware is by the use of file sharing software (P2P peer to peer networking) and some freeware which can often comes bundled with Spyware that installs without informing you

This is especially important if the kids use your PC, or have there own linked to your network as kids often download and install stuff without thinking. That new tool bar that they installed because it gave them more emoticons to use in there MSN starts to hijack your browser settings. Suddenly your home page changes and despite having a pop up blocker you get regular timed pop up windows, some Spyware like this can be so difficult to remover

One other necessity has to be a pop up blocker and my personal favourite has to be the Google tool bar as it allows you to use the full search facilities and block pop ups very effectively

Windows XP has some good security features in the Service Pack 2 download (SP2) and includes a Firewall that is simple but effective to use , I keep SP2 on a CD for any reformats that I have to do as Microsoft is removing some of the downloads like this, especially if your windows is not a Valid Copy which can be a problem if you buy a secondhand PC

There is a great online tool from Norton that you can use to scan your PC for and security threats including virus's from Symantec Security Check page simply press the go button and let Symantec scan your PC for FREE

Typhoon Lagoon A Personal Review

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 18:33:00 +0000

Our first trip to a Disney water park was to Typhoon Lagoon many years ago, it was our very first trip to Florida to experience the whole Disney adventure.After a few days hurriedly experiencing the theme parks we decided to have a break and do something different and decided to visit Typhoon Lagoon. After parking the car and proceeding to the entrance immediately we knew we were in for a real treat, once inside the park the Caribbean theme is very evident with the piped music and the buildings etc

First view of the typhoon is dominated by the shipwreck high up above and the sound of the horn culminating in the huge waves been started in the lagoon and the sound of the children and adults cheering as the waves start. After finding a base to return to for the kids if they should get lost we found the castaway creek and jumped on a tube to ride round the castaway creek and see the whole of the park, lazing on the tubes floating round the park is a great way to relax (unless you have kids as they always steer their unaware parents into the sprays of cold water from the various waterfalls etc)

Next was Shark Reef where there is a upturned ship wreck where you can view the fish in the surrounding tank along with some small sharks, for the brave ones some scuba gear is available to use if you would like to swim the short distance across the tank giving great views of the fish, coral and the sharks. As with everything Disney the are life guards on hand should you have a problem and I should point out the sharks are very very small

Another favourite is the family raft ride Keelhaul Falls which is thrilling for a family of four with small children and once again is very safe and off course all mums and dads seem to get wet from the cold water that spills onto them from the various waterfalls, funny how the kids always manage to avoid them

Next was the storm slides, which are great fun they are water rides where you sit on a tube singly, or with another person these are great fun. For the brave ones amongst you there is the Humunga Kowabunga which is a massive slide, of course the kids love anything like this and show no fear and being the dad of the group you cant not ride the Humunga Kowabunga all I can say is that I did it just the once

There are also a couple of tubes slides called Mayday Falls, these are great fun too and we had a number of runs on both of these before we moved on to the lagoon itself. The lagoon itself is brilliant it is so big I havent seen anything like it in the UK, if you dont like the deep water the lagoon opens out into a wide shallow bay which is great for the younger children or grown ups who aren't very confident swimmers etc

Read the Rest on our Disney Vacation Home Website

Freeware Programs and Spyware

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 14:41:00 +0000

There are a large number of freeware programs out there on the internet some are very good and some come bundled with lots of Malware or otherwise known as Spyware and so you have to be careful exactly what you download

Microsoft have a FREE Beta Version of there Anti Spyware that you can download free if you have Valid windows operating software, this is a great piece of software , it monitors any software installations, browser hacks etc . It is compatible with most proprietary software but if a change is made and it is unsure if the software is malicious it will ask you before allowing changes

It also updates itself automatically and scans your system once per day to detect any spyware etc its very easy to use but more importantly its very affective and stops internet explorer being hijacked

Microsoft Antispyware

My Freeware List

Site Updated www.paul-cottam.co.uk

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Sat, 18 Feb 2006 10:40:00 +0000

Finally I have managed to update the whole of my site after moving to a new cheaper host in January , the main area that has been updated is the Land Rover Section . I have added a new page about the developing work on the lightweight with some pictures to illustrate the purchase of a new bargain from eBay

After much scraping and cutting out of rusty material on the existing lightweight landie Will and I decided that we would be better off by replacing the chassis and looked around for a replacement one on eBay but soon decided that if we were going to replace the chassis we might as well go the whole hog and replace it with a range rover chassis so that we could use the whole of the range rover running gear including a V8

So we decided to build the ultimate land rover a V8 coil sprung hybrid Land Rover

Lightweight Rebuild

Welcome to my First Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Paul Cottam) — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 19:36:00 +0000

Well here goes this is my first attempt at a Blog as there all the rage I thought I should try and build one for my site and here its is

I hope to publish regularly to this blog with information regarding the main contents of my site and interests , I have taken my first steps recently to publish articles to some of the online article site and hope that people will find them interesting

I will be covering topics that are represented on my site as well as some new ones especially in the area of Web Design, Digital Photograph, Search Engine optimization, Holiday Property Managements just to name a few

http://www.paul-cottam.co.uk