The BoneWagon

[V70 Graham]

I have to admit to sitting in the car holding Frankie's Birch.....

[RollingThunder]

lol

I'd take a selfie but I'd look a tit. OK more of a tit than usual. Oh, you meant the wheel!!!

[RollingThunder]

OK... this is the marmite test lol. I've seen a test sample of this colour down at the powdercoaters - do you think it'd be a step too far on a set of Comets??? On a black V70 ?



I did say it'd be controversial !!!

[stephenevans99]

Very similar to what Ian had last year:

[T5frankie]

OK... this is the marmite test lol. I've seen a test sample of this colour down at the powdercoaters - do you think it'd be a step too far on a set of Comets??? On a black V70 ?



I did say it'd be controversial !!!

do what you want mate, you could of course follow every other boring git on here and go silver/grey, i like the colour and any colour goes with black

[RollingThunder]

Well thats the cambelt changed, getting through the jobs slowly but surely!

Tried to swap the Comets so that I could get them refurbed, but the 15in 850 alloys don't fit - at all. The fronts catch on the 302s and the rears don't even fit the hubs - I thought they were the same, but it looks like thats not the case I need to find 2 spacesaver spares - I've got two, so another two would allow me to get all the wheels off in one go. I don't think the powder coat people would be too happy if I asked them to do them in two batches of 2!

[RollingThunder]

Well, looks like the non fitting loaner wheels is no longer a problem - I think I've bought a set of Propuses!

[M-R-P]

OK... this is the marmite test lol. I've seen a test sample of this colour down at the powdercoaters - do you think it'd be a step too far on a set of Comets??? On a black V70 ?



I did say it'd be controversial !!!

On a black car?

I think you're onto a winner there.

[RollingThunder]

Well its confirmed - I've bought a set of Propus 17in split rims from Claymore Can't believe how things turned out - I was seriously miffed when the loaner alloys didn't fit and I had to put the Comets back on. If they had fitted, the Comets would be down the powdercoaters now and I'd have missed out on the Propuses - which I've admired since seeing them on AcidicDave's car.

I'm now faced with another dilemma Not sure whether to go with the safe but attractive grey on silver look -



Or try the black copper on the middles instead... which may look awesome, or may look minging - and it ain't going to be cheap. Decisions decisions...

[M-R-P]

Black gold rims, gloss black middle

Yum!

[AcidicDavey]

Good choice of wheels Sam, given any thought to what colour you're going for?

Check this out, good look?

You have to have a polished lip. Easy to do yourself. Take the centres out to get powdercoated and polish your lips

[RollingThunder]

Well the decision about the wheel colour just got more urgent - a nice little man just dropped off 4x Propuses Thanks Claymore, didn't think to ask if they were 7s or 7.5s - they're 7.5s, lurvely!



Got to decide PDQ now as I want to get them painted and fitted

BTW, Dave - its all your fault. I hadn't seen a Propus on a V70 until I saw yours...

[V70 Graham]

Nice looking wheels.

[RollingThunder]

Check this out, good look?

TBH, its too Scooby like Dave. Thats why I was edging towards the black copper effect. Been considering white again too lol. Got a headache now

[RollingThunder]

OK, its now a choice between white and gunmetal centres, with a chrome/polished rim -









The candy colours were going to cost too much sadly (over £600...)

[AcidicDavey]

BTW, Dave - its all your fault. I hadn't seen a Propus on a V70 until I saw yours...

You're welcome

Personally I'd go with some sort of shade of grey, it's what I was going to paint mine if I could be bothered with the faff of dismantling them.

[RollingThunder]

Spent an hour or so removing all the bolts last night. To be honest it wasn't too bad - I was ready for a couple to snap but they all came out ok luckily. I was being very very cautious mind you - making sure the bit was fully seated, and putting plenty of weight onto the bit - in fact I was putting as much weight onto it as I was exerting pull on the rachet. The tool you need is an 8mm hex spline bit, not a torx, and don't think about using a 6 pointed spline bit. I tried that on the first bolt and it jumped right out out the bolt. Luckily it didnt chew up the head, but after that one attempt I decided to get the proper tool. I bought a Laser branded bit - it was a lovely snug fit and I had no problems using it, so if anyone else goes down this route, I'd recommend you get one of these. Cheap too - I paid £8 for a set of 5 various sized bits

So now I have 76 bolts that I need to strip the paint off. I'm not sure whether to trust the powder coaters to stick them in the acid bath when they do the wheels, or whether I should try using nitromors or similar. I don't want to lose any as they are BBS stamped so are probably the original bolts and the heads and threads are mint.

Doing some work on the Discovery today (full interior swap, including the dash) so I'll have time to think about it.

On the downside, there are rumours that my bodyshop guy may be going bust soon, so my cheap bumpers & tailgate respray may disappear - he was going to paint those, plus get a pro detailler in to do a full paint resto on the rest of the car and engine detailing for £300. I reckon the 'going' price must be nigh on treble that, so the detailing may have to wait for a while Its not too bad to be honest, I was just looking forward to the car being 'as new' as soon as I got it on the road. I was never a particularly patient person lol.

[RollingThunder]

Had some great news about my tracker yesterday. I bought a SkyTag tracker when they first came out, so its about 3-4 years old now. It died about 6 months ago, and as it was so far out of warranty I took it apart to see if I could fix it, but nothing was obvious so it ended up in a drawer for a while. Fast forward to two weeks ago when I was at a Landrover show and came upon one of their stands - I mentioned that my old tracker had died and that I'd taken it apart etc and how much would a new one be - for a long standing customer? I was told to send it back to them and they'd have a look and if they couldn't repair it they'd replace it FOC. So I sent it back expecting a polite note saying it was out of warranty, but no, they're sending me a brand new unit! Now that is customer service, I'm well impressed

I've also ordered another dashcam for the Bonewagon. I currently have a DOD LS300W ( http://dashboardcamerareviews.com/dod-ls300w/ ) facing forwards and an 801 minicam ( http://dashboardcamerareviews.com/mini-0801-ambarella/ ) facing rearwards in the HotRod. I'm going to put the existing 801 into the rear of BoneWagon, and the new 801 (with GPS) in the front. The DOD unit is a bit bulky in comparison (but gives superb video) so thats going into the Disco. The 801s will be permanently wired in so that they come on whenever the ignition is on. None of these cameras are insurance approved, but they record excellent video and have been reliable - unlike the 'approved', expensive, Blackvue that I had a few years ago that ran very hot, didn't record particularly good video, and eventually packed up altogether.

Finally, I've had assurance from the powdercoaters that they'll strip the bolts and promise not to lose any

[RollingThunder]

Finally got down to the powdercoaters this morning to drop the wheels off. Price confirmed as £60\ea and they'll strip the bolts for free

As for the colour.... well you'll have to wait and see lol. I spent hours going through House of Kolor colour samples but couldn't justify the price in the end, so I can say that they won't be in Root Beer, Candy Apple Red or Brandy Wine - all colours that I seriously considered! It is a custom colour though, 'our home brew special' as they called it.

Pics will follow... in 2-3 weeks !

[RollingThunder]

Firstly, apologies, I haven't updated this in a while

The wheels took 2 weeks to do in the end, then I couldn't get the tyres fitted for another week, so it was almost a month after dropping them off that I finally had them on the car. I have to say I'm very happy with them



So I gave the car another once over and booked it in for its MoT, and to have a few other jobs done. Sadly I'm just not getting the time to do any of the bigger jobs, so I decided to stop fighting it and just ask my spannerman to sort it. So he is fitting the radiator, investigating the rear hub noise (looks like a bearing), and is then moTing it for me.

That was the plan anyway. An hour or so after dropping it off for the test I had a call - it had failed. On the steering rack Apparently it had a major leak and had all but emptied the reservoir during my 5 minute drive to the garage! I asked him to get a price for a recon exchange unit, but he couldn't get one - the AWD racks are like rocking horse poo poo aparently. So I called our forum friendly dealers to price up a new one... and nearly had a cardiac. Bloody hell, they're £650 plus a £300 deposit! So I set to, and a couple of days later I found someone who had an AWD recon rack in stock. Fairly local too, and with a 2 year warranty so I'v ordered that and it'll be fitted next week.

Other than that, I noticed a vibration during the drive, so it'll likely need an engine mount too. And the propshaft is still off - my spannerman thought he could get it overhauled for £150 at a local place that does HGV and marine propshafts, but they can't do the Volvo props due to the design of the centre bearing. So its only Bailey Morris that can do them - for £350

So the bill for commissioning Bonewagon is likely to be close on £1k. Thats a serious bummer lol. I was always going to sell HotRod to pay for an LPG conversion on Bonewagon, but the money from that will now be put to clearing off this bill!

On the plus side, Bonewagon drove fantastically well. Unbelievably eager to pick up and go - I wouldn't be surprised if it already has a 3in throttle body on it, its very very sprightly, far more so than HotRod and thats no slouch. It hasn't been remapped either as the anti tamper bolt on the bracket over the ECU box is present and looks original...???

So next week it'll be MoT'd, taxed, insured and will become the daily driver I'll post some decent pics of the car once I can get it to somewhere more scenic than our driveway lol