Another green laner build

Well, I took it for a test drive and the auto gearbox is playing up - this car is really fighting me. Most of this weekend was spent driving and trying to fault find the gearbox.

The driver's seat is way too far forward to be comfortable, so I made some seat relocating brackets. They relocate the seat 60mm further back. If anyone wants a copy of the drawings, let me know. I also took a quick video of the parts being cut out on the plasma.
Click here


The finished parts bolted in the car for a test fit. I still need to paint them.
 

I'm seriously considering attaching this winch to an adapter that fits the receivers. It's only a small winch but it should be enough for recovery purposes.
 

An idea for mounting the hilift. It's held in with a linch pin so that it doesn't fly around the cab in a rollover or crash. The blue tape marks where it needs to be cut. I won't be cutting this hilift as it fits the Copelander but they are cheap enough to buy. After playing with it I think I'll turn it around so the foot is towards the door.
 

 

The hilift mount is now made and installed. The hilift has been shortened by about 200mm.
Old supermarket totes are useful for storage. I'd like to find some way of locking everything down so it doesn't start raining hard and heavy items if I roll it. The floor is currently cardboard. It's basically the template for a plywood floor.

 

Here's a close up of the mount. It screws onto the original rear seat fixing. Thinking about it. I'll probably move it to the driver's side. The plan is to sometimes use this car for longer outings. If I remove the passenger's seat and replace it with a suitable platform there will be enough room to sleep in the car overnight. The totes stack easily so they can be stacked on one side overnight.

 

Sand ladders mounted with J bolts. I was concerned about wind noise but when I took it for a test drive I didn't hear anything, which is great news.
I'm not totally convinced by the J bolts. They are a bit fiddly to use. I'll stick with them until I figure out a more suitable clamping method.

 

The "18W" (actually 6W) LED reversing lights throw lots of light. Much better than the dim glow of the standard reversing light.

 

Hopefully I'll be finally taking it on a proper green laning run this weekend. It's still on the original 205/70 road tyres. I want to get an idea of how it performs as standard before fitting the 195/80 Saharas. It will also be interesting to see how it compares to a friend's un-modified Terios on 185/80 R15 tyres. I already know he has considerably more chassis ground clearance than me.

Before you take that too far down the road please remount your high lift jack with the foot towards the seat. If you get shunted from the back as it is, you or your passenger are sitting directly in the path of a large metal spear that will travel straight through the seat frame through your back and down your leg because there is no way it's staying put mounted by that rear seat bolt. At least if the foot is against the seat it will probably only be a crush injury if you are unlucky.

Actually the more I think about it you really need to mount it transversely across the rear foot well. Yes it will be more difficult to get to but mounted longitudinally which ever way forward it is bridging the crumple structure of the car and is going to cause carnage to the occupants. Your other alternative would be to have a mount above and behind the upper front seatbelt point and have it vertically ish behind the seat. But anything is better than running the risk of being impaled on 15kg of farm jack.

Either end slamming into your back would make for a very bad day. I just did some research and it looks like about the maximum survivable peak vehicle crash acceleration is around 60G. The jack weighs about 11kg so you are looking at about 660kg/6500N peak load on the mount. Looking at the way it's attached I don't think the seat mount would tear out at that load. It would undoubtedly bend a bit but keep in mind under that kind of acceleration the passenger is going to move forward quite a long way as the seat belt stretches.

I think the various other bits that are loose in the back are probably more dangerous. I'd like to find a good way of holding that stuff down.

I'm not suggesting it might move if you hit something and stop abruptly, I'm saying that if something hits you from behind and drives the jack forward. A Jimny is bad in a crash anyway but if you were hit by say 2 plus tonnes of discovery sport into the back door, that would easily send the jack through into the occupants.