Another green laner build

Good point. The problem is that I'm not sure where else I can put the jack.
Realistically I won't have a passenger very often. If I go out with others they generally have their own vehicles.

I had quick play with the jack, looking for better mounting positions. There aren't any convenient places to attach mounts to the B pillar. Behind the front seats is a possibility. I need to move the driver's seat further back and while I have it out I'll have more room to experiment.
This is another possibility. Of course it would have fit better if I hadn't just lopped a chunk off the end...
 

I spent a messy day striping the wheels for repainting. Here they are just after opening up my curing oven AKA a few sheets of Celotex and a fan heater. I painted them them on Thursday and fitted the tyres on Friday so I needed the paint to cure quickly. 5 hours at about 40C did the trick.
 

Got enough wheel weights???
 

I acquired a "monkey on a stick" jack from a VW for use in my SJ. A plywood base and a longer shaft completed the transformation. It was a lot easier to stow and did the job.

Roger

Lambert, The tyres are Insa Turbo Sahara, remoulds with lots of extra rubber. From what I've heard they are pretty good off road and not too bad on it.

Roger Fairclough, I like that jack idea. As you say it's easy to extend the shaft. I looked on eBay and they seem to fetch a fairly high price. On my trials car I use a crank type jack from an old Panda 4x4. It's light weight and works very well.

I took the Jimny out for a bit of a test run with it's new boots. As expected it's a bit more squirelly on the road. I'll play with the tyre pressures a bit to see if that helps. They are a bit noisy but it's not as bad as I expected. I wouldn't want to do a lot of motorway driving with these tyres but at back lane speeds it's not bad at all.

A friend found a new lane that's fairly local so we had to give it a whirl. I scouted it out a few days back and saw the top was impassable but there was enough room to turn just before it got really tight. The photo doesn't do it justice at all. The lane is steep with some deep washouts and rock steps. With lockers and sand ladders in a few places the Jimny crawled up it without any major dramas. My friend managed it in his Terios which has no low range or lockers. He's a very experienced driver and that Terios is surprisingly capable. In total it probably took us getting on for an hour to get up and back down the 0.5 mile lane. I'm tempted to give it a try in the trials car. I think I have a pretty decent chance of getting up. The trials car may be only 2wd and on road tyres but it takes a lot to stop it.

Keeping sand ladders on the roof isn't working. It's just too inconvenient when you're jammed in a lane with only just enough room to access one side of the car. I ended up throwing them in the back, which is not ideal when they are covered in mud.
I am considering making a rack that can be clipped on the spare wheel for when we are going up tough lanes like this one. It just needs to have two hooks so the ladders can be quickly hooked on the back when they are not being used. They can be stored on the roof between lanes.

 

The rear sand ladder rack turned out to be really simple. It's just a piece of 25x3mm strip bent into a U shape with a couple of hooks welded on the ends. It simply drops over the spare wheel. When in place it's surprisingly solid. If you shake the car violently enough to shake one of the sand ladders off, losing a sand ladder is going to be the least of your worries. The only issue is security. It's really easy to remove them (that's the point) so it's also easy for someone to steal them.

 

Sunday I had a bit of a play in the Dawlish/Teignmouth area, which I haven't really visited before. There aren't that many lanes but most are a decent length. Who needs a car wash when you have lanes like this to wipe the mud off?
 

I'm glad I brought my battery chainsaw. On one lane I had to stop about four times to clear fallen trees. Obviously it doesn't get much by 4x4 traffic. At £140 including batteries off eBay I wasn't expecting a lot from the chainsaw but it's actually very usable. It'll happily chew through a 12" tree. I've never heard of Hychika before but it's a step above the usual cheap no-name Chinese eBay rubbish.

I had my OBD scanner hooked up using the torque Lite app to monitor fuel consumption today. It's around 30mpg on the more open roads but get into the tight back lanes and it's horrific. I quite often saw single digit instantaneous MPG. That auto seems to really suck the juice at low speeds. It certainly goes a long way towards explaining why I'm averaging in the low 20s.

Love a scratchy lane

Got a link for the cheap chainsaw Les? Ive been meaning to get one, but dont fancy paying Makita prices for something I wont use much.

And 20mpg would be nice! I get about 150 miles to a tank

You find the chainsaw on eBay . It looks like they have now dropped the price to £117. Don't use normal thick chainsaw oil. It needs thinner oil and the thick stuff won't feed. When the supplied oil runs out I'll probably use engine oil.

And 20mpg would be nice! I get about 150 miles to a tank

Ouch. At least you get a fair chunk more power for your money.

TOOLSTATION do one for £100-