Hi Luke,

I haven't really decided what kind of vehicle to build on yet. Nyathi's outer dimensions were determined by the need (wish) to fit in a 6m shipping container. Relaistically, if I go bigger, a high-top container, or even an open-top container probably will be too small. So I have a blank sheet of paper to start with.

We want to be able to live inside, to give us the possibility of travelling in colder climes. (Nyathi was designed to live outside, as we wanted to be "camping", and we planned our route and timetable to make that possible and pleasant).

We also still want to be able to go anywhere that wheeled traffic can go, and be reasonably self-sufficient for a couple of weeks. I am leaning towards a 'Mog, but wary of the complexity. The slow speed is also unattractive, but we like to travel slowly anyway. Besides, a comparable vehicle could very rarely do even 100km more in a day than a slower Unimog.

My biggest fear of a compromise is ending up with a vehicle that has almost all the drawbacks of smaller campers, and almost all the costs and other problems of a big truck. I'll tell you what, you go first, and tell me how it worked out!? :-)

Back to the diff thing: I'll grant you that I didn't give much thought to the actual figures I used in my sums, but it's hard to work out what actually happens unless one quantifies the principles with some numbers. Now that I have thought it over, 2000Nm doesn't seem an unreasonable number to pull a 2000kg car up a gradient. (200Nm from the engine, and a 10:1 overall gear ratio in, say, 2nd gear?).

As you can see, I am not fully employed at the moment! :-)

Hi Peter: I wasn't aware that any Rovers made use of worm-type Torsen diffs(?) Or do you mean if you fit a Torsen as an after-market diff? Are you saying the use of ETC makes the performance of the Torsens worse, or that they are just terrible anyway?

(Of course LSDs and Torsens both make use of friction to slow the spinning wheel, but they do so by slowing the planetary gears, and not the shafts. That's why the friction clutches and worms don't present quite the same wearing-out problems as the brake pads in the case of a TCS. I'll leave it to a braver person than me to try and analyse a mixed ETC/Torsen scenario with some torque numbers!)

Cheers,

Michael...




[This message has been edited by SandyM (edited 11 November 2005).]

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