Shuush The Little Haffies Are Sleeping

[heinkeljb]

Whilst you are on the earths, take them off, sand both parts of the connection and then either paint them or cover them with ordinary grease or some battery pole grease. That should keep the connections clear of water for a while.

You can even buy some electrolytic grease as used in the electronics industry. I have even heard of using Vaseline to accomplish the same task of keeping air and water away from the electrical contact points.

If you use grease of any sort, you have to replenish it at intervals, whereas if you use the right sort of paint then it should last a lot longer, but any connection which has dissimilar metals will eventually corrode and give some electrical issues.

Shame you lost light just after you made them all work, but that happens all the time - you make sure the lights work, drive to the testing station and "sod's law" at least one of the lights won't work when the tester gets to it!

John

[AustHaflinger]

Thanks John - I will look at some dedicated products to use - what I find amazing is that except for the front parkers I have never had any other light issues in the many years that I have had my Haf.

Cheers

Garry

[heinkeljb]

Lurch woke up long enough for me to go and spend a day busy doing some 10 gate trials - especially for the over 50's.... I don't need to be reminded that I am on the wrong side of that now. Anyway was a good day even though I came last. Started with 7 vehicles and finished with 4, so not that bad. I am still waiting for pictures and videos of Lurch to be sent in. As it was a young lad taking them, I suppose he has got other things going on that are taking president.

John

[AustHaflinger]

It was good that you got out - has been 2 months since I was out in my Haflinger, not helped by our local lockdown.

It doesn't matter if you came last - well if 3 cars did not finish you did not really come last - a glass half full approach.

Glad you had some fun.

[AustHaflinger]

Well the forum has been quiet for a while - obviously the little Haffies are all having a sleep - too cold in the northern hemisphere and too wet in the southern hemisphere for the cars to go out.

[heinkeljb]

All the forums I visit are quite - so not surprised this one is with only 300 odd members.

John

[AustHaflinger]

so not surprised this one is with only 300 odd members.

Unfortunately less that 10 post on a regular or occasional basis.

Garry

[heinkeljb]

Lurch was rudely woken up and driven to this years Dersingham Treffen, organised by the Haflinger and Pinzgauer club UK. I managed to book a day off work on Friday 29th April in order to drive to the venue. As it was a back holiday weekend, I had the Monday 2 May to drive home again. What did we do? Saturday was spent driving with another Haflinger and 7 Pinzgauers up and down some local byways (Green Lanes or unmade roads). It was very dusty. I am still shaking dust out of things! Sunday we went to the sea side in the morning and then spent the rest of the day driving off road in the woods. Plenty of "Bomb holes" to drive into and out of. Site is on two levels and there is quite a steep back between them with lots of trees, so lots dodging in and out of trees going up and down the slope - exactly what the Haflinger was made for!
Monday spent driving home.
Total distance ~ 400 to 450 miles round trip. I forgot to take the mileage on Friday when I set out....

As you can see - picture is missing a couple of others who camped, the rest stay in a B & B down the road!

John

[jhon]

Fair play to you John, doing these miles in the Haflinger! (not something that I would look forward to) - how long, about 6 hours each way?

[Julian B]

Well done John - great journeying! Surprised how few Hafs turned up in comparison to the Pinzgauers though.

I went for a couple of local journeys today giving mine a final shakedown prior to Sud Tirol. With fingers crossed all seems OK for now

[heinkeljb]

It was probably about 6 hours each way, but I stopped a few time and spent a hour or so with my friend Alf who lives at about the mid point between home and the site for a coffee and a chin wag. Then of course the essential stops as well. So actual driving was about a couple of hours at any one time.
Got to spent this weekend mending a rusted through exhaust pipe section - Was a tad noisy throughout the weekend with the hole in the wrong place!

Not sure why so few Haf's turned up, Probably all like you Julian - Going to a European treffen!

John

[AustHaflinger]

John - great to see

As I have mentioned before we dont have any central club and distances make things difficult to organise - we tried a few years back but no interest so was cancelled - there was one in other State where a few local Hafs got together. In now 11 years of ownership I have never seen another Haflinger on the road and only one in person when I visited a guy to buy some parts. I believe I have the only Haflinger on the road within 300km of where I live, though there is a 6x6 Pinzgauer about 50km away.

Other than show and shine type events I cannot even use my vehicle on my Land Rover club events as it is just too slow.

It is great that you can do these events.

Garry

[AustHaflinger]

Everything has all gone quiet again - better speak softly so not to wake sleeping Haffies.

Nothing changed on my vehicle - just starts and goes and runs fine. Things I want to do are redo the brakes, change the lights to LEDs with LED spotties, install a removable winch for offroad use, put on a larger exhaust as I think the standard one strangles my larger engine a bit and get a new tilt made that will hopefully keep the draft out in winter.

Garry

[heinkeljb]

The Brakes on a Haf are not as good as they should be. Doesn't help if you take them off road through stuff deep enough to get in the drums. No body really remembers to clean them after such events so the rubbish tends to wreck them.
When I was looking at dealing with the lights on Lurch, there was not much in the way of choice for LED's so I opted for HID's having found some designed for self build sports cars. One unit that had a "Dip" function rather than having to have two units per side. They take slightly more power than the originals, but with changing all the other bulbs to LED's, the over all power consumption is only slightly higher than the original setup.

I think the only problem with having a winch is that it requires a large amount of current which means a bigger battery or a sperate battery with a dual charge system. It would still need to be connected to an external charger every once in a while to make sure it was fully charged. I had thought about making a bolt on rim that you could wind a rope around like a windlass and using that four wheel drive and diff locks to turn it to extract your Haf from what ever bogged in situation you were stuck in. Just makes it not very easy to use to help others as you would have to have a jack to get an axle off the floor and make sure you weren't pulled off the jack whilst winching.

The exhaust ports on the cylinder heads are 1.25 (35mm) inch ID, and it is not easy to get 1.25 inch (35mm) ID tubing with out getting quite a thick wall tube. Still, at least that would mean you exhaust would not rot very quickly. I am in the process of doing this task myself and will post some pictures showing what I have come up with.

John

[AustHaflinger]

Hi John I hope you are well.

My brakes are OK but I have oil on one of the rear brakes so the car pull right under heavy braking so was thinking of doing a full overall. Yes brakes are not great overall and I was thinking of putting an electric brake booster on - these are cheap and work really well.

The winch is easy to do and will only be installed when on trips where it is likely to be required. Yes a larger starter battery is needed but I have a full size starter battery as it is so not an issue. Kits are available here in Aust to do what you describe but their use is cumbersome and bulky to carry.

The exhaust manifold is of a good size and there is not much point making this a larger diameter than the exhaust port - the issue is the size it goes down to to go into the muffler and then the exhaust pipe. The standard exhaust pipe is only half the size of other vehicles and engines with similar size engines so something is going on there.

It is a shame that you and I and a couple of others are the only ones who seem to use the forum - I would have thought many members would comment on threads, not just the 5 or 6 regulars.

Garry

[heinkeljb]

All the forums / clubs I deal with are the same. works out at about 2 ~ 5% of the membership actually get involved with anything. The rest are happy to follow.
Have you got a link to the electric brake booster you are talking about - I had thought of putting the vacuum one that was fitted to the communual variations of the Haflinger in Europe. Although that would mean drilling and tapping a hole in to the inlet manifold to get the vacuum and then finding a suitable space under the dash to mount the booster, which is quite big.

John

[AustHaflinger]

Sorry no link - I know of a guy on another forum who put one in a Land rover and that it works well and was relatively cheap - other than that I have not investigated any further.