So I'm back, from outerspace. Well, Rome, actually. Now what?

After 3700 largely trouble free miles I got back from Italy. I left Frascati, south of Rome, on Wednesday morning and arrived home Friday afternoon. Yup, 3 days!

What to do now? Well, after a period of reflection (or sleep as some call it) and a curry I decided that Elmer would make an ideal campervan for some serious trips, like Rust 2 Rome is trivial. My short term plan became to convert him into a 'day van' which has a bed, storage etc but no fixed water supply or cooker. So I started cruising eBay and FB Marketplace for spares, extras and useful bits. Being the end of the season the deals started to appear. More on that later because a more pressing problem appeared.

However entertaining it is to have to thump your starter motor with a hammer to get it to start, it's less than convenient and one day, somewhere remote, it will fail and because Elmer is an automatic he can't be bump started. Luckily, if you can call it that, I was about to head out shopping when the inevitable happened - Elmer refused to start. No clicks, no stutters, no voltage drop, nothing. Ah well, on to the internet to spend £179 on a new top quality one from a reputable source and learn how to charge it, which is far from easy.

I won't bore you with details but after reading scare stories it only took 2 hours and many scraped fingers but the new starter was a relatively easy fit and I combined it with a full service. This got him back on the road but mpg had become disastrous and the 4x4 system had decided to play up .... the joys of old cars!

So another, longer and more considered refurb began. I won't bore you with details so here's a list of things I did which you can skip and join me lower down the page when it gets interesting again;

• starter motor change (okay you knew this already - just checking you were paying attention)
• full oil and filter change
• windscreen washer flush (entertainingly, this required the removal of the wing for access!)
• front passenger seat swapped for a middle, swivel seat
• rear seats removed
• new rear suspension springs (from a defender, +2" lift)
• front suspension torsion bars, reindexed and slightly lifted
• bought shogun wheels and fitted 31" tyres (ie big tyres) and fitted standard size summer tyres to the original wheels. This sorted the 4x4 system because its very sensitive to tyre size differences
• bought (for £216 from eBay) and installed and camper sofa/bed/storage system
• fitted new rear brake calipers
• fitted a longer steering wheel boss (to make the driving position a little more flexible and comfortable)

The final issue to resolve was the fuel consumption. After around 20,000 miles (maybe more) the engine's timing chain was most likely needing replaced. A stretched chain can affect the timing enough to reduce power so you need more throttle so you use a lot more diesel. I thought about doing it myself but a nice chap called Mark Broad is a well know expert based in east of London. A 450 mile drive, plus a couple of campering overnighters would enable me to prove mpg improvement and cold weather camping using the internals I'd bagged from eBay for £200

So off I popped and apart from discovering Elmer is not registered as a passenger car so I was hit with a £100 LEZ charge to get to Mark's, an overnight stay at motirway services was dead comfy, the work was done and I drove home  (with an overnight stay at Scotch Corner). With a new timing chain Elmer ran  better and smoother, got a few more miles per gallon and generally had a new lease of life.

Next: consider the camper and maybe get started on the big build