Parents Bongo dropped another electrical issue. This time the electric windows failed. The problem was traced to broken and shorting out wires in the cable loom umbilical cord from the drivers door to the body shell. It's an obvious stress point but the manufactures offered minimum protection in that area by just adding a split plastic corrugated cable conduit over wrapped with insulation tape. The insulation of the cables had hardened and split - exposing the cores to corrosion and shorting out. I found most of the dozen wires with damaged insulation, several completely sheared.

To repair, the wires where stripped back, solder joined and re-insulated with heatshrink tubing. Trouble is the windows still didn't function properly. The shorted and broken wires had fried the window control switch in the door.

This switch is more of module - it contains a logic IC, a relay and associated components. the cost for a new one is £120.00, a grotty 2nd hand one sold on ebay for £50.00 with many bidders. So a repair of the switch more favourable. I originally thought it might be the relay coils that had burnt out so was aiming to remove that relay to buzz its logic out and seek out a replacement. It is a dual coil package each seem to be around 230ohm resistance on the meter. The relay itself is not readily available as a replacement part but I was going to hack something together.

Takes a little hacking to strip the module down to expose the PCB. Once visible I could see that a PCB track had burnt out in a couple of places leading up to the relay. By use of a piggy back wire, I re-ran the missing tracks and was confident that was the only damage.

The module is fiddly to put back together with a tiny spring and ball bearing needing to be inserted into the rocker switch (which breaks apart on disassembly) and the connector legs needing resoldering (I cut the long copper legs with snips midway for ease of access).

With the repaired module back in place the windows all seem to work fine now.

This season the defender is currently shod with a set of new set of Michelin XZL 7.50 x16 tyres fitted upon a set of black LR discovery rims.

The are rather skinny looking compared to the Anacondas on spoked rims, but are tough, hard wearing and good all round tyre.

The truck is being toned down from extreme greenlaning to a medium capable laner with more "nano expedition" (weekends away) friendly attributes added.

Anti roll bar fitted to the rear again. Full length roof rack to counter for the fact the inside length is now sectioned. Better storage system for tools and recovery gear and extra cargo tie downs.

Rear 'half' step added to the crossmember.

CB antenna relocated to mount on the roof rack.

CB changed over to a cobra29 due to the midland excel getting bad modulation reports.

Front lamp grills removed as it very annoying not being able to wipe clean the headlamps.