Thread: Progress on My Unimog

At long last, my truck is now registered [​IMG] In the end, it turned out a bit heavier than expected, full of fuel, people and water, we are 7.12 tons, so we don't have that much spare weight to play with. Going to look at ways of doing a GVM upgrade, even a couple of hundred kg will make it better. Talked to Mercedes Benz Australia, and initial conversations seem to say that it is possible.

It is great to drive, quite happy at 90kph around 2000rpm. I've set the boost to 10psi, and it gets there around 1500rpm, It can hold speed up the hills on the highway, not game to push it too hard as I've only got 60km on the new engine, so trying to be gentle in the beginning. I've read loads of websites and heard lots of advice on how to run in an old style diesel, and the one thing everyone seems to agree with is not to be too gentle on it, try not to idle it if at all possible, and keep it loaded up. Some say don't rev it, other says not to rev it hard under load, but you need to let it rev a bit now and again, and most say charge the oil filter around 500km to ensure the oil filter is not blocked with all the engine assembly lube and bits of silcone/RTV/gaskets. Portals and transmission are running around 50-60 Deg C after a trip down the highway at 90kph on the GPS.

My speedo is about 16% under-reading, so will head off down to the place for a new speedo correction gearbox, they are only about 15 minutes away, so will use the trip to compare the odometer to the GPS route distance. I have a small water leak on the camper water system (seems I crossed threaded a brass elbow somehow), and need to get the a/c system gassed up, as it was pretty hot driving around without a/c - been about 16 years since I last drove any car without a/c , I don't know how you guys with the older Land Rovers do it .

All going well I will have all these things fixed by tomorrow evening, then we will drive around some more to get up the 500km by the weekend. If the weather says good, we will be down on the beach early next week, and hopefully spend out first night in the camper.

That's exciting! A good milestone.

We sorted out the a/c system, and it works great, we had a few trips now around Brisbane. It has been pretty hot, 33 Deg C plus days last week. The air con works great, drops the cab temp down within a few minutes and then we only need one of the units on low. I'm still running the new motor in, but I can hold 95kph all the way down the M1 to the Gold Coast and back, and can hold 80koh up the Gateway Bridge. EGT got up to around 620 Deg C maximum up the bridge, air intake temperature after the intercooler was around 60 Dec C and we were running at around 10 PSI boost.

I've make a mock up of the centre console storage box from some cardboard. It is where we will store some of our cameras for easy access. It will make the Defender one look small, and hold our main camera with a F2.8 70-210mm lens. I will make the lid to match the arm rests from the Range Rover seats, similar material and stitching, and cover the front with carpet, maybe a wood insert or two .

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We also added some more sound insulation today around the gear nest area and drove down the M1 to Masters at Coomera. You can now hold a normal conversation when driving on the concrete part at 95kph. My Unimog actually seems quieter than my Defender since I still have the 255/85 mud tyres on it. I'm going to try and record some sound levels using my iPhone app, and record a video in both vehicles, then we will know for certain.

Measured the noise in the cab today, driving between Beenleigh and Mt Tambourine. Lowest was 70db, at idle and highest was 90db, when accelerating up to 90kph. On average we were around 80-85db for most of the trip. That's quite noisy, but not that bad.

Sitting in our loung room with the TV on, the same app is recording 70-80db.

At 80dbA employment standards allow an 8 hour eposure per 24 hours. Any noisier and you start to reduce eposure by 1/2 for every 3db increase. I think that they have raised the 8 hour exposure limit to about 85dbA, haven't looked into this for a while but I'd say you are getting up there for noise. I'd hate to think what the noise level in the Defender would be.

We had not done an extended trip, and measure the sound levels on various roads. This time we used a paid Sound level app, as the free one was rather basic. We installed on both my iPhone and my wife's to see if there was any difference and they were within 0.5db of each other all the time.

On the M1 concrete freeway @ 95kph, we sit at around 75-80 db, depending on whether we are going up a hill or not, strangely enough, going down a hill seems to be a bit noisier. We have not seen the 90db at all on this trip on either phone.

I tested the Defender using the same app, and was between 72 to 79db on the short trip to the workshop, never got above 80kph, I know the tyres start to howl at around 90kph on the M1.

We also ran the frequency analyser as well. Not sure what it all means but this is the output.


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So it looks like it noise levels will be similar to the Defender with the mud tyres on it.

Close enough?

[ame]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQXlufpcx4w[/ame]

Not to noisy either

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Originally Posted by Pedro_The_Swift

I hope you realise Iain, that its now mandatory for a pic of the speedo needle off the end of the dial?

Fantastic build

When the camera went right I **** myself!!