I spent a full day painting underbody of my car – I have got more paint on me than on the car – my hands, arms, face, ears and head hair is covered in thick Hammerite paint.

I spent much of the time using thinners to get it out but the stuff in my hair stubbornly refuses to move and some stubborn splashes on my hands. Sod it, I need to get ready for the flight to Bulgaria in three hours – so jumped into the bath and started washing my hair.

Imagine my surprise to find bits of paint coming off after massaging my hair with Head & Shoulders shampoo! Even my hands were spotlessly clean!

So, forget white spirits – just jump into a bath full of Head & Shoulders shampoo instead!

On my return from Libya, my brother surprised me as a birthday present by working on my new car. He spent many many hours and setting fire to his garage in the process to lift my car higher. For those who don’t understand cars/4×4s/offroading, lifting a 4×4 gives it a number of benefits – 1) higher ride height giving better visibility, 2) more ground clearance, 3) more room in the wheel arches for bigger wheels. The latter point is doubly good as bigger wheels gives it even more height, and a bigger wheel has more thread in touch with the ground, giving it more traction when the going gets tough.

I’m very impressed with what he has done!

More pictures (or bigger versions of those below) are in the gallery. Below is my car before the work is done – notice how low it sits compared to the red car on the right. They are both the same model – a Nissan Terrano II 2.7 turbo diesel with intercooler (although the red one is older by about 5 years).

Below is with front bumper taken off to allow access for the silver cylinder blocks to go in to lift the body up.

Below is with the rear bumper off, again for the same reasons. Notice the massively increased space in the wheel well – ample room for much bigger tyres

A pretty sight for sore eyes…

The result of the body lift and slightly bigger tyres – notice its nearly as high as the red car behind it now…

Tech info:
Nissan Terrano 2.7 TDi ‘S’ Model, year 2001.
Part-worn Colway Remould 80% off-road/20% on-road MT 31″ tyres with sandblasted steel wheels
4″ aluminium blocks, 8 blocks, with 7″ bolts (made to order)
Sump guard

For the future:
Quickshift gear lever
New black chrome 16″ by 10.5″ wheels (on order)
33″ MT tyres (on order)
Bull bars re-fitted (need new mounting brackets after body lift)
Rock sliders (custom made)
Roof racks
Second spare tyre holder (for European (off)roadtrip)
Winch…?

After six long, hard weeks in the sorched deserts of the Murzuq basin in the Sahara of south-west Libya, I’m finally flying out on a wee charter plane to Tripoli for an overnight stay followed by a flight to London village to celebrate my freedom and looming birthday.

There’s been many days of 16-19 hours and it’s not making me a happy man. Our client company is being ridicolously demanding to the point of our department being run flat out for 24hours a day. With 5 computers, not one of them is left idle for more than five minutes.

Our printing rates has gone up sky high – before, we were using maybe one ink cartridge a week, and now, we’re using five. What are we producing here? Seismic… or stacks of paper? Bugger me if I knew!