FridgeFreezer

Even if the part is a house brick - the chance of a failure multiplies with every additional part... now, that chance may go from a billion-to-one to a billion-to-two, but where this pedantic nonsense started was adding (usually unnecessary) oil coolers to Land Rovers which means adding not-exactly-NASA-grade pipes, fittings, and delicate heat exchangers to a vehicle that's going to see a lot of abuse and almost certainly NOT aerospace levels of servicing & inspection... unless everyone else is x-raying their chassis after each outing and I'm the only idiot not doing so

Well now I can't remember which one I fitted to the 109 but it's definitely one of those two Edit - this one: And it fits this gear and works:

It's not about errors - more plumbing means more things to get damaged, more parts means more parts that can fail, more weight means more stress on the vehicle, etc... the most reliable part is the one that's not fitted.

It does add cost, complexity, points of failure, and weight though... I just stick temperature telltale indicator labels around my vehicles and if anything ever shows it's got too hot I'll consider adding cooling - so far nothing ever has.

I saw the videos from the airport - also the one of some idiot floating a Porsche Panamera through the floods, sure that won't develop any electrical gremlins in future At least you knew where your air intake is, most folks just seem to plough straight into 3' of water and act surprised when they get washed away or the engine explodes

This feels like conflating using the wrong oil with just using fresh / better quality oil of the correct type... Most mechanical things will work for a quite a while with the wrong oil but unless you're sending oil samples off for analysis you won't know if you're knocking years off the life of it until, well, years down the line...

My neighbour once showed me a very long video from inside his Peugeot estate driving up a gravel track because he'd seen my 109 so knew I was into "off-roading"

I'm a big fan of magnetic drain plugs - especially Nige's insanely strong ones - for gearboxes and anything else with a drain plug frankly.

I don't think there's a single inch of my workshop that's as clean as that

Decoder tool says: Screw, Flanged?, thread Metric coarse (std.) M8, length 25mm, finish Zinc passivated (BZP) In case anyone was wondering

Willing to bet there's a lot of trucks running round on the original brake fluid out there... surprising how much better the pedal gets when you replace it with new after 20 years though!

Well, seems a good time to throw @Daan's signature in here: Amen to that!

Two rare birds in one anecdote!

The green bible (Series 3 workshop manual) has a comprehensive section on testing & diagnosing alternators, could be worth a read through as the technology hasn't really changed.

6000wH of battery? What on earth are you powering?

FTDI rowed back on that as there were angry mobs with pitchforks at their door... the knock off FTDI stuff is mostly OK, it's the others (CP2102 etc.) that tend to cause problems especially with Windows systems - you end up with 250 COM ports and have to guess which one it's actually going to appear on.

Same here, still on the set of TIC's fitted about 20+ years ago and they've survived being abused by portal axles and big tyres. Biggest improvement I made was Bilstein 5125's rather than the cheap ProComps.

It's very good of them to put an ECU behind the headlamp and drill ventilation holes in the case so water can flow freely around the electronics

Still not as peaky as a 4cyl: http://www.epi-eng.com/piston_engine_technology/torsional_excitation_from_piston_engines.htm Although obviously a nice smooth V8 would be preferable Not sure if diesels would also have sharper peaks due to the higher compression and nasty rattling noise?

Cost of conversion buys a hell of a lot of fuel though, especially if you're comparing a very cheap & available V6 or V8 to a crate motor costing 10k or more... in fact (googles it) $18k RRP plus the cost of conversion buys a lot of gas. And a much nicer / quieter driving experience I'd wager.

Only drawback with big lumpy diesels is they seem to destroy LR drivetrain components much more quickly compared to smoother petrol engines, even ones that make more power. Plus it does come back to the question why you'd fit a diesel in the US unless you were doing a LOT of miles, these days they're not cheaper or simpler than a petrol lump either.

Well a 76 degree stat would certainly cause that - it likely won't be open fully until ~82deg anyway.

^ what they said, a domestic engine like a low-end LS or the GM Fireball V6 that shares lineage with the Rover/Buick V8 would be a far easier bet in most ways, the Land Rover turbo diesels are unicorns out there and make very little sense, especially now they're all very old. I've pondered for a while if the Fireball would bolt up to a Land Rover transmission designed for the Rover/Buick V8, it could make for a very neat & practical conversion with decent power - ISTR they did supercharged versions so fill your boots! All that said the 2.5 NAD is not a bad engine in good condition, you won't get anywhere fast but they're solid old lumps if you just accept you're not winning any races and relax your driving style.

I guess we should be grateful they didn't go down the glue gun & sea shell route of interior decor then

Not my cuppa either but I must say that at least JLR's lineup is a lot cleaner looking than 90% of the other stuff on the roads that looks like it's in competition to be as ugly and overly-complicated as possible. Volvo/Polestar are doing the Scandi minimalist thing quite nicely but the rest of the field seem fugly as hell.