Ed Poore

Equally I suspect I'll be heading up north again - cost an extortionate £77 to get the tick repellent for the two dogs so might as well make the most of the next 3 months protection

Sort of... There's plenty of "Ultra 4 vs Rock Bouncer videos" but they're all time-based competitions. I know the Ultra4 guys don't air down and run more "all-terrain" biased tyres due to the mixed racing they do and instead prefer to throw power and speed at the problem. What I'd be more curious is seeing them on, I suppose, would be more along the lines of what we might see in the UK - a mix of bogs, (thinking Highlands ), mud, rocks, grass etc. but rather than throw power into the equation follow the Green Lane Code and tread lightly so to speak. I.e. eliminate the huge (and admittedly fun) HP and speed figures and try and complete a course with minimal wheel spin and damage underneath. That should tell us a little more about the actual capabilities of the vehicle, momentum and speed can overcome a lot of shortcomings. I mean the Norwegian Army wanted to learn to fly and they didn't have any planes - so momentum and speed helped out here

Does the FL2 have air suspension? / Did yours? That's the crucial bit with the Terrain Response that LR developed, it mimics a solid axle through the use of those cross-link valves (not something I'd heard of on the FL2). Having said that for basically a glorified shopping trolley the FL2 did remarkably well and it was more your (understandable) desire not to trash it that hindered it's progress. It was the same reason why I stopped using the RR for laning trips it was just a little too nice and I didn't / don't have enough disposable income to justify trashing it. Whereas I feel perfectly justified in doing that to the Defender. The major advantage for me on the Defender is that the same basic design has been around for so long that you can build a vehicle from the ground up on new parts quite easily as there are so many after market suppliers. Hence parts can be sourced readily and at a variety of price points. Case in point - I had the RR for about 4 years and it cost me roughly the same as my Defender has over 9 (except that the Defender has had a new gearbox, transfer box, two new axles with Ashcroft internals / pegged lockers (courtesy of @Hybrid_From_Hell), two engine rebuilds (oops ), two sets of BFG KM2s and two sets of wheels over the course of 130k miles. I'd be curious to see how a vehicle setup for pure off-road such as Shannon Campbell's Dragon Slayer (see below) compares on technical off-roading vs. a similar vehicle with no IFS. I know he switched to IFS due to the large gains he could make on the high-speed sections. He was willing to compromise the rock-crawling sections of KoH because he could make up so much time in the fast desert sections. I seem to remember a question posed to him or someone else running an IFS car about not airing down to which the response was it's not worth the time taking to air down and back up when you can chuck 800 horses at the problem . Mind you I don't think he falls into the category of an amateur driver having been the first person (and one of two) to win KoH three times. Awww shucks

They're also considered to have better armour aren't they? Also from what I recall there's only ever need one destroyed and it wasn't by enemy fire but a blue-on-blue incident. There have been injuries due to non-friendly fire but the only tank ever lost was due to another Challenger 2 targeting it. I hadn't thought about it before but does EU law apply for areas of National Security? I know when that caveat is applied there are a lot of exemptions. One company I have worked for in the past was allowed to "discriminate" against employment to a certain extent due to the fact you needed a security clearance to work there and in order to gain that security clearance you had to be a British Citizen.

If you look at the recent (modern) vehicles Land Rover have produced with air suspension you'll see that that is not the case. For example on the L322 when you enable the Terrain Response system it will automatically open up cross-link valves between the air bags. This means that as one wheel gets pushed up the opposite wheels get pushed down as air flows between the bags. I.e. what happens on a solid axle setup. The bonus being that when you disable the system then it goes back to being fully independent suspension which is far superior for road handling. As to the limitations of travel on the suspension I think it was @Retroanaconda following me on a laning trip in the Lake District. We were going up a climb and the rear wheel kept dropping and dropping way further than a standard Defender setup would do. Once the suspension actually drooped out then the vehicle simply stopped bothering applying power to that wheel, every so often you could see it apply a bit of power and the moment it detected some traction and something under the wheel it applied power back to that wheel. I still own my Defender but sold the L322 a while back because I didn't really have the space for it (ironically I do now) but in standard setup the L322 knocks the socks off a Defender on the road and in the vast majority of situations off-road too, the main fallacies of it are tyres, width and weight. When I started taking my Range Rover off-road there were basically no options for an all-terrain tyre in 18 or 19". Fast forward 7 years and there's now a lot of options, so whilst they may not have the height of the side-wall the main gripe I had with the tyres was lack of side-wall protection - they were essentially road tyres with a chunky tread. Now BFG and Cooper are all manufacturing tyres with stronger sidewalls in these kinds of tyre sizes. Having the lower sidewall will be more pleasant most of the time on the road and then traction control / suspension designs will likely compensate when you go off-road (i.e. you won't need such a large sidewall because with the traction control you won't need to air down as much). If we move onto weight then you can see with the L322 -> L405 that Land Rover have done large leaps on that front shaving off almost half a tonne so now an L405 with all it's leather seats, 4.4l engine, air conditioning, infotainment, massaging seats etc is not far off what a 110 weighs. I wouldn't be surprised if the new Defender is lighter than the old. Now if you look at the width then the only major downside with this is that most tracks in GB (green-lanes, pay and play etc) are predominantly carved out by vehicles with Defender track widths. However for the vast majority of stuff the extra width will be more useful (more spacious cabin despite the sound deadening, insulation etc). I know I'm always peed off by the fact that a station wagon Defender's back-door is not full width, the saving grace is a Defender is a box so you can always pack a surprising amount of stuff in. If you're going off-road then I'd argue that unless you're always in narrow tracks then the extra width is a great stability boost. A simple comparison - Defender at ~70", the L322 and L405 are ~80" but then if you look at what is arguably one of the most capable off-road vehicles in the world (Shannon Campbell's Dragon Slayer) then that has been designed with an close to 90" track. So I wouldn't go knocking the extra width, after winning KoH three times I suspect Shannon know's a thing or two about building a capable off-road vehicle.

Well you've not made it worse then

I'd personally just get them blasted and pins replaced if that's a free option. You've got nothing to lose by doing it. If you can't leave the vehicle without them attached then you could always source another pair and still get yours blasted, serviced and painted. From what people have said nothing seems to last compared to the "old" Land Rover hinges. From some people I've spoken to my original 1994 hinges have less play in them than vehicles from the end of the production line.

Yeah but has he made it to work yet...

I've sent him a message to see if he has anything lying around in the yard.

Bob may have a motor lying around (tends to swap them out for hydraulic) so if it ever happens could swap bumper for motor?

If the windings aren't burnt out then chances are it's a simple fix. I'd try pulling it apart first and assessing the damage. Measure the impedance through the windings and you should get an ohm or two. You've got nothing to lose by it.

You sure it's working? The impacts suffer greatly if you have a loose fit, amazing how a snug fitting socket with no extensions changes things.

Sounds like you need to invest in one of these... Or they've brought out a bigger one. I've got the older variant of the first one and yet to find anything it's failed to undo. Problem is fitting it in in the first place, although the newer ones are slightly more powerful but considerably more compact.

What's wrong with the motor? Electric motors are normally pretty simple beasts and usually rebuildable. Might be as simple as some new brushes.

I suspect those bushes won't be much use / offer any benefit. They're in effect just acting as spacers, the bolt goes all the way through so any vibrations will also go through the bolt. If you think about all other bushes the rubber seperates the two metal contact points. You've introduced some flex there but I'd wager all that'll happen is the bole hole or bolt will eventually work lose / damage itself. If it were me I'd stick with them bolted directly together in the more rigid setup.