Ed Poore

With regards to the touchscreen I think the main reason everyone has jumped on the bandwagon is it's flexible and allows cheap and easy (for the manufacturer) updates to refresh a vehicle's interior. Historically I seem to remember a lot more "refreshes" of a vehicle's design which were largely focused around the dashboard with some exterior changes as well so you could identify the differences. Nowaways I feel much less changes but the infotainment systems get updated to add more features which kind of has the same effect. I did like my "old" TDV8 (christ that would be12 years old now) which had the touch screen but for switching between screens (maps, phone, music, etc) there were hard buttons surrounding it. That meant I didn't often use the touch screen aspects of it while driving and I could just by feel switch the display if I wanted to check something. Perhaps what they should do is use some of these little buttons with OLEDs in them so that you can have reconfigurable tactile buttons on the dashboard.

Because he's too busy the rest of the time goosing stuff to post about.

I put Loctite on but then I don't have a problem getting the bolt off...

So what about all this horsepower. Don't you all know torque gets you there, power keeps you there. I'll admit torque and power are typically related but I'll be honest the biggest benefit of the TDV8 when I owned it was the bottom end torque rather than the top end power. But more of both is definitely better.

I think @Challo hit it on the head there. For me I drive a 110 because it's simply the best all round vehicle. I don't need a Defender but it does suit my lifestyle very well. For the utility companies / agricultural markets simply put there are more focussed better vehicles for the job nowadays. Quite a few years ago now I looked into a more comfortable car to have alongside the 110 but decided I didn't need (or really have the space) to have two cars. So ironically ended up buying a 3.6TDV8 L322. As Clarkson said "it's all the car you could ever need". The downside for me was tyres. I do enjoy green laning and also go offroad up at the family estate in Scotland. @Retroanaconda remembers me blowing up, literally, (he heard it from inside his 90 behind me) a tyre on the Range Rover. I ended up going through £3.5k of tyres in 3 years... I ended up selling the RR and keeping the Defender because I felt comfier abusing it a bit more and the tyres stood up to what I do regularly better. There aren't many vehicles that will be a daily driver and then in the middle of the day drive across Scottish mountainsides to collect a deer carcass, or through a Welsh farm to collect firewood / sheep in trouble. My Defender does and I suspect the new one will. It'll just be more comfortable than the original version. So all round yes, just weighted more to the daily driver aspect. I mean most of the local farms around me actually use Clios, Kias, Fiestas, small Audis etc. They have quads, tractors and lorries for the actual farm work. Even hauling stuff to market they typically hook up the tractor to the trailer. At least that way our neighbour can take more than two cows in the back without worrying about being overweight. Incidentally most of the utility companies around here still have Defenders in their fleet. When my parents incoming main was being put underground I had a chat with them. All the Defenders run a huge hydraulic winch on the front, not for recovery but for installing cables. Because a lot of their work is in fields they need its off road ability (all the pickups get stuck) and then they use the winch for pulling cables through ditches. If they get stuck it's quicker to ask the farmer for a tow than bother winching out. I'd be curious to see if they get any of the new ones, there's a chap down the road who still has one of the Td5 based vehicles so obviously keeping hold of them.

Not against it but not completely behind it. I think if the windows took a larger percentage of the side height it would look quite a lot nicer. Just looks a bit squat to me.

You need to build up a network of friends around the country Mike. Unfortunately James (@Retroanaconda) has moved further north but he used to be not that far away. My nan's is unfortunately just down the road near Invermorriston but there'd have been space to dump it there. Now it's deer stalking season it's likely I'll be up and down a fair bit so could have helped getting it further south. But AA is a much simpler option

I meant putting the chassis alone through a stress test / fatigue analysis. The only other manufacturer I have heard of doing similar is New Holland Tractors because then bought an instrumentation system off us to test their tractors to destruction.

A number of years ago my professor was doing some work in conjunction with Warwick University and went on a tour up there. They had a rig that had been flexing and twisting a chassis (what was to become the Disco 3 if I remember correctly) continuously for a year. Not heard of any other manufacturer doing that.

I did a quick trial around home with the spare (265/75R16 KM2) on the bonnet and it massively restricted forward version. My godfather many years ago when I started driving and had a Series 3 bought me a swing away wheel carrier (think it was sold as a Paddock Spares one but was actually built by Mantec) and it's been superb. Was only £50 at the time - I see that they're now almost £300. Sorry not much help but I've been thinking about alternative locations for a while because I'm tempted to build a split tail gate back door for the Defender and it would be easier without the spare wheel there but not really found anywhere suitable - not enough space inside with the L322 seats and what I normally carry, bonnet restricts visibility too much so going to have to be back door. Considered running without a spare as I've never had a puncture or needed one on the Defender but I know the moment I take it off I'll do something.

And I think no Defender or road going vehicle is going to have enough clearance for the tyres that are fitted to the average tractor around here. Met half a dozen contractors on the road a few days ago whilst everyone was rapidly trying to get the silage done - each tractor's front tyres were half way up my Defenders windscreen...

Holiday?

So you're in?

Ignition on or off? If it's on can you put a screwdriver / crow-bar to prise open the window and trigger a window to go down?

Is there any resistance to the door handle? It's not unheard of for the cable to the handle to snap and thus won't allow you to open it from the outside.

They were just prototyping the convertible Evoque waaay before it was actually released.

That's is a very good point and one I had not considered. Hmmm, perhaps some experimentation with rubber bushings is in order 🙂

I've gone one level up and fitted seats from a 2004 Range Rover to my 110, all 5 of them . Electric adjustment is working, still to get around to the heated seats and TVs though... As a bonus they're easier to keep clean too being leather and all. Most of the comfort from a Defender comes I think from the seating position. You're actually sat upright rather than squashed down on the floor. I actually found my 110 as comfortable if not more so than the 2007 TDV8 Full Fat Range Rover I had for a number of years. Seating position had a lot to do with it but also it was higher up so drives, particularly in the south east, you could see further and were a bit more relaxing. The main downside is it is noisier, hell of a lot so, but then again sound proofing isn't as thick (but it's not as fat) and it did have more tread on the sidewall of my tyres than the RR had on the tyre. The doors are rusting up on mine and the bulkhead is a little tired so once I sort those will be soundproofing things a bit more and fitting cruise control

He should know that's too heavy - unless it's from titanium.

You surprise me - I'd have thought you'd have gone bespoke

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.