nicks90

i like those blingy side windows!

also check the hose from the servo to the inlet - as mine perished and under heavy breaking the lack of assistance was woeful! changed the pipe and all was restored!

i have an allmakes prop on the front of my 90, been fine for the past 3 years. Eaten a UJ recently, but i consider UJs consumables, so cant complain!

my 300tdi has phased 45deg front prop, its supposed to be like that. rear isnt though - again supposed to be like that. do you need a lift to clear humongous tyres? if not, remove the lift. it doesnt do anything for you other than screw up the handling and makes things like UJs wear out quicker.

the bfg muds have a 3 ply sidewall, polyester i believe. I could be the wallowing he is experiencing is general flex from the tyres, as they are just not rigid enough when under that sort of loading and experiencing latteral forces on the road and he is feeling the tyres 'folding' slightly. i believe goodyear tyres use a steel 4 ply sidewall, the mt-r being supposedly extremely tough and needing airing down to single figures to make then mould around rocks and roots etc - which will probably help it feel 'stiffer' when loaded up and inflated to 50psi on the road...

if you knew where it leaks from - catch the spill before it touches anything dirty and then run the captured atf through a fine coffee filter to ensure it really is grit free and put it back in the bottle to reuse later on.

I have seen an accident involving a discovery - some principle of ladder chassis and weak body bolted on top - and the ladder chassis penetrated the side of a transit and the disco bodywork just folded uo when it came into contact with the transit. It was not good for the disco or the transit! Quite frightening how it folded off the chassis and crushed the cabin It general I feel safe in my 90, but I have no illusions in a proper high speed crash or a roll over. That's why I fitted an internal hoop when I bought mine!

in danger of receiving wrath of the forum - but for that usage i wouldnt buy a defender in any shape or form. toyota hilux invincible nicer interior, more comfy front and back, better drive on the road, perfectly acceptable for greenlanes and muddy tracks etc, MUCH better build quality, better dealer support, more powerful engine, lower emissions and therefore lower road tax, better mpg and its cheaper!!! sorry.

i've always set mine as dead ahead as i can manage using a bit of string. Tyre pressure and tread type have more impact (imho) than a couple of mm toe in or toe out - and therefore getting tyre pressure right is more important than perfectly set tracking. steering column UJ and panhard rod bushes are the next biggest improvement you can make to a 'wandering' deefer. Any play in this magnifies a hundred times the vagueness of the steering.

yep - i;m paying 91ppl at the local indian cash and carry, and its fancy sunflower oil - none of that lumpy gm soya oil stuff! Runs lovely and beleive it or not, it hardly smells at all!

so it'll be done for sunday lunch then?

track rod then - sorry i can never remember which is which! Its the one behind the axle

people dont want simple - how well did the CityRover do?

ooooh, didnt know that!

I dont know about the rest of you - but I think its fairly widespread and commonly agreed that landrover steering bars are about as much use as a chocolate firegaurd. Now being a Yorkshire person, its against every strand of DNA in my body to pay for things if i can get it for free/cheap. I used to run a sleeved drag link (the one behind the axle) and it was great and never bent it. However it was not without some design flaws. 1) it rattled ...... ALOT 2) I made it full width of the steering bar, which meant if i needed to adjust the tracking I had to pop a tre off the hub (as the sleeve just spun on the bar) and then manually turn one tre in/out and refit and recheck tracking. proper ball ache. 3) When the tre's died, i had to scrap the whole thing, as I couldnt grip the drag link to unscrew the bloody tre's - see point 2 - and both of them had siezed in the bar and i got angry and threw the thing in with the pile of metal recycling. So for a while i just stuck on a standard drag link with new tre's and ran with it. that meant i bent the drag links on the first section of the trials and by the end of the day having been bent back into shape 3 times it was totally unsafe...... luckily someone lent me a strengthened bar wth tre's on so i could get home safely. so i happened to have a day off yesterday and decided to have another crack at a stronger bar without having to pay any money. I took a standard bar and had a dig around in my garage and found some 3.2mm walled galvanised tube that fit fairly snugly over the standard bar (no idea where it came from and its a strange thickness at 3.2mm). I cut it to length and then welded the ends to the steering bar - so i can now get a decent set of stilsons on it to adjust tracking and removal of stubborn tre's in the future. Also doesnt rattle. I know it aint rocket science, but it amused me for 45 mins and thought I;d stick it up here. Please dont zoom in on the welds, they aint structural - they are just there to prevent it rattling and to 'grip' the inner drag link - as i ran outta gas for the mig and only had really big rods for my arc and didnt want to melt everything. Last picture it compared to the retail HD drag link I borrowed off matthew. hope this is of some help and a possible inspiration to other tight fisted gits. nick

modern cars are brilliant - but have their faults. main fault is that the majority of manufacturers still make their vehicles to be as cost effective to fleet operators as possible - eg 60k miles and 4 years. The running and warranty costs during this period are all they care about in order to secure good fleet sales. If it falls to pieces a month after that period, they have designed it perfectly! however, it is still much cheaper to run a car nowadays than it was 20 years ago. Rust and poor quality was EPIC back then. [casts mind back to fiesta and escorts i owned] yup, they were properly rubbish back then!

my 90 gets a fair bit of abuse and road miles too - has longer shocks and hence more "droop" than standard and still has standard radius arms. genuine rubber bushes lasted 110k miles before getting sloppy. so i changed them to deflex and they lasted a few months. Threw some money at a set of the new (at the time) orange Polybush bushes that were meant to be mid way between the hard reds and comfort blues. In 18 months I have changes both rear radius arm bushes, front panhard rod bushes and front right radius arm axle end bushes. Seriously unimpressed. I wish i had access to a press and some time to spare - as genuine metalastic ones would be going straight back in!

plus it prompted you to learn to tig... always a handy skill to have.

so after all the hassle, stress and fabrication - are you still glad you did it, or do you now think it would have been easier to get 340bhp by fitting an LSx engine?

the ford v6 is a lovely engine with lots of low down grunt and they are bloomin tiny! other option is the vw vr6 engine, extremely compact and beautiful flat torque curve from idle to 7k rpm.

what really surprised me is the parts prices for mercedes! Believe it or not, they are very very reasonable. Alot of parts are shared between the merc ml and grand cherokee (same engine + box) and we recently had to service the auto and change a couple of sensors and the merc prices were half the jeep price. Speed sensor from merc was only £30+vat and the filter was a fiver

yes, i recently had one of my tyres stabbed by some yooof.... went to the local truck tyre specialist and he did a full vulcanised repair on the tyre. Although he did say it was legal and perfectly ok to do a vulcanised repair on a truck tyre that does 60mph with 40 tonnes on its back - for a 'car' tyre, it renders it strictly an offroad tyre from that point on. Although he did say he could understand why that distinction occurs - as your typical porsche driver might put a bit more stress on their tyres hoofing around, but for your average landrover running what is essentially a small truck tyre, its perfectly safe in his opinion. [this mail is for information only. If you do get a repair done on it and then use it on the road and it blows up causing you to crash into a bus full of nuns and orphans and you all explode in a ball of fire, i aint responsible!] Nick

this is the latest definitive statement from the gubbermints website - updated on 1st april 2012 http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageVAT_ShowContent&id=HMCE_CL_000205&propertyType=document bit we're interested in is section 2 - specifically section 2.4 Yes, the limit is still 2500l and you must retain receipts for 6 years. Also states it again in section 4 - excise duty - and 4.2.1 excemptions. cant be any clearer than that. I would go to the LRO link and post it myself - but i'm afraid if i did that I would catch some infectious idiot lro disease and become an obnoxious rivet counter or something,

i think those icon defenders looks like a santana

so you would be making the worst rusting vehicle in the world by combining them