Tanuki

Stainless is the obvious answer. The tank on my classic-car is known to rust-out after 20 years or so; there are a couple of suppliers who produce stainless-steel tanks with proper roller-welded construction [and proper internal baffles to stop fuel-slosh: 15 gallons of fuel slopping from side to side during 11/10ths cornering can be a bit of a problem on-track] and they will never be a rust-problem. Surely there must be someone out there who makes stainless-steel 'series' tanks as a £250 fit-and-forget option?

I've got a 110AmpHour Yuasa in my Defender; it's been there three years and has been worked hard powering a couple of hundred Watts of HF radio-gear while parked-up with the engine off. Yuasa aren't cheap - but a good battery is a hell of a lot cheaper than having to pay to get a recovery-company out on a sunday evening!

Of relevance: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2021/11/05/sir-jim-ratcliffe-pumps-90m-grenadier-4x4/ "Chemicals billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s Grenadier 4x4, a “spiritual successor” to Jaguar Land Rover’s original Defender, cost his company another €106m (£90m) in development last year. The company’s loss narrowed in 2020 from €137m in 2019 as research and development investment slowed. Ineos Automotive Ltd, controlled by Sir Jim, has been set back by intellectual property disputes with JLR because of similarities between the Grenadier and the Defender. There has been speculation that drawn-out litigation could set back the launch of the car, planned for summer 2022, although the company’s statement suggests next year is still the target for production.".

There's currently a consultaqtion by the UK government on proposals which include "anti-tampering" laws which potentially outlaw a whole range of things - to quote: "a specific offence for supplying, installing and/or advertising, a ‘tampering product’ for a vehicle or NRMM – this would apply where a principal effect of the product is to bypass, defeat, reduce the effectiveness of or render inoperative a system, part or component (the product may be a physical part or component, hardware and/or software) a specific offence for removing, reducing the effectiveness of, or rendering inoperative a system, part or component for a vehicle/NRMM and advertising such services a specific offence for allowing for use or providing a vehicle or NRMM that has had the operations described in the previous 2 points performed on it a new power to require economic operators to provide information, where a service/product they have supplied amounts to or enables ‘tampering’ with a vehicle or NRMM – this would apply in any of the above senses and include requirements to provide relevant information on the quantities of products sold or modified" This is seemingly aimed at stopping people doing chip-tuning, decats, EGR-bypass or similar, but regulatory-overreach could also mean it extends to include things like Megasquirt or changing the final-drive ratio if it could increase emissions. Motorcyclists are already worried because it would - seemingly - apply to non-road-registered vehicles, https://www.britishmotorcyclists.co.uk/anti-tampering-threat/ and see See https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/future-of-transport-regulatory-review-modernising-vehicle-standards for the proposals.

At one time I considered the possibility of buying a Grenadier. But the absence of any solid revelations on the dealers/sales-support-network put me off the idea. I don't want to have to drive 100 miles to get it serviced! [so I put down a deposit on a LWB Toyota LandCruiser 'Commercial' - but when Toyota couldn't deliver because of microchip-supply-issues I got the dealer to refund my deposit]. So recently I added a really rather nice 15,000-mile Freelander-2 "Metropolis" to my fleet! Plush-tastic, 0-60 in 9 seconds and it has a heated steering-wheel!

I'd suggest as a first step checking the running-gear: a while back a friend had a 300TDi which was truly, horribly noisy at speed. You could feel the vibrations theough the seat-base and I knew something was deeply wrong. I investigated and found two propshaft UJs to be essentilly solid; one had a cup whose needle-rollers had seized to the spider and so the cup was 'articulating' by rotating in the yoke. I condemned both propshafts! New ones [genuine GKN Driveline] made things a lot nicer - and safer too [nothing good has ever been reported about the disintegration of a UJ at speed and wntering the passenger-compartment]. Fitting modern "road biased" tyres cut the Decibels too: if most of your driving is at 60-75MPH on open roads you don't need knobblies.

Looking at your rotted shock-absorbers, I'd say you'd be stupid not to replace them. If only to make life easier at MoT time. If you present a vehicle for MoT with such obviously-scabby parts, the tester will likely think the vehicle is likely suffering a 'historical maintenance deficit' in other areas and so will apply extra scrutiny during the rest of the test, picking out anything marginal that, had his spidey-senses not been alerted he might otherwise have passed. A vehicle that looks tatty will be scrutinised: a vehicle that's showing a bunch of recently-replaced parts and is clearly cared-for can have minor infractions [like windscreen chips] downgraded from fails to advisories.

When I've been "out and about" it's generally been on missions which involved some significantly-powerful radio-transmitter-stuff, so i've been carrying a little Honda 4-stroke generator and a 1Kw 12V-to-240V inverter. A small modern 'inverter' 600-Watt microwave-oven has always done to boil water for tea and cook things A typical toaster only takes 750 Watts.... and everyone knows that when you're freezing-cold after a night on the moor there's no finer mood-booster than freshly-made crunchy toast.

First - simple - things I'd be doing is looking at the tyre wear/tread-depth and checking the pressures. The Haldex is told to activate due to different rotational speeds between the front and rear axles/wheels (as detected by the ABS trigger-wheels) - if your tyres are worn differently front to rear or you've got a tyre that's down on pressure and so has a lower effective radius it can confuse the electronics into thinking the front wheels are slipping and you get inappropriate Haldex engagement.

I'd be checking the air/fuel ratio. A rich mixture will wash oil from the bores and increase oil consumption as well as causing increased bore-wear. [in practice, matching a non standard carb setup and camshaft _properly_ along with getting the ignition-timing/advance-curve correct will involve a good bit of rolling-road time]

The only non-oriiginal bits on my 90TD5 are the exhaust [rotted at the flange between the front and rear boxes - both replaced with standard-spec parts], the brake calipers [pistons seized after about 10 years; new genuine Delphi parts were cheap] and the front bumper [got bent; replaced by a standard-pattern one, albeit galvanized]. Tyres - now running road-pattern 235/85 in place of the no-longer-available 750-16 Avon Rangemasters it came with. Oh yes, the shock-absorbers too; the originals got swapped for Bilsteins about 10 years ago. The rest is entirely unmolested. I like my vehicles to be unobtrusive and reliable.

If you're shelling-out for a respray, how about getting it done in Vantablack™ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack Vantablack is the blackest-black yet created: it uses carbon nanotubes to capture 99.96% of all visible light falling on it - to the extent that it makes 3-dimensional objects take on a 2D aspect. For me, that would be the ultimate "reverse-bling" stealth paint-job.... driving round in what amounts to a visual black-hole.

I've used ATF to re-fill hydraulic jacks. But equally - if your jack has lost oil - most jacks will 'recycle' any seepage-past-the-seals into the thing's sump so even if the seals are leaky you should not need to add oil. If it's leaking badly enough to require adding fresh oil - I'd not be trusting it! New non-leaky jacks are cheap, from the likes of Machine-Mart. Why risk using a jack that's needing oil adding?

To avoid the punitive fines of the ULEZ your vehicle needs to be Euro6 emissions-compliant. While it is possible to retro-fit an Euro6-compliant engine into a 20-year-old Defender, the cost of doing so - and moreso the cost of getting the resultant vehicle tested and certified as being Euro6 compliant - will well exceed what you paid for your vehicle in the first place. My suggestion: sell it, and use the proceeds to buy something Euro6-compliant. Why, honestly, do you want to drive an old Defender in an inner-city anyway?

The injector harness [wiring under the cam-cover] is a favourite thing - mine went at about 70,000 miles and caused misfiring when warm. It can't be cleaned/repaired, replacement is quick and easy though. Hard starting/cutting-out: I'd be looking at getting the injector copper-washers replaced - these have needed doing twice on my TD5 - if you continue to drive with failing injector-washers then you can get a buildup of 'black sludge' in the fuel tank [it's a mixture of soot, condensation and diesel - which can breed a fungus!] and this can block the fuel-pickup filter causing your in-tank fuel-pump to burn itself out. Yes, this happened to me...

I had a similar quandary back around 2007 when my prime client [where I was working 2 days a week] moved their head-office from Swindon to Leamington Spa - adding at least 280 miles a week to my drive. I looked at leasing a cheap-to-run hack Diesel [back then the Merc A-class had good offers] because it would at least have been reliable and partly tax-deductible - but then I remembered the tendency of the Fosse Way to grind to a total halt at the first sign of a bit-of-snow and didn't want to take the risk of contract-breach penalties if I didn't show-up in Leamington on a day I was contracted to [missing a contract-day would have paid for a month and a half's lease on the Merc]. So I stuck with my 90TD5 - and though it only averaged 24MPG it never failed to get through. Don't run a TD5 on crappy veg-oil - the cost of a new set of injectors and/or a fuel-pump when it all clags-up will totally wipe-out any fuel-cost-savings you may have achieved. Weight-shedding is always good: I used to carry a load of tools, a high-lift jack and a jerrican of fuel around with me [probably 50Kg of weight] - a RAC/AA card and a phone are _much_ lighter. Equally, get rid of roofracks, winches, bull-bars, light-bars and other such tat that adds weight _and_ wind-resistance. Driving-style is also relevant: *don't* stick it in a high gear and expect it to stagger along at off-boost low-RPM: the efficiency of a turbodiesel depends on the turbo doing its thing to get maximum air-volume into the cylinders - Compression Pressure is the friend of Thermodynamic Efficiency! A TD5 is happier if you let it rev, even if you're only giving it a whiff of throttle.

There are plenty of hydraulic-service companies that will come out to you and fix the problem, Pirtek being a good example, but given that this is harvest-season they're really busy doing work on tractors/combines/silagers so don't necessarily expect "ETA 1 hour" response. Driving with failed PAS - just don't get involved in an accident or your insurers will be likely to disown you.

Worst I've done on a LR product is pour in 8 litres of new clean fully-synthetic engine-oil before noticing the growing puddle of new clean fully-synthetic engine-oil emerging from beneath the vehicle and spotting the sump-plug/copper-washer sitting smugly on the wing. £60 down the drain [or rather, all over the concrete]. I also once jacked-up a LR in a narrow-ish workshop to replace the front CVs, only to find - after I'd pulled the swivel-hub apart - that the workshop was about an inch too narrow to let me pull the thing out of the diff-casing :(

The rear lights are less-than-ideal, but they are a sensible compromise. The big restriction on placement being the type-approval requirement that the opening of the rear door does not obstruct the parking-lights/indicators (which is why old Discos had the lights in the rear step which replicated the lights on the rear corners).

My understanding is that the 'source' vehicle needs to be road-legal [meaning it is both taxed and MOTd - and maybe insured? - as appropriate at the time-of-transfer]. Tax/MoT-exemption - along with [to me far more important] emissions-certifications don't transfer with registration-numbers. This could pose issues if you drive into one of the low-emission-zones and their retarded CCTV sees you're driving a vehicle with an 'old' registration-number so they stick you for a fine without realising you're actually in a 2021 Euro6-compliant vehicle.

If it hasn't already been done, deactivate the EGR. You can buy kits for this but get the same effect for free just by disconnecting the wiring-loom plugs from the two vacuum-solenoids. Change the brake- and clutch-fluid regularly - like every year. This will stop master-cylinder/slave-cylinder/caliper corrosion issues. Yes the calipers will eventually seize but they're cheap and you'll be taking them off every few years to replace the discs anyway. Use the right antifreeze at 50:50 dilution. Don't mix different colour antifreezes if topping-up the coolant. Change the gearbox-oil regularly. And use the right stuff [MTF94 isn't that easy to get these days alas]. Use decent quality filters [I did an autopsy on a "Blue Box" oil-filter here about 3 years ago, after I got worryingly-low oil pressure following an oil/filter change - the findings were disturbing] Consider the copper injector-seal washers a 50,000-mile service-item. Fit decent shock-absorbers - not the 'blingy' stuff sold to the off-road market. I put gas-pressure yellow Bilsteins on my 90TD5 over 100,000 miles ago and the transformation, particularly when towing, was impressive. A pair of these Bilsteins will cost you more than four blingy off-road-market dampers, which says something. Apart from that, my biggest advice is 'sort out the little niggles' - that odd rattle/squeak, the door that doesn't always close cleanly first time, the juddery screenwipers. They won't actually make your vehicle last longer but they'll mean you want to keep it and use it rather than dreading your next journey in it.

Presumably, someone-somewhere is covering the cost of your hiring an equivalent vehicle while this insurance dispute is going on? If so, the costs of this must now be truly astronomical - far greater than the repair-costs! Your lawyer [you do have one I guess - probably through your insurer's 'legal cover' scheme] could point this out to the third-party's insurers and tell them to get their fingers out of their collective bums in order to save themselves from the ever-growing costs. [A couple of decades back, my daily-driver, a Scimitar, got rear-ended by a drunk woman in a FIAT. Initially her insurers tried to palm me off with a 'basic' courtesy-car but I really didn't think driving clients around in a Nissan Micra would be good for business. Eventually they caved-in and said I could rent something suitable - I got a Merc C280 Estate, this being the nearest equivalent vehicle they could arrange. After four months driving this - and my weekly faxes (this being before insurers understood email) reminding them of the spectacularly-growing rental tab they realised it would be cheaper to just pay for my Scimitar to be rebuilt at a GRP-specialist classic-car-garage of my choice - which duly happened. And they paid-up all the rental-costs for the Merc...] I like lawyers!

I found that the BECM-equivalent [alarm/immobilizer] on my 90TD5 was being kept 'awake' by the thing-on-the-central-heating-oil-tank-that-reports-the-oil-level-to-the-display-in-the-house. This was sending a reading every 10 minutes or so - and with my Defender parked only a few feet away it couldn't help but hear it! The usual frequencies for the remotes are around 418, 433-434 or 868MHz. An old-style "Scanner" receiver (generally obsolete now the police/ambulance/fire-brigade have all gone digital) is a useful tool to investigate these kinds of problems. I got round the problem by not replacing the battery on the in-tank sender bit and now just use the tank's external sight-gauge.

Folllowed a Black Defender 2.0 back from Devizes today, which gave me some time to study its rear-profile before he turned-off to Avebury. To me, it does look a bit of a "Fat-bottomed girl" as Queen would put it: the wheelarches seeming too wide for the upper superstructure (reminds me of the 'bubble' arches boy-racers fitted to Mk.1 Escorts back in the 70s). Keeping the same track but widening the body up-top and using smaller wheelarch-flares would have given a more-balanced profile [also being a quiet 'heritage' nod to the original flat-sided Series LRs!] - they could then have moved the rear lights further-out too and avoided the silly little extra ones.

I could - perhaps - give houseroom to a New [old] Defender - but I'd want a van-bodied 90 and would insist on the silly attention-attracting 'adventure' accessories [roll-cage/roofrack/lights/A-bar/winch] being deleted, it being repainted in base white, and fitted with 117MPH road-rated tyres. I never want to attract attention. You can blat a clean-but-boring-looking Land-Rover down a motorway at 80MPH and the Volkspolizei don't turn a hair; do the same in something that looks like it's a low-rent refugee from Tomb Raider and you can guarantee to see blue-lights in your mirrors.