Tanuki

I'd go for a 90; I don't need the space of a 110 - I'd want a 'commercial' version so no rear seats to waste space, and a 90 will be lighter [so better handling] and easier to park too. [I once made the mistake of taking a 130-inch HCPU into a multi-storey underground car-park... and got very good at making multi-point turns to get on/off the up-and-down ramps!]

Rather than an inertia-switch [which can be set-off inadverently - the one on my 90TD5 tripped once during a 'clumsy' trailer-hookup] could you maybe use one of the 3-way oil-pressure-switches that kill power to the fuel-pump when there's no oil-pressure? Alternatively, 1970s/80s Fords used a relay that took pulses from the distributor and shut-down the fuel-pump when the engine wasn't turning.

There are 2 aspects to battery-health; the ability to store charge and the ability to deliver that charge rapidly-enough to actually start a vehicle. Testing these - particularly with modern batteries - is rather more than just looking at the battery's terminal-voltage; I'm sure you're all familiar with the battery that's got enough voltage to bring the instrument-lights on at a seemingly-OK brightness but which gives the solenoid-death-rattle when you try and crank the engine. My "general purpose" battery-test is to turn the headlights on - and leave them on for an hour. Headlamps typically take 5 Amps each - so that's 10 amps, plus maybe another 5 Amps for sidelights/number-plate-lights/instrument-panel illumination. An hour of this is 15AH of load; a LR battery is typically rated for 85 or 110AH - so draining 15AH is less than 20% of the battery's rated capacity. If it can't start the engine after that, well, I'd be replacing it. The kind of "big resistor" load-testers the AA use are OK to indicate the battery's ability to supply lots of current for a short period, but not to show how the battery will cope with extended discharge. One thing to be careful of - decades back there were some such load-testers that had a central rectangular case containing the load-resistor and a good/bad-indicating meter, with a sort-of pair of tongs with probes you were meant to stab across the battery-terminals. Problem was, this invariably created a spark - not something you want close to a battery where there may be explosive Hydrogen gas around. A relative blew-up a tractor-battery using one such tester. Proper "load testers" these days have big alligator-clips and cables like jump-leads, the resistor/meter box with the test-switch can then be placed a few feet away from the Hydrogen-bomb before you start drawing big currents.

Diffcult starting, lumpy running-after-start: Does it start easier if you do a few fuel-system purge-cycles [see manual] before trying to start it? If so, how old are the copper injector-seals? I consider these to be a 60,000-mile service-item. You may be able to run a TD5 longer, but the copper seals *will* be leaking after 60K miles, letting combustion-gases back into the fuel-galleries and feeding carbon-crud back to the fuel-tank, where bacteria grow and produce 'Diesel Fungus' that clogs the pick-up-pipe-filter and kills the fuel-pump.

The thing is, a business can lease a £50K vehicle on, say, a 3-year-plan, it's both VAT-deductible and the lease-payments are entirely seen as legitimate business-costs, so they come off your balance-sheet before any considerations of 'profit' are made. Meaning you get to pay £500/month to drive a nice vehicle that impresses your customers/clients and that £500/month is not your _personal_ tax-liability.

Had this on my 90TD5 at about 10,000 miles - Give the red plug on the main harness, and the matching socket on the ECU, a good blast with brake-cleaner; then as mentioned hook the rubber gasket round the inner edge of the main harness plug out to let any further oil drain out. When you replace the injector loom under the cam-cover, give the matching plug on the engine-bay wiring harness a good blast with the brake-cleaner and let it dry before re-plugging it to the replaced injector-loom. Oil will continue to emerge from the red plug over a period of weeks - so pull it off and blast it with brake-cleaner regularly until no more oil appears.

Don't look at the purchase-price; look at what it costs-per-month on a 3-year business lease. Then remember that you can slice 20% off that cost when you reclaim the VAT. The vast majority of Hiluxes, Rangers, L200s are leased these days: it makes serious cashflow-sense even if you're a sole trader or D/B/A.

Worth looking at the AFFF extinguishers used for rally-cars; a nozzle in the engine-bay and a couple behind the dash, with an external release-pull [you don't want to be in the vehicle when the extinguisher goes-off!] There was another system I saw used some time back which involved a small-diameter - about 1/4-inch - thinwall green plastic pipe that was threaded through all fire-likely locations and back to the gas-bottle. Get a fire and the pipe melts, dumping the bottle-contents. Probably no longer available outside the aerospace/military/nuclear/medical industries though, because it used BCF gas.

Also check the settings of the two steering-stop-bolts on the ends of the axle-tube; if these are not correctly adjusted the swivels can turn through a larger-than-intended angle, which could possibly cause the problem you're seeing.

It'll run, sure - but with the injector-profiling unmatched to the original ECU fuelling-profile it will be less-than-optimally-efficient, less-smooth-than-it-could-be, and potentially wasting fuel and giving the catalytic-converter/emissions-control-system a hard time with over/underfuelling. Why do half-a-job when you could get the thing properly matched?

In times-past I've used my 90TD5 to haul dozens of bogged cars off country-fair/agricultural-show carparks; I always offer them the end-of-the-cable and expect them to suitably-attach it to their car. [If they wrap it round a track-rod ARB or FWD driveshaft rather than attaching it to a proper tow-point on their vehicle, welll...] Only had a couple of problems - one was a bunch of lower-class-types in a lowered-class VW Golf; dragging them out across ruts meant their stupid front spoiler snagged on the ruts and they then drove over it. Resulting in much Anglo-Saxon language from them. I happily unhooked the cable and left them - ranting and still unable to make forward-progress. I gather they called the AA - who said "it's on private land - we can't help you". Other time, I got a load of abuse because I refused to tow-out a vehicle whose driver was clearly drunk/drugged/otherwise-so-mentally-retarded-they-should-not-be-driving. In that case I was happy to have prevented them regaining traction only to then wrap themselves round a 300-year-old Oak-tree on the exit from the site. Only offer to recover normal-people.

I can see the attractiveness of this for a vehicle for regular less-than-50-mile journeys - taking shooting-parties to their pegs and to haul bales out to stock on the hill - particularly if it can be discounted for tax-purposes against various 'zero-emissions' eco-grants the government seems to be throwing-around at the moment. Recharging shouldn't be a problem for commercial operators: any serious farm'/estate will have three-phase as standard, which will happily supply 100KVA of fast-charge goodness [if yours can't, take it up with your DNO] The tax-equations will be the really-important issues here.

Also worth checking the tyres - both for rolling-radius and pressure. In times-past one of my cars [1977 Range Rover] had a bit of a power-on/power-off 'drift' which I spent ages trying to track down - eventually turned out to be unmatched (different brands, different amounts of wear) tyres on the front axle. New tyres of the same make on the front and the problem vanished.

The good ones are surprisingly-good; the bad ones are predictably-bad. They use Li-Ion batteries [as found powering Teslas etc] - and generally work on the principle that they can quickly shove some significant number of Joules into your dead battery, rather than attempting to directly crank the engine from the battery-pack itself. I've got one [badged "RING"] that as well as doing the boost-thing also has a Hella-socket so I can use it to power my coolbox and HF radios when camping; I've only once had to use it to jump-start a car [an Audi A6 3.0 V6 Diesel] but it did the job surprisingly well.

For the crazy off-road/extreme-adventure types, there's always Torsus: https://www.torsus.eu/ who build offroad-people-transporters using well-proven MAN engines/transmissions. I'm sticking with the Toyota 'commercial' Landcruiser - if only they can get their fingers out and actually build the thing!

Can you not lease it rather than buying it? If it's leased and it goes-wrong then the issue is between the lease-company and the dealer: OK, it was 3 decades years back but when I was working in the US I leased a car [a Chevy Corsica.... ugh!!] and when it went wrong I called the leaseco and said "it's broken - send me another" and they did within six hours.

Having put more than a few Japanese imports thtough IVA, the #1 thing I'd be looking at is whether your proposed lighting-rejig will still give the required angular visibility of the tail=lights when the rear door is open to the full extent its check-stop allows. This was the first thing the guys at the SVA/IVA facility in Bristol would check: if they could fail it on this then they didn't need to conduct the rest of the scheduled test and so could convert a 45-minute job into a 5-minute-and-spend-the-next-40-minutes-in-the-office-drinking-coffee job. Remember also that the "high viz" rear-fog-lamp(s) needs to be on the outer-side of the centre-line of the vehicle. That was another instant-fail-and-back-to-the-cabin-for-a-coffee thing. [Personally, I've never seen the point of frobbing-about with lighting-stuff unless it means I can go measurably-faster on the dark-stages]

Looking at this - to me it's irrelevantly-intriguing: I wonder how it will get type-approval/emissions-certification for sale at an EU/world-level. Will look forward to seeing the the Euro-NCAP crash-test videos when they slam a few into concrete blocks/do the "Moose-swerve" rollover-thing and drive a similarly-heavy vehicle into its side at 30MPH. Apart from that - how many dogs-and-logs can I fit in the back, what's the interior dB noise-level when cruising at 80MPH, and what's it rated to tow?

Midweek, coming down M4 from a meet with my accountant, doing the typical midday-middle-lane 70MPH 90TD5-amble - a couple of silver New Defenders passed me; sign-written for an estates-management business - one towing a twin-axle flatbed with a Takeuchi minidigger on-board, the other towing an orange Timberwolf log-muncher. Caught up with them at Reading services - they were in a hurry so only a few words were exchanged but the gist was that they were going down to Shepton Mallett to drop their loads, pick up new loads, expected to be back in Maidenhead by 6PM. They said the new-Defenders were great as towcars, but that after the first year of the lease was up they'd be looking at swapping to the 'commercial' tax-efficient equivalent-model when it appears later this-year/early-2021. I told them I had a commercial LandCruiser on order, and they were both interested and amused; one of them is already a Mole Farmers member so is eligible for the 16%-off-list-price discount. Perhaps I've tempted him to join the Cruiser cult/

I'd be pondering whether any beneficial effect was derived from increasing the plenum-volume (the total volume between the outlet of the turbo and the inlet-valves) which may improve engine performance because there's a bigger volume of turbo-pressurised-air waiting and available to be gulped when an inlet-valve opens. Some would say that the downside of increasing total plenum-volume would be increased turbo-lag when building boost - but we all know that the answer here is 'change down early'. I never want to be significantly-loading an engine at low RPM - doing so knocks-out crankshaft bearings.

You can get a kit that tests for 'combustion gases' in the header-tank. I'd suggest getting one of these, and if it shows combustion-gases present then get the cylinder-head lifted and check the head-gasket for any signs of blow-by. And get the head pressure-tested - they can develop combustion-chamber-to-waterway cracks. Catch it early and you can fix it - continue driving with a failing gasket and the head-face can get eroded to the point where the head (and possibly the block) is scrap.

I'm wondering if there's a way round this by taxing it as a 'camion' or "break" or 'fourgon' or "Commerciale" or "Derives V.P." or something? Sure, it may require the rear seats being removed and the rear door/window-glass being rendered 85%-opaque - I remember in the 1970s/80s seeing big Citroen estate-cars with the side-glass panelled-out for tax-purposes.

Surely "What matters" is the maximum towing-weight/gross-train-weight as specified and approved by the towcar's manufacturer? My 90TD5 is rated to tow 3500Kg, even though it weighs rather less than this. Sure, if you get the noseweight/load-distribution wrong it can be a disaster - but that's equally-relevant if you've gof a 2-ton car towing a 1-ton trailer. [In my Territorial-Army times, I remember being on a night exercise where I had to use a LR to tow a fuel-bowser containing 5000 Litres of AVTUR. We got it up to around 75MPH on the A12 between Arnhem and Rotterdam - we had a ferry to catch! The Dutch highway-police stopped us for 'driving rather fast with our lights off' - it was 3AM and once they realised we were in a convoy with rather-well-armed friends they said 'OK - NATO Friends!" and waved us on our way. We got to the ferry with 10 minutes to spare]

I've locally seen a couple of new-Defenders clearly being used for business: both silver. One was signwritten for a tree-surgeon and towing a wood-chipper, the other was marked up in the livery of a farrier-business (or 'Hoof-care' as they termed it). I guess these will be on 3- or 5-year business leases.

I wouldn't put a 300TDi in - it's a 30-year-old engine which is becoming problematic to support with 'first-line-quality' parts! [I run a TD5 and parts availability for that is not exactly good either]. If you're going to the bother of re-engineing, I'd always go for something that is still in current-production, so your investment-effort is less-likely to become obsolete/unsupportable in a few years. There's also the consideration that replacing a rev-happy petrol engine with a low-revving Diesel will probably lead to you then going on to want a changed transfer-box-ratio to make it liveable-with... If you must go Diesel, look at some of the this-millennium BMW lumps: they're torquey, revvable, quiet and efficient. Some Luddites will wail about "electronics" but personally I'm happy with engines I can 'tune' and 'diagnose' using a laptop to look at the errors rather than randomly swapping-in replacement parts in the hope it might fix an intermittent issue.