Tanuki

This is all very well, but it's taking its time and losing potential customers in the process. In the last week I've been test-driving a LWB Landcruiser 'commercial', which is sorta the same market-segment Defender 2.0 is targeting. It passes my "Dogs and Logs" test with flying colours and will cruise at 85/touch 100MPH, but alas only comes with a nasty 4-pot Diesel and manual transmission. If Toyota did a V8 petrol automatic LC Commercial, I'd be waving a £50,000 cheque in their face right now rather than waiting for whatever JLR come up with.

£30? That's seriously good-value. I've never been a fan of the standard Sankey: it's stupid-heavy for its designated payload, and has a nastily high centre-of-gravity. Someone I knew had one where they rebuilt the tub using aluminium sheet and angle (which sliced 175 pounds off the unladen weight) and fitted it with 15-inch wheels/245-50 tyres to get the centre-of-gravity down. The result was much more Autobahn-towing-friendly.

To allow roofrack mounting?

Check your tyre pressures - being a few pounds down on one corner can cause all sorts of strange issues. Then check the discs/pads/pistons. I once had a strange 'pulling' issue on a Series LR which turned out to be most of the oil in one of the front dampers having gone-missing.

That may be the case with the likes of first-generation Toyota Aurises etc, but current-generation PHEVs generally come with 150BHP-or-so of combustion-engine assist - which can be run at full-power to recharge the batteries while you're sitting at the lights, so you've got full electric launch-power when the lights turn green. A friend in Japan who has a Mitsubishi PHEV because of local tax/on-road-parking-space-restrictions says that at first it's odd to park-up, lock her car and walk away with the engine still running (because it's recharging the battery after a climb up some twisty gradients before she parked which drained the battery). She's happy because that wimpy 2-litre petrol engine will mean her battery's fully-charged when she comes back an hour later. This is the future. Get used to it.

Perfectly feasible if it's the electrically-assisted version. A 'stateside friend has a Lexus LS hybrid: the petrol-part is a 3.5-litre V6. Overall it produces 415BHP/600NM of torque. The electric motor gives murderous levels of torque-on-tap-in-a-millisecond; for a luxury car that weighs over 5000 pounds it has truly indecent acceleration (0-60 in a gnat's whisker more than 5 seconds - and in supreme silence!)

I'd also suggest: do it under cover! Nothing good has ever been reported about having squadrons of Greenfly or Wasps circulating while you're trying to spray a panel out-of-doors. [But equally, if you're spraying in an enclosed space remember to use a proper air-feed mask so you don't start to get solvent-hallucinations after a few minutes] I've always self-prepared but got the actual spraying done by professionals with a heated/airconditioned booth.

I've never understood the antipathy towards SVA/IVA: having done a couple of kit-car builds myself and helped-out friends with another half-dozen I see a SVA/IVA-pass as a rather basic seal-of-approval that the workmanship is of acceptable quality and all the paperwork seems to be in-order. Sure beats the likes of a friend being stopped inbound at Hull ferryport at 23:00 on a Sunday-evening by an officious customs-officer who thinks you're up to something-dodgy because you're driving a 1980s 6x4 LHD Range-Rover conversion that was exported to Saudi at first-build and so doesn't have a 'sensible' chassis-plate/VIN. It took him three days to get de-impounded.

Yes, mea culpa - it was indeed Ferrari who commented about the aerodynamics. Chapman was better known for telling his designers - when they presented him with their latest creation - to "now add lightness". Lightness is one of the reasons I'm hoping the new Defender will make plentiful use of alloy- and composite-construction rather than the old heavy welded steel-chassis of yesteryear.

TBH I can't really worry about what-it-looks-like. When you're driving it you're not looking at it. [this is my excuse for only washing my Defender once a year - the day before it goes in for its MOT]. Though I'd rather like "Defender 3.0" to have decent aerodynamics if only to reduce the noise, strange spray-flooding patterns when passing HGVs, and door-tops-pulling-away-from-the-body when cruising at 90MPH. [OK, so I have sympathy for the late Colin Chapman's mindset that "aerodynamics are only of interest to those whose engines are underpowered" - but a decently-aerodynamic vehicle can make towing a trailer at 75MPH while passing a convoy of 56MPH-limited trucks across the Thelwall Viaduct in a gale a lot less of a buttock~clenching event]

Eggs-actly! And you're unlikely to be able to participate in any of the State-funded 'electrification' programs that give you a refund on the costs (these are only generally available to new-vehicle purchases). It's interesting that the Chinese company that now makes the traditional Diesel-powered London Taxis has recently introduced a 'commercial' version - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/levc-lcv-revealed-new-black-cab-spawns-hybrid-van-built-londons/ To my way of thinking, they're the sort of business I can see offering fully type-approved/tax-offsettable electric repower kits for Defenders/Evoques/Range-Rovers. China has a big city-pollution problem and also plenty of wealthy/middle-class types who won't be prepared to scrap their 4-year-old premium-SUV just because of an edict from Communist Party HQ.

In the context of tyres, road-biased - I suspect that the preference of JLR to fit such tyres on their vehicles is related to speed-characteristics. If you're producing a vehicle that has a top-speed of 120MPH or so, you need to fit it with tyres rated for service at such speeds. Not doing-so would leave you open to some serious legal-liability in the event of failure. (Ford had to pay out a hell of a lot a couple of decades back because of tyre-specification-issues on their Explorers). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_controversy How many "knobbly" M&S-style tyres are there which are rated for service at the sorts of speeds a Discovery, RR, "Defender 3.0" can cruise at on Autobahns etc?

The type shown is pretty much the same as the one I use. One hint - if the joint's taper doesn't seem to want to come apart don't just keep tightening and tightening until something breaks. Tighten it up reasonably-tight, then go and have a coffee (or a beer). When you come back half an hour later chances are the taper will have 'popped' as intended.

Do a couple of "purge-cycles" [turning the ignition on with the throttle-pedal down: precise details depend on the age of your TD5's software] without starting - if you can still hear the in-tank fuel pump screaming or swishy-swooshy-gurgling noises, then you've got air/combustion-gases getting into the fuel system somewhere. Once you've expelled any 'trapped wind' this should not be a recurrent problem unless there's a fault. Best-case, it could be a need for another injector-seal-replacement [I get these done every 50,000 miles]. Worst-case your head could be cracking..... A healthy TD5 should start-and-run-cleanly with half a second of cranking.

I'm kinda hoping that Defender 3.0 will be structurally based more on aluminium-alloy and stressed-composite technology rather than the old-fashioned steel-chassis stuff. Lighter, cheaper-to-manufacture-in-complex-shapes, better able to provide controlled deformation/energy absorption in high-speed collisions - and you do repairs using thermally/UV-cured adhesives rather than by welding. Think 21st-century, rather than Victorian engineering.

Bought my 90TD5 new, for cash, in 2001. OK, it was via a dealer in Namur, Belgium. The spec I wanted [County, but without a sunroof] was not available via UK LR dealers! Personal-imports from EU countries also had certain VAT-benefits for business-purchasers back then. I also arranged to pay in Euros - in the time between placing my order and the time-for-payment, Sterling had gained something like 2.5% against the Euro - so I was happy. I've always bought new-cars in-full, for cash (or the bankers-draft-equivalent of the traditional briefcase-full of serially-numbered £50 notes). Am looking at the prospective "Defender 3.0" and also Mr. Ineos's Projekt Grenadier as a future replacement for my TD5 whrn it turns its 20 years. Again, it'll be a cash purchase.

Looks a nice clean head-job! Before you fire it up again - take the intercooler out and give it a good rinsing with Kerosene to wash-out any oil deposits, then blow it dry with compressed-air [squirt the air into the intercooler-port that would normally feed the engine - so you're reverse-blowing it] for rather-longer-than-you-would-first-think-it-needs. You don't want the rebuilt engine to suddenly 'run-away' if it discovers a pint of sump-oil that's settled in the intercooler. [This happened to a mate's Golf TDi - and led to a second engine-rebuild!]

These things are only ever a 'get-you-home' bodge - as well as sealing any leak they'll clag-up your radiator and heater-matrix and the smaller air-bleed passages in your cylinder-head. OK, so you've got-home - but at what cost? To make things good you'll now be needing a new radiator (to replace the one with the temporarily-bunged-up leak), a new heater-matrix, and some serious pressure-flushing of your block/head to remove the goop that's left therein. Rover Group issued specific warnings against using any kind of "radiator stop-leak" goop in its 1980s-era engines. "Bars Seal Stop Leak" specifically says it's not recommended for Rover engines! I guess they had good reason for this!

Give it a squirt of WD40, some new oil/fresh petrol, hook it up to a good battery and you'll have it running fine in half an hour...!

Have had the yellow gas-pressurised Bilsteins on my 90TD5 for around six years/80,000 miles - they weren't cheap but they made a spectacular improvement to the handling both when running unladen on twisty A/B-roads and when towing my big Bateson 3.5-ton flatbed on motorways. Best thing about them - no more bowel-loosening steering-wobble-of-death when you drop a front-wheel into a pothole coming off a roundabout at 50MPH full-throttle-in-3rd while pulling-away from a boy-racer in a Citroen Saxo!

I'd say: At first - stop running it on the wrong fuel! Yes, low-spec edible-grade veg-oil is cheap, but it's really not a good long-term diet for a modern Diesel-engine. You may save a bit in the short-term in terms of fuel-costs, but after a few years/few tens-of-thousands-of-miles you find you need a new FIP, the cost of which takes-out the supposed 'saving' you made from running on carp fuel.

Check the handbrake cable - if it's binding and not allowing the shoes in the drum to retract fully it can cause a 'snatch' when first taking up drive. [I've seen a couple of cases where the handbrake cable has been melted - the inner nylon liner of the central core being swollen. This was because there was an engine-to-chassis earth problem and the starter-motor current had been going down the centre of the handbrake cable causing it to get hot and melt the liner]

Is it metallic? If so it would probably be Oslo Blue like my TD5.

If they want to start selling them next year they'll be appointing their sales/dealer/support network and financial-partners [nobody in business buys vehicles these days - they're all leased because of the cashflow/tax advantages] now. I guess they'll all be under non-disclosure-agreements - but you don't build, provision and train the underlying networks to finance and support 30,000-a-year sales [presumably globally] without it showing.

The problem with a "small off-roader" like the Jimny is its towing-capacity's not that great. These days your 'serious' forester/farmer/rural sporting-estate-manager has stuff like a Deere Gator or Kawasaki Mule for hauling bales around and lugging feed to gamebird-sites, Ford Rangers for general duty, and something nice [Range-Rover/Merc/BMW] as daily-driver. My local forestry-guys got rid of their Defender 130HCPU when it came to the end of its lease and now have a Mitsubishi "Fuso" tipper-truck for log-lugging. Landcruisers are OK: but they're only available in the UK with Diesel engines. The Lexus LX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexus_LX is essentially the same car but with a nice free-revving 32V quad-camshaft petrol V8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lexus_LX which I've experienced in the Lexus saloon and is truly a gorgeous engine!