steve_a

Haven't used the Jimny in anger yet, but I have high hopes... The other thing is that the 4wd High can be engaged at any time but low can only be done when in neutral IIRC, it will just sit there and flash at you but not go in. This might have been the issue?? FWIW, for snow driving on the UK roads in the last few weeks the jimny has the no centre diff issue which makes trying to use the 4wd a bit of a worry if you ask me. If you already have issues going around corners due to the snow and ice a locked diff isn't going to help. Our jimny will get some attention in the coming months, if nothing else I need to have a look at wheel spacers and the anti-roll bars, it span a wheel coming off a kerb in 2wd which makes me thing the anti-rolls are bit too anti.

The Thor was the first serpentine AFAIK, I have a D2 1999 with the Thor serp outside, and when I was buying discoveries a year or more ago the move to the D2 was the swap for them. The P38 I think was the same engine, but that came out a bit earlier than the D2 didn't it? A V8 D2 or P38 can't set you back too many notes in the UK can it?

I believe the general opinion here and experience is that they fail too quickly, as all the gubbins are exposed to mud, water, salt, sand, dust, roo heads etc. You'd be better looking at some kind of air locker type system IMHO, which has all the moving stuff inside and no issues with electric guff where it is exposed.

Saw this and was waiting for the UK to comment. I wonder if this ignores the idea of 'acceptable risk'. If you take someone mountain climbing, they fall and are killed or injured are you any different? Might be time to have everyone sign a disclaimer (motorsport is dangerous!) before heading out for the day in future? Surely a good test is that, if a police officer had seen them crossing the river and *nothing* had happened, would he have arrested him? Because surely careless driving is not dependant on the outcome? I suspect that no arrest would have occurred... Having said all that, the green lanes are just highway, so should you be doing something that can possibly be considered risky (i.e. motorsport) on the highway, what is the difference between street racing and green laning through a river? Good luck on all that stuff. Also, if you look on the Daily Mail site (where I saw the story) further up is a picture of a LR going through a good bit of flooding and a general 'good oh' statement on it. Edit: Just having looked at this again, surely the other two drivers (of the two who made it) should have been prosecuted for careless driving too, unless there is good proof that he was *careless* in his driving during that time (messing with radio, on his phone etc)?

Nah, you buy it, book it in with one of these quick companies who do transport and video tape his arrival and face as he tries to deal with it. Sell video to you've been framed, got your money back.

Love my land rovers, but one of the main things for me is or was the simplicity and accessibility of them. That's why, for me, they are no longer the right car. The D2 is not bad, I can get engine codes for relatively little cost ($60 reader), but the rest of the systems are inaccessible without a fair bit of cost (e.g. I have the ABS amigo at $200). Now compare that my little Suzuki Jimny Sierra, the workshop manual tells you how to get flash codes out every system on the car. It's still coil and beam axle and I know I can continue to maintain it. This is a 2009 model.... Why has land rover lost the plot on the recent vehicles and made them unserviceable in the field? Even the D2 has some stupid quirks - where is my auto box dipstick! Who took it away, why did they take it away? I'll take anything up to a 300TDI in any of the vehicles over anything else and a V8 without EFI or with the OBD2 compliance. But with dealers so sparse on the ground I wouldn't touch a new one over here

Having redone all 4 calipers a bit of time ago, it's not too difficult to do. Tips: 1) use genuine, I had a bunch of different types (britpart, bearmach and LR OEM) and the genuine were much easier to use 2) get some LM grease (urea based) to grease everything, makes a big difference 3) Make sure you put something like a block of wood in the caliper as you use some compressed air to eject the piston(s) 4) while doing (3) don't get your fingers in the way, it hurts If you are rebuilding because of rust then you will need to either wet and dry everything or buy new pistons and maybe still do a bit of wet and dry on the cylinders. After that, mega clean with brake cleaner and compressed air.

Just got my 3 Amigos reader and resetter ABS device in the post today from RSW Solutions. Worked exactly as advertised, and at £130 delivered, (A$240) it seems good value rather than dealing with a main service centre and is totally self contained to be left in the car. If anyone has any questions I can try and answer them. The codes on mine are currently inconclusive, since I have had the brake system apart, so some ground faults, relay O/Cs are probably from when the ABS unit was removed and other work was done. Just got to wait for it to come on again and then read the code straight away to see what the issue is. -------------------------------------------------------------- |* ABS Amigo Box V1 RSW Solutions LLC Copyright 2008. *| |* www.RSWsolutions.com *| |* *| |* *| |* Version V1.1 *| |* *| -------------------------------------------------------------- 1.--Current Faults----> Active Faults: None Logged Faults: 040:Pump relay open circuit Front Right Sensor Bad Output 114:Shuttle Valve Electric Failure <-END Faults ------------------------------------------------------------ * * ------------------------------------------------------------ ..--Previous Faults---> Active Faults: 022:ECU Gnd or Reference Gnd bad Logged Faults: None <-END Faults ------------------------------------------------------------ * * ------------------------------------------------------------ ..--Previous Faults---> Active Faults: Comms Error Logged Faults: Comms Error <-END Faults ------------------------------------------------------------ * * ------------------------------------------------------------

STC493 is a workable replacement it turns out, or at least that is what I used last week. The section going into the servo fits, however the pipe connector is about the same size as the pipe, I used another bit of pipe which fit over both to join and butted them against each other. Brakes have loads of stopping power again. Still not the right part though, and I wonder if some of the others would work as well.

REF: the ecufarce link I thought that a car manufacturer was legally obliged to provides parts for 10 years from the date of production? That's put me right off buying a TD5, or at least a pre-2002 model..

Have you thought about either fitting an external antenna, which would stop the issues you describe. OR a reradiating antenna for inside the car, which will also sort the issue out, most likely. The external antenna doesn't need to be fixed, I use magnetic ones all the time, but you do have wires knocking around. The re-radiating may be a fixed install but no wires, and any GPS device benefits.

Having had a good look at this on my own.... If the spigot is there then you can make or fit a mechanical linkage. It has the flats as described and I think an 8mm spanner will turn it. So step 1 is to locate and confirm that is it. Now, you could just climb under and activate when needed, but on the V8 the exhaust will almost certainly burn you . On top of that it will be messy and generally a PITA. If you start the car with diff lock in then it will disable TC, unless you cut a wire on the SLABS input. So.... 1) get the cable operated diff lock and fit it. pros are that it is the right set up. cons is cost, finding one and fitting. 2) fit a rod up into the cab which you can turn. pros - easy. cons - it will come up in the wrong place and will be a rigid link from body to transferbox. 3) cable operated, like a choke or bonnet release type cable. You make up a simple bracket and it works kind of like a bicycle brake. pros: cheap, fairly easy, can route where you want. cons - will still a bit heath robinson with a handle appearing on the centre console. 4) electric actuator - basically the same as 3 but can be made to look neater in the cab. pros - good looking, not too difficult. cons - the actuator is exposed to all the horrible stuff and will probably fail. I've seen pictures of all 4, and I reckon 3 is the best option if you can't cheaply do 1. I've heard nothing good about the electric actuator, so if you plan on having it window deep in mud I wouldn't give much for the lifespan of the thing. HTH For what it's worth - I will be doing 3 at some point.

Fantastic - thanks people. Damned sight cheaper than buying a whole new box and having it shipped to Australia! I'll get him to get the box number and talk to Mr Ashcroft about sending the parts over.. S

Having had a search and a read of Ashcrofts website and our own, I wanted to get a definitive answer on whether you can fix the mainshaft of an auto with the stub shaft (FTC5090) and the cross drilled gear. It looks like the auto has a shaft coming out which this slides on to (does this area get excessive wear?) and then the input gear drives off that. If so, can you (in situ) remove the gear and shaft and replace both to get rid any wear and clonking in that part of the driveline? I've never had one of these things apart or near me - so I've just gather this from a bit of hunting around. If the answer is yes, there will be a very happy new land rover owner as he is currently panicking about having to get a new gearbox at some point.

I must admit when I looked through I never searched much further than the DSET file for a date info, I guess if they have multiple places that contain the date it would be a good way of setting it to not expire. Had to laugh about the development of microcat in VB 3.0, I was amazed that it was running loads of 16bit portions and ended up doing crazy stuff like win 3.11 in VMWare to debug it. I'd be interested in hearing about any info you or cipx has about the protection.

I had a bolt that had no thread on it coming from the gearbox and just ground/cut the bolt off and put the bolt through in the other way. It doesn't (shouldn't) alter distance with articulation, so if it doesn't foul and it appears they don't, then it's fine. Advantage to swapping them to bolts coming from propshaft side is that it's easy to replace bolts as well as nuts when you want, I used to use mine until showing any sign of wear and then new ones - not worth the aggro of trying to get rounded bolts or nuts off a propshaft.

You see everything with bullbars over here We bought the Jimny because: - cheap ($25k on the road) - easy to maintain (still not very high tech) - proper off road (i.e. 2h/4h/4l) option - not huge, but not tiny tiny. Though having lived with it for a little bit, it is smaller than I thought. - good for beach and other shorter trips out. Nothing else touched it for those criteria, and after experiencing the local land rover dealer I knew we weren't going to buy a new one of those. I do think I need to buy some wheel spacers to widen the wheel base, it is on the small side, and yes, probably a bull bar for driving out. But I'm not sure we'll do anything else, aiming for 80% road, 20% off road and probably 60% city, 40% rural (hence the bullbar). One thing is certain, it is really easy to drive and great fun, can't fault it for that. Could do with a bit more go from the 1.3, but might just be after driving the V8 disco..

I've yet to try the Jimny off road, but since it is coil and effectively just an SJ, I have some hopes...

I assume the fence was in case some of that tat fell off and brained you.... How's the slightly sunnier side of the country at the moment?

I guess some of what I have picked up on out here will hold true. Nissan Patrol Early ones are very very land rover like in technology terms. One to watch for is the Ford Maverick which is the patrol rebadged, and comes in a cool short wheel base form, about the same length as a 90, but I haven't measured or had the chance to do a back to back comparison. The standard patrol is about disco length Suzuki Sierra / Jimny Well I just bought a jimny, the are still pretty low tech, and even the high tech bits have easy to access flash codes and stuff. (Land rover take note you gits - a paper clip should be a diagnostic tool on a bloody 4x4 out in the middle of no where - how could suzuki get it so right and you so wrong!!) Isuzu Trooper Was rebadged a few times here, watch out for the 4JX1 motor. Really complex design with loads of faults that make it a nightmare to run. I'm working on one now with a mate and it's carp. Over thunk, lack of diagnostic solutions and some cracking bad design for stuff (you thought some should be easy to reach things were hard on a landy, this thing was designed by a sadist) Toyotas well they had their own war named after them - how bad can they be? A nice old 1970's toyota has a real bit of class if you ask me. Landy you could always just by a V8 disco or RR??? No idea if these sit in the US$5k range, I don't think the US has any MOT, so you would need to give any car a good inspection to ensure it wasn't a death trap, and I guess the same factors as here hold you shouldn't be freaked out by high mileage since it's a big place, and rust should be less of an issue in the hotter places. I'd guess Colorado sees a fair bit of snow and salt though - so perhaps a trip to a drier state??

It appears that we have a new lodger that signed for the $850 worth of parts that just got here from the UK. Have to love the UPS guy - at least my parts were still there when I got home.. Also, the supplier, LR Centre Ltd, Speke, Liverpool have done a good job - all the right parts, well packed and easy to deal with. One item missing, small fiddly item, which may have not been put back in by customs.

Can confirm that for Oz, got my eye on one at the moment to buy and is completely mechanical.

To rule out the disc copy the contents of the disc to a directory and install from there, I'm pretty sure that will work - I haven't had a disk for ages and I remember installing at the start of the year. Try uninstalling via the control panel first and check that the folders have gone. hth

As part of the repair work on the Discovery 2 I had to remove the master cylinder, and I managed to snap the one way valve during the process. Microcat doesn't have the part number listed - so wondering if someone knew it? They are probably all the same, but it's 99 Discovery 2, ABS. There are no part numbers on the actual valve, just marked made in Germany. If you have part numbers for earlier servos post em up, because if they are cheap I'll get a few thrown in when I do the order from the UK next week.