Snagger

I wonder where they moved the heat exchangers from below the head lights to. Given the location, I doubt they deleted them. It does seem a better arrangement than left the factory.

They are nicely made and should prevent so many clothes snagging and tearing on the catches, but they shouldn’t affect lock operation at all. That is down to adjustment of their position on the B pillar.

I wouldn’t limit it to trailing arm bushes; radius arm bushes would have a similar effect, as could a panhard bushes. Less common is failure of A-fame bushes to the chassis, but if one was worse than the other, the A-frame could skew a little and press the axle a little sideways, with the trailing arm geometry affected.

A little dollop of grease will.

I swapped the diffs between 109 and 110 Salisbury axles and didn’t even need to alter the shims. There is a difference in the carriers between 4.71 and 3.54 diffs, though - the ring gear flange is set at different positions to allow for the different pinion head diameter, the 4.71 diff having its flange around an inch closer to the pinion axis, so you have to swap the whole diff for significant ratio changes. I don’t know if there is a third specification diff centre for the even lower ratio of the 101 axles or whether they used 109 diffs with very thick ring gears.

Beautiful location and photography. The new model should do well, with all those electronic gadgets - that’s the whole point. The worry is the reliability and the lack of adaptability of the vehicle. Not much risk for him taking it to a place like that with so many other vehicles alongside, but would you venture out alone in one?

Given how much is breaking on your 110, I can’t imagine a van doing well! 😜

My RRC gets a rumble from the front end accelerating through around 55mph. I replaced the prop UJs, the diff (even though the original seemed good), CV joints, wheel bearings and brake discs. None made any difference. There is some very slight wear in the stub axles, where the wheel bearings sit, so I think they may be the cause. The ridge is tiny, barely catching, but that slight diameter reduction could be allowing the inner races to chatter.

Make sure you spend the little extra and buy a genuine Bosch one - typically, the cheap brands fail far more often.

The BP tailgate seal for my RRC was so thick that I put the tired old one back on - it didn’t pop the upper tailgate open going over speed bumps like the BP one did. Mike at Britannica Restorations did a few videos about their seals, comparing them to genuine with his “pen of truth” and had similar experiences to me, so you may have been lucky. Of course, contracts and sources change, different batches may come from different sources or be made to vary specs, and more recent Gen Parts appear to have taken a significant dip in quality.

Sounds like it’s working for it’s living. Maybe you should write to LR and a few aftermarket companies and offer to be a product development tester...😉

Some thread lock on the grub screws should not only keep them tight, but prevent thread corrosion from permanently seizing the screws., but stainless screws would be a good little change too as they’ll be harder and can’t wear on their tips, gradually becoming slack.

You can remove those flanges on the Rover diffs without worry; it’s the Salisbury diffs with their crushable preload spacer that is theoretically sensitive to changes and should have the nut and pinion end indexed for alignment on reassembly, but in practice a torque of 150’lbs gets rid of any play and hysteresis in the tube but isn’t enough to increase the preload over the previous setting, so works fine as a bit of a fudge.

That’s a superb job - looks normal from the exterior, but much thicker with less water traps and much stronger material. And cheaper. 👌

Three 10mm flange headed bolts. I had a fuel solenoid burn out in situ several years ago, but had no warning - the engine just died and I saw some smoke from the back edge of the bonnet. With the bonnet open, it was easy to find - the smoke was emanating at the rate you see from a blown out candle. I was fortunate in it being easy to remove and replace.

Try taking the door seal of and testing the lock - an excessively hard or thick door seal (I’m looking at you, Britpart) stops the door itself from closing to the position needed for good latching, but even new genuine seals can do this (which is why it was so common to see new Defenders have the back edge of the doors sick out a few mm when shut, and leak around the top in the rain). You might get away with moving the door striker pin outboard a little.

I had a similar experience with the 3.54s and overdrive with the Tdi. The problem is that you have to use the lower gears much more, and they are lower than the standard 4th, plus 1-3 and the overdrive all use meshing gears, lay shafts and lots of bearings, so have more losses than fourth, which runs straight through the box. Off the top of my head, a 3.8:1 diff gear set should give a similar final drive ratio as standard with overdrive engaged, but should give mildly but measureably better performance and economy because you’d not be turning any extra components and stirring any more oil.

It could serve two people if disassembled and hung on a wall in a garage, but while it’d make it more affordable and benefit two rather than one person, it’d also be a shame to break it up.

I think I saw a video showing access to the rear seats via the front door, like the original RR Classic.

It’d be more interesting to see the full year figures, and last year’s too, for the D5, RRS and Wrangler. I suspect you’d see a significant dent in the D5 figures and a bit in the RRS, but very little in the Wrangler from June. The D5 numbers don’t look good at all - they do in isolation as they are imply that the new Defender is taking sales from Discovery, like many of us predicted.

That is impressive stuff.

The thought also occurs that it could be a problem with the electrical power. If you have a voltmeter, check the voltage at the motor feed with it running to see if it’s getting enough power - a broken or corroded connection, wire or switch could cause a voltage drop, and the earth wire and junction is worth a close look.

The faces of those intermediate shaft bushes look good to me - slight polishing from where the roller bearing cages have run against them, but nothing from the gear cluster.

I have a Chicago trip just before Christmas, and will be visiting the UK for the first week of January. If you like, I can bring it to the UK for you and post it once there, if you have it sent to my hotel.

Any news on that end casting? I wonder if Warn can supply them. If not, fabricating one shouldn’t be the end of the world, unless the innards are very complex.