deep

No it's not. It absolutely is not. Freelander is a single gearbox, front-wheel drive biased, small-wheeled, low ground clearance and fairly small car with moderately good off-road capabilities. New Defender is altogether larger, tougher and much more off-road capable by design and has a proper four-wheel-drive system. Why do people persist with such foolishness?

That's so ironic. It would equally have described that G-Wagen. Not that either have great hindquarters...

Yes, in that it has a wheel in each corner. Otherwise not very much at all.

I think this thread should have me worried, as my ex Singapore military 110 with 18J motor came with a pretty big oil cooler fitted! Then again, I'll just trust that they put it together in a way that doesn't require a tropical climate to keep the oil warm enough. It would be interesting to know if there is any sort of thermostat in there though. Other than that, I will follow this thread with interest. No better way to learn than seeing worn items being pulled apart carefully.

Well, that may well happen here and there but the new Defender is clearly the result of chasing a market in preference to adhering to a tradition which is no longer profitable. It's uncompromisingly aimed at the market I alluded to above. That sounds like a cold, hard executive decision, rather than any sort of one-man arrogance. Yes, most of us think they could have done that in a much better (i.e. simpler and more flexible) way but it doesn't matter a jot what we think, of course!

Yes and no. Stick one next to an old Defender and it will look pretty horrible. Stick one next to a new Range Rover or Disco 5 and it won't look bad. Stick one next to the new RAV4 my boss rented this week and the new Defender suddenly looks beautiful!

You genuinely think the management doesn't bother with extensive market research before committing to major investment?? That would put them at odds with nearly every other large-scale manufacturer. Is your thinking clouded by intense disappointment?

Not BFG??? KM3s are wonderful and will cost Beeps far less because he/she is in the U.S.A.. Anyway, if you are not making it up slippery muddy hills that others are getting up, tyres are the first suspect (assuming you had the right pressures and good throttle technique). Keen off-roaders these days tend to put very large tyres on their trucks and push them with powerful motors. Doing that in a Defender is going to give you axle trouble very quickly! If your vehicle is standard, get decent tyres but not bigger than 255/85x16 and follow Hybrid_From_Hell's advice above. With a little fettling, you could fit 285x75/16s, which allows you to fit some very aggressive but cheap Chinese rubber. The money saved will get you those Ashcroft/TruTac/Detroit diffs.

Compliment to, not replacement for! They've obviously decided that's going to be a more lucrative approach. I'll bet they've spent far more than either of us researching the topic, so I won't say they're wrong. Note, too, that some (likely large) proportion of people who actually bought their Defenders brand new (unlike many of us here) will also be happy with the new Defender. At the end of the day, it's not just JLR's fault that the new Defender is such a complex and partly fake departure from the Land Rover heritage. It's the sheep mentality of humanity, with bored people led by a bored press and totally taken in by a safety-obsessed mentality, which is, itself, fuelled as much by politics and big business as it is by any actual threat to humanity. People, in general, would far rather "belong" than adopt a common-sense approach to life. Or, to put it more simply, fashion dictates what cars people will buy far more than practical aspects of the car itself. As a brand which has steadily become a fashion statement, Land Rover would have decided they had no option but to change tack with the Defender. I still wish they'd grown a pair and built something practical...

It may not be that stupid. It's VERY clear that LR have changed the target market for the Defender and, if you think about it, that market is (to a large extent) people who used to buy Discoverys before the bland new one put them off. It's apparently a far bigger market than the former Defender one for an expensive working truck, so the approach should actually do the company more good than harm. That's because it will bring back a proportion of buyers who moved elsewhere, more than taking away buyers from Disco 5. I'd go further and say that the new Defender is really without peer in the modern market, for those well-heeled types who want a modern, roomy, gadget-laden vehicle which makes a statement of being rugged and go-anywhere and which genuinely won't falter at the first few hurdles. Unless you can afford a G wagon. If the 85 E.C.U.s don't fail too often and the air suspension doesn't continually misbehave, those people will probably love their Defenders and sales will be good. (Just to be clear, I am a loooooooong way from that target market and wouldn't swap my 1987 110 for a new Defender without a massive bribe. That doesn't mean I don't understand why they have done what they have done, even if I don't like it.) I'll bet they are flat out trying to re-design the D(isaster) 5 right now...

The Disco 5 isn't just ugly from the back! The problem (styling wise) is that the whole thing has lost it's distinctiveness. It's just another blob that could easily have come out of Korea. When a Disco 4 wafts past, it still looks really classy. A bit regal, even. If a Disco 5 goes past, you don't even notice it until your sub-conscious self starts trying to work out why the back of that car is wonky. While the new Defender may be a styling disaster to anyone who expected it to look like a traditional Land Rover, it very much has that distinctiveness of the Disco 3&4. For that reason alone, I predict it will outsell the Disco 5 at 4:1.

Pretty hard to field test something on a car the press haven't even driven yet!

There's clearly been image manipulation. Not that it matters, it's all about what's on top of the vehicle, not under it!

If you retrieve your gauge, measure the bores down low, then just under the lip (if there is no lip, it doesn't need measuring!). Look for that difference and check against factory tolerances and you'll know if a re-bore is needed. You can get a lightly cracked piston welded and re-machined, as long as everything else is okay with them and someone who understands pistons is doing it. Especially check the ring grooves are still square and that new rings sit tight. Otherwise they will wear quickly. You can get worn grooves machined and over-width rings to match. Back in my classic motorcycle days, when we had pistons made of unobtanium, we would get miracles done with them to keep the bike on the road, even to the extent of having them peened to swell the skirt. Piston repair is nothing to fear. Of course, if you can find new pistons at a good price, that's even better. A couple of light cracks like that shouldn't cost much to fix though.

My dad was an aircraft "mechanic" (actually an aircraft engineer) for a group that flew bush planes in East Africa. I doubt they ever did anything like this but there were plenty of adventures along the way. Lots of nostalgia looking at those photos. Years later, in New Zealand, I helped him transport a Tiger Moth body behind a Land Rover. My job? To crouch down with my hands under the dashboard, holding the wires for the lights together! I think we brought a bit of Africa over with us.