deep

Probably should explain that there is a LOT of private road where I live and my little Land Rover may never actually be used on public road, so the "rules" don't necessarily apply. I still don't want it to fall in two though!

Ah, thanks for that. None of those problems would be too much for an angle grinder and welder to sort. Excellent. Our rules here are weird and very much subject to interpretation on the day by the tester! Not really a problem as the car has lost its registration due to New Zealand's Draconian "use it or lose it" legislation (soooooooo many Land Rovers lost their registration like this, it's an absolute tragedy). However, there is a procedure for getting them road legal again and a replacement chassis can be accommodated in the process. Not for the faint hearted though...

I've done a bit of a forum search but haven't found a definitive answer, so thought I'd make a new topic (but please feel free to direct me to the thread I couldn't find!). In short, I'm wondering what the differences might be between a Series 2a 88" chassis and an early (1972) Series 3 chassis (with welded gearbox crossmember)? The only thing I can think of might be the handbrake attachment? The story is that I bought a reasonably straight, original, low mileage Series 3 a couple of years ago. It had some chassis rust so I bought replacement outriggers and a new rear crossmember, thinking I'd bodge it up and drive around happily. Sadly, a bit of work with a needle scaler and wire brush showed a lot of bad areas elsewhere. There comes a point when you think it really needs a new chassis but, ouch, they are so expensive now and who wants to do all that work? Until yesterday, when I found an excellent Series 2a chassis going for peanuts. Suddenly, it seems the work is worth doing! I just want to know what needs modifying before I proceed with it. Any hints or issues? Thanks in advance...

I did the same modification (pump out of a 19J) and pulled the pump apart before installing it to check its condition. It does rely on a close fit between the impellers (and I could see it being better with thicker oil) but no vacuum at all is strange. I'd take the hose off the booster and feel directly for vacuum there before writing off the pump. I've had two dodgy boosters in the last two Land Rovers which seemed fine but weren't. If you get vacuum in the hose, the booster is faulty. If not, the pump needs reconditioning. Presuming it's a good hose that doesn't do strange things when it gets warm...

Yes. If you call that "unnecessary advice", you missed the point that this isn't generally a nasty site. No need for further discussion. Nor to derail the thread.

Not very nice. This site tends to be a bit more respectful? (Though I agree that isn't great economy for a diesel. I'd have to drive like a hoon to get my Freelander 2 - with it's bigger petrol engine -that low.)

I wouldn't see one every day, and I frequently drive 2-300 miles in a day. Then I'll see two or three in short succession. Most look like family cars, quite a few seem image-focused (with either a show of accessories or too much dreary black) and a few are definitely being used as off road vehicles or to haul all the toys for an adventure holiday. If any of those are being used as commercial vehicles, it's very hard to tell! Actually, since the recent cyclone turned so many of our roads to porridge, every car looks like an off-road vehicle in this neighbourhood...

Exactly.

Interesting. Perhaps unfortunate that the photo right on the first screen shows a Defender with road tyres barely clearing the small rock in front of it! I wonder how hard you'd have to hit one to even touch that roll cage? They seem remarkably tough bodies on those things.

You should look around. They don't make older stuff any more. We are discussing new vehicles...

I (and quite a few people I know) am sick to death of all the electronic junk and big brother stuff being endlessly chucked into modern vehicles. If anything, the problem with the Grenadier is that it already has too much of it, not too little! A strong appeal is that it doesn't have all that fluff fitted.

"The Grenadier is indivisible from the man who owns the ... company..". Indivisible? Strange choice of wording! Would be nice to read the rest though. It's bound to score lower than the road-orientated Defender in a car magazine.

There'a a Utube video out there, with SirJim in his office. On the shelf behind him is a model Grenadier without that bumper. It suggests a removable item, there to meet regulations in over-regulated markets but potentially replaceable? Obviously the winch does fit within that space - it's not a leaf-sprung Landcruiser with bulldozer blade in front!

At the risk of pushing further off topic - New Zealand electrified it's main trunk railway line some decades ago. No need for batteries at all in that scenario.

Fair call.

Taste again. I really like the round lights. Vastly better than the big, bland lumps of plastic most pickups have. Likewise the station wagon, come to think of it.

Before I read your comment, I was thinking that back end looks better than pretty much any pickup on the market! Taste is a very personal thing. I personally dislike crew cab pickups in general. Great for certain purposes but too much of a compromise for most things. Yet I look at this and it just looks so very functional, as if the makers aren't even bothering going for the "my car is a truck" market. I quite like that.

Towing can hit petrol vehicles pretty hard too, to be fair. My 6 cylinder Freelander 2 ordinarily reacts very well to sensitive driving, getting 29-33 m.p.g. on a long run (which always impresses me, being quite a big car with quite a big engine). Recently, I moved house and I used it to tow a large vehicle transporter with, first, a Ferguson TEA tractor (plus a few heavy extras) and, later, my Series 3 SWB (which was packed to the gunnels). Both big heavy loads (likely beyond the rated towing capacity, ahem) and economy literally halved. Essentially, if your load weighs as much as your tow vehicle and has worse aerodynamics, you are asking twice as much of your power train. If your big diesel isn't using vastly more fuel to haul that load, it probably isn't as efficient as it could be in normal running or you are driving it pretty hard in normal running! Oddly, I think electric vehicles are "honest" in this respect, with a reasonably linear load to energy use ratio.

Ooh, I do like that!

The 6.5 horse power Tesla - with a few hundred more available for a 100 yard sprint every hour. Hybrid drive trains at their simplest!

The written review in that link is concise and encouraging. Nice to see someone enthusiastic about what the machine actually is, rather than bleating about what it isn't!

I do sympathise with your point of view but don't really agree with it. Land Rover may have embraced the hype and gadgetry that typifies the modern market but the Grenadier is pretty much as close as you can get to the old mould - with just a tiny bit more fluff to justify a price that couldn't possibly be very low.

If your flavour of Defender was the very common five door station wagon, the Grenadier is exactly the modern version of a traditional Defender - separate chassis, solid axles, boxy body designed for practicality above looks etc.. If your flavour was a short wheelbase, from a Series One to a 90, the Jimny is a great replacement for the former but maybe a tad small to replace the latter. You do see zillions of those Jimnies here and I'd expect the Grenadier to do well too. I predict a LOT of second hand new Defenders appearing on the market over the next year...

That makes very little sense. They are not competing vehicles. If you want a pickup truck, you buy a pick up truck. If you want a van body or station wagon, that's what you buy. If what is behind the seat doesn't matter, you're not really buying a purpose built vehicle and won't be looking at the likes of a Grenadier, Defender or G Wagen (but you might and probably should consider a Suzuki Jimny). Plus the Grenadier is nowhere near as complicated as the Defender... Edit - Have you actually looked at a Japanese pick up truck lately? They are every bit as complicated (electronically speaking) as the Grenadier. Mechanically, many still use cart horse suspension and, last time I looked, rear brakes from the 1960s but, otherwise, they bristle with all the doodads the modern buyer thinks he/she wants, with a considerably lesser off-road, utility focus. They are four-wheel drive cars with a built-in trailer, that's all.

There is obviously an ECU that controls the electric windows in my Freelander 2. Every now and then, the windows inexplicably change their "behaviour". Frequently, different windows behave in different ways and, at the moment, one window thinks going fully up and then half way down is, in fact, fully up. A computer controlling electric windows???? Bonkers. Actually, there is a lot that is bonkers on that car, either because of the terribly designed Volvo motor or the bad choices made by the computer engineers. What worries me, is that it is now 14 years old and so 14 years behind the current excess of electronics. It isn't getting better. Will the Grenadier be better or worse? My expectation is that it will have more electronics, for reasons dictated by legislation, but the dumb choices should be far less of an issue and I'd expect the failure rate to be less. Frankly, in this day and age, that is the best we can expect. Fair enough venting a little about that here (we all do a bit) but, on balance, I wouldn't put the Grenadier aside for unavoidable complexity. Anyway, I won't be buying one in the immediate future but that decision is because I have bought a few acres and need a digger more...