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A 75w-90GL5 is fine in LT230, they come from the factory filled with one! Good ones are buffered anyway, their copper corrosion rating is usually 1b meaning minimal to no discolouration in a copper corrosion test.

It can take a good 800km for the new friction modifiers to displace the old ones when swapping fluids, in the meantime you may get crashing of the synchro's etc. Having said that R380's can be idiosyncratic but most perform better with a dedicated MTF

130's and HD110 Sals use heavier wall tube [edit]Oops, already answered.

Australian built Isuzu powered 110's in Australia bend the front housing just from the cast iron 4cyl lump sitting above. My old Tdi 130 sported more than 1/2* of negative camber on the front end. At least it was even both sides ! The 130 Sals rear end use 8mm tube instead of 6mm tube for the same reason, and they still pull axle tubes out of the centre when heavily loaded and punished on Australian and African 'roads'

I think it was the Sals axle tubes pulling out under chronic overloading, or at least that's what happened here in Oz. As a consequence the Telstra 130 extended cab TD5's here had heavily trussed Wolf rear ends.

A lot were sold in Australia with 18's, but I think I've only seen one with the above style rim. Most people remove them for 16's, mainly for the improved ride as BM mentioned.

Can second Turners. I'm on the other side of the world and I bought the head, injectors, pistons/rings from Tuners when I o/hauled my old 300Tdi.

ATF is friction modified, but the friction modifiers used aren't ideal for manual gearbox synchros, they are formulated for wet clutches. Basically the FM's used in an MTF have a coefficient of friction that increases with decreasing rotational speed, oils like engine oil used in the LT95 actually work the other way around resulting in a stick/slip style situation so you sometimes 'beat' the synchros. Mostly MTF's will also give better gear/bearing protection too. In high ambient/high load conditions (eg. Southern Europe, Africa, Australia) ATF's and lighter MTF's can become too thin resulting in bearing rattle and eroded shifting performance.

Just an adjunct to Nige's post, I'd run a 75W-90 just to ensure you are getting decent oil feed inside the ATB case at temps below normal operating temp. As mentioned there are 6 helical planetary gears running in pockets inside the case and oil feed may be compromised at high speed with a viscous oil, eg an SAE90 at least until it's up to operating temp. If you're careful and take a few km to get things warm before running the diff at motorway+ type speeds an EP90 wouldn't be an issue.

A FWIW, I ran an ATB in the LT230 in my old Defender and IMO it was well worth the $$. It takes all of the excess backlash out of the t/case, makes the centre diff much, much stronger and on high speed dirt/gravel improves the handling/steering by eliminating the hunting you can get with the open diff (I dislike locking the CDL on dirt, too much understeer for my liking) One will find its way into the current Disco eventually.

Ashcroft's can do an upgraded (larger) low stall converter and a stronger drive plate for the TD5 if it's chipped/modified. This suits the torque characteristics of the modded engine better as well as being a lot stronger. Dave has stated in the past that the stock TD5 converter is marginal for a stock engine at the best of times. If $$ allow they can also do some 4HP24 bits internally to allow the 'box to better handle the power/torque of modified TD5

Cool trip Boydie, it'll be fun.

Hey Ralph, those specs are so old, out of date and superseded I wouldn't use them as a reference for anything these days. Not having a crack, just a FWIW. To the OP, just keep driving and don't overthink it. It's a heavy duty engine oil, ie blended for heavy duty over the road and off road diesels. The US API CI-4 spec is a few years old now but a very high spec. European ACEA E7 is a current spec, E5, E3 are a few years old now but all these specs are so much more advanced than what was originally specified. The API CD spec is decades out of date, most dual rated petrol biased oils are at a minimum API CF or ACEA B4 but personally I prefer dedicated diesel oils, our little diesels are highly stressed and wear metals drop with real diesel engine oils. If oil consumptions is reduced, that's a bonus, I'd say that oil suits your engine better than what you've been using, although ultimately used oil analysis over a number of oil change periods between the old and new oils is the only way to really now what's going on.

In my experience the airflow throw the Deefer engine bay is ****, it becomes a high pressure zone and so it needs that viscous fan to keep pushing the air out of the engine bay at speed, not necessarily draw the air through the rad. This has been proven by quite a few here in Australia over many years. The Tdi or TD5 would start to overheat at highway speeds, checked and replaced the fan clutch and the problem is solved. A work around is to cut a slot or hole in the side of the guard (not the top, top, the side is a low pressure region, the air flow is really disturbed on top of the guard, it does strange things) and let the hot, high pressure air escape. The condenser fan on the Oz spec A/C is next to useless, it's justa single Davies Craig 10" fan and only really helps at low speeds. Again, IME it actually blocks flow at high speed, as does the Oz spec condenser, which has a ridiculously fine fin pitch to get capacity and blocks air flow to the rad and intercooler. The condenser is an aftermarket and off the shelf Sanden part, not something specific to the Defender here on those older models. In winter I found up to 5* difference in coolant temp between the condenser in place and uninstalled. And another FWIW, the stock temp gauge is garbage, it has a huge amount of latitude built into it's movement, it's incredibly innacurate and is unduly influenced by the usual Defender **** earths. A decent aftermarket and preferably mechanical guage will show exactly what's going on, or better still install something like the Madman EMS or Engine Watchdog TM2

Forgot to take one today. This isn't the best photo, (it's years old, haven't run BFG's for maybe eight years?) but you can see the RHS mounted at each end of the outrigger. One day I'll re-jig them so that they are higher and through the side panel.