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New Vehicle, VW Amorok


Boydie

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16 minutes ago, Happyoldgit said:

Current Ranger can be had in 2.2 or 3.2 flavours. Quite happy with mine which I bought new few months ago. Pity my last few new Defenders weren't screwed together so well.

2.2 ,right thanks for that . Without a doubt screwed together better than a defender ,what isn't ?but I just don't like it , driven it half a dozen times now and it does nothing for me , whenever I drive a rodeo I always get out thinking "yep, wouldn't mind one of them" , each to their own and not a criticism of anyone that buys one 

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I had a couple of the older rangers, (rebadged mazdas). They were ok, the 2002 2.5td was very commercial, needed constant servicing but was generally reliable, only significant fault was a fuel pump at £1600. It was up to site working.

The 2007 2.5td was very car like to drive, too high geared for towing, had various niggles with suspension faults, wheel problems, electrical problems etc but it never actually let me down, if always got back to the dealer under it's own steam.

I swapped it for a 60 plate 3.0td rodeo which was more commercial than the ford but much more robust and in almost 100,000 miles hasn't needed a single part aside from service items which is currently for sale.

I'm currently driving a 15 plate 2.5td d-max which is quieter than the rodeo and smoother and despite the smaller engine it does have more grunt, noticeable when towing or overtaking mostly, the climate control is a bit annoying, not sure why I can't just have a slider for hot and cold and a switch for the fan, but that seems to be the way cars are now. I miss having 2 reverse lights like the rodeo had but again, not many cars seem to have 2 now, but they're just niggles. I really don't like the auto box, even in normal driving it doesn't seem to want to shift up until over 3000rpm and if your cruising at 50mph in 5th and give the throttle even the slightest nudge to wind upto 60 it kicks down to 4th. I know you can override but if your doing that all the time you might as well have a manual? I also find the traction control less useful than the LSD that the rodeo had when offroad but there are obvious advantages on road. The worst bit is I'm getting 5mpg less than my friend with an identical manual. <_<

And March / April time the VW should arrive, lets hope I like that :huh:

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21 minutes ago, honitonhobbit said:

The biggest annoyance I've found with the Isuzu has been towing. The 2.5Td has different towing characteristics than the 3.0. Not in power but when towing the same tri axle trailer with the same weight on. The trailer snakes at over 50 on the 2.5...  No idea why

Do they have different nose weights? I was towing my 110 down to Wales with the 3.6 L322 and found that started having anaconda snakes above about 50 despite me strapping down the body work which I hadn't done last time. After a couple of brown pants moments I pulled over in a services and shifted the 110 forward <1" and it made the world of difference. Just a bit too light rear meaning the back wheels weren't getting perhaps as much traction as they wanted.

Maybe if the 2.5 is a lighter engine then wants less weight on the rear than the 3.0 so that the front isn't lifted up quite as much?

Just a thought anyway because I was astonished how much <1" made to the stability of the 322. When I towed Dad's new toy (a 2 tonne horizontal and vertical mill) on a triple axle trailer behind the L322 the only reason I knew there was something behind me was because it wasn't quite as quick accelerating as it normally is. Accidentally went significantly above the 60mph limit when merging onto the M5 but it didn't really notice.

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The D-max is slightly heavier than the Rodeo but not by much. Couldn't say about axle weights. I always load the nose of the trailer heavy anyway, I find the pickups like that. I haven't pulled anything that heavy with the D-max yet so can't comment, however I've had the rodeo snaking twice, once with a discovery loaded backwards which I put down to poor loading and once when I didn't strap the body of the Range Rover down (think long soft springs) then joined the motorway at speed and went straight to the middle lane to go around a lorry, as I straightened up the body of the range rover rolled and took the trailer towards the central reservation, then rolled back and took the trailer towards the hard shoulder and it just got worse and worse. I was expecting to go into the barrier but held my nerve, held the speed I was doing (didn't have the bottle to speed up) and didn't fight it too much, I let it take me from side to side slightly and luckily it settled down. So I put that down to poor loading and poor driving :D

A bloke at work had a D2, they'd changed the fuel pump on his sons mondeo and were taking it on the trailer to the dealer to be coded in. It was loaded backwards and it took them off the sliproad when they were trying to join the motorway and wrote off the disco, trailer and mondeo :/

The Mitsubishi / Fiat have trailer wobble assist, I've never had that so don't know how good it is but I did once see a promotional video of a disco with a defender on the trailer and it looked quite impressive. Infact here it is;

 

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I've towed the odd load over the years, so have tried the usual tricks. I know the suspension on the Rodeo and D max very well - helping to develop the aftermarket suspension set up from IM made sure of that. There's no obvious reason why. I'm surprised the vehicle has such a high towing rating. Very few pickups tow well at the top end of the weight scale

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Well they're all around the 2 tonne mark kerb weight so it goes against the usual advice, couple that with the leaf suspension designed to carry over a tonne payload, the fact that the back is usually relatively empty when towing and the tall narrow stature of the 4x4 models I think you have to be prepared to drive them accordingly.

The way I look at it is that most of them do a base model which is around the £16k +vat mark which has the same running gear, suspension and body as the fancy ones, which they are trying to make as practical and comfortable as a saloon car, an off roader, a van and a tow car, for the price of a ford focus, so I think you can only expect so much.

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It is if you only want to run 1 car. The alternative is a regular car for shipping the family around comfortably and economically, a van for work and a 4x4 for offroad and towing. If most of your driving doesn't need the 4x4 then you could make a saving on economy, have the extra comfort and easier parking of a car, the greater practicality of a van and the better offroad / towing potential of a 4x4. However by the time you've bought them, taxed them and insured them I'm quite happy to live with the compromises to get it all in one package!

Or switch to a 5th wheel trailer and enjoy better stability, less fussiness over loading and potentially carry more weight.

Edited by Cynic-al
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We live too far from civilisation to be a one car family. Added to which with a wife working crazy shift patterns 35 miles from home and my need to be on call anywhere over 1500kms of road network...  To be honest a bit of common sense and we could sell the Discoveries, sell the Audi; buy a pick-up and use the company car more. But then I would have no toys

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Well you've got to have a bit of fun too :)

Mines a works truck which means I don't have to buy it, tax it, insure it, service it etc etc so being a Yorkshire lad and incredibly tight it's in my interest to have that one vehicle to do as much as possible :lol:

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The company I'm working for at the moment haven't approached the "company car as a working vehicle" concept yet. So my company car gets so much abuse it's unreal.  The contract comes to an end in June, so It's TUPE time again. I'm thinking of going down the 'money in hand, 44p a mile' option now that tax is so crazy. A pick up will then be very much on the cards; and the sale of at least one Disco. I'm thinking that I might keep the Mpi now that diesel is the sum of all fear

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IMG_1564.JPGWhat were we saying about Rodeo's ? Not the motors fault , it's been "farmered " ,no oil in transfer case ,grindy grindy seize ?

In the background you can see a disco quietly rusting !

regarding Diesel becoming the evil in the world ,it's already made me wonder if the 110 should have the V8 put back in ?

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Completely agree, you've got to be doing a lot of miles for a company car to pay now, the tax is horrific. If a car allowance was offered I would consider it and run something older.

 

Good luck rebuilding the transfer case!

 

The Mazda always was a bit ugly, it's coming back to the UK soon but based on the next generation Isuzu oddly... and it's still ugly. :lol: I think it's because ford started making the trucks instead of mazda and ford wouldn't allow mazda to sell against them in Europe.

Edited by Cynic-al
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I turned down the present company's car allowance because of the 'Green' conditions they required. Not over 7 years old. 120gms/km. 55mpg.

Benefit in kind is going to hit the roof in April.

My present one is due back in mid May - Skoda Roomster Scout, great car - I had ordered a new motor, then found out I was going to be TUPE'd in July, so I'm just taking on a colleagues Leon Estate for the 6 weeks or so....

I don't like the Ford's looks... not keen on the latest Mazda looks either. Best looking truck IMHO is the Toyota D4D

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Re the Rodeo from my earlier post Transfer box replaced with a second hand unit , motor is an 06 ,the replacement came out of an 07 ,completely different serial numbers ?Took a chance and it was the right one ,only £200 and a trip to Lancashire to collect it , nice easy job to swap as well , yup I still like em ??.Thing is if I sold the disco, the 110 hicap and all the other landrovers and bits I could afford a nice jap double cab around the 10k mark , but I would rather have the 110 , no I don't understand it either ????

Edited by Ozzy50
I forgot summat
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On 02/02/2017 at 6:45 PM, hangover said:

Just the look, the lines are horrible. Ford got it right and Mazda went the opposite way.

I agree the ford looks a little tougher or better. But I dont mind the Mazda at all.

 

and for a $8000 difference model to model,  well ford can get.......

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Unless I get offered one as a company car, it isn't happening. One of the joys of having small and expensive children and living in a beautiful part of the country is that we have to stick with cheaper cars. Having said that I love my Discovery. It might be old, but it's comfortable, economic and generally reliable

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Well you can now pre order your Mercedes X-class pickup, there is no official price, spec, or even a firm photo of what it will be like but for just a thousand pounds deposit you can get yourself in the queue to be one of the first to own one when they're released... sometime next year... ish

http://www.mercedes-benz.co.uk/content/unitedkingdom/mpc/mpc_unitedkingdom_website/en/home_mpc/van/home/new_vans/models/pickup/x-class.html?gclid=CO7flpe2gNICFcy87QodCu4FzA&csref=13C9802_VNWEB06346_WEB1701907005_dsp_270117&s_kwcid=AL!160!3!163384169699!b!!g!!%2Bmercedes %2Bpick %2Bup&ef_id=V6hedgAAAKlb-cei:20170208114425:s

It's built in the same factory as the Nissan, with the Nissan chassis and suspension but a wider track, probably options of the Nissan 2.3 diesel or the Mercedes 3.0 V6 diesel already used in some of their other vehicles and a 7 speed auto with part time 4wd. Based on the fact that the new Nissan is, in my opinion, awful, and the lack of full time 4wd and all the concept models being full of awful Mercedes go go gadget controls I can't say it excites me that much.

Finally got a date for my VW, being built week 13 with delivery a few weeks after... which feels like a lifetime to wait :rolleyes: I like buying second hand, you get what you see!

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