Spares to carry ?

[Boydie]

Ahhhh speedfreak, if you think you could repair THAT hose you have got to be awarded this weeks Optimists Medal, but then, being a Disco owner my guess is, like me you were born an optimist.

[sierrafery]

while you can bodge several things with tape or wire or a piece of wood and the D2 can limp with several faults there's one bit which IMO it's safe to have in the glove box, a crank sensor...cos if that one fails you are stuck for good and it has no backup whatsoever... i wish i had one few years ago in the middle of nowhere... now it's in the glovebox well packed

[Dave W]

On our trip around Australia (Defender 90 TD5) we were a bit strapped for room so went with the minimum really. We carried a spare tyre on the roof as well as a spare wheel/tyre on the back door and that was jammed full of light weight spares - air filters, spare coolant pipes, fuel pipe and clips, a few metres of wire.

We went with the view that anything that could stop the vehicle was essential so crank sensor and throttle pot were essential for the TD5 along with spare belts (one with A/C, one without, together with idler pulley), spare alternator. We also carried a spare starter motor as it's an auto. The dual batteries were configured so that they could be used in tandem to start the vehicle or quickly reconfigured to use the auxiliary battery to start the vehicle in the event that the main battery died. We also carried a spare AS10 unit (pre-configured) and a spare engine ECU.

On top of that we had a Nanocom, a complete set of bushes, at least one of each external oil seal, spare fuel filters and the complete workshop manual on iBooks (available on 4 devices, 2 iPhones, an iPad and a Laptop. A set of spare brake pads, a spare flexi hose and a couple of metres of brake pipe with a hand flaring tool.

As well as spares we carried a number of general purpose items like self amalgamating tape, steel putty, duct tape, tie wraps, crimps and a crimping tool.

We didn't go over the top on fluids but carried between 2 and 4 litres of each oil and, obviously, we always had over 20 litres of drinking water with us.

Before we shipped the vehicle I gave it a thorough look over, particularly looking for pipes/wires etc that may be rubbing. I then gave the vehicle to a friend for a day (he's a mechanic with a very good eye for detail to the point of being annoying) for him to look over it and fix or advise on anything he could see that was sub par.

The only thing that we knew could stop us (being an auto) was a split oil cooler pipe or oil cooler for the auto. There was no way we could carry enough ATF to cope with that so a lot of attention was paid to the pipework and condition of all those components,

We fitted a Madman gauge to forewarn of anything going out of range, monitoring coolant level, coolant temp, oil pressure, EGT, transfer box temp, battery voltage.

Our "last ditch" kit included a satellite phone and the very small list of Australian Land Rover parts places that would ship "anywhere".

http://landytravels.com

[Boydie]

It seems that you were well prepared the main reason I chose a diesel over a petrol was the comparative simplicity of the diesel over the petrol, no crank-sensors etc. Another consideration was the availability of diesel out in the Australian bush is far greater than petrol.

The auto is a far better transmission box for sandy deserts than the manual, the moment you engage the clutch to change gear driving up a sand dune you are bogged!! that said I changed mine from an auto to a manual simply because I can fix a manual but repairing an auto with burnt out clutches or a damaged valve plate out in the bush is beyond my ability, in addition the manual can be push started or rolled.

Its all about the KIS principle -- Keep It Simple.