Land Rover Defender?

andy162

Anybody on here drive a Land Rover Defender? I'm considering buying one as my day to day machine. I'm drawn to the fact that I can sling my bikes in & not worry too much if they or I am caked in mud. I like the idea of not being to precious about it, if it gets the odd knock or ding...so be it. Depreciation appears to be almost horizontal too.

I'm thinking of a TD5 Station Wagon.

unixnerd

With the weather up here I've been looking at loads of them on ebay, doubt if I'll do anything about it though. A few things to be aware of:

The 110 has a turning circle similar to a supertanker, I'd go for a 90.
The older non-turbo ones struggle to do 60mph and can't keep up with traffic.
If you're not using it much you'd may be better with a petrol V8 (with an LPG conversion if you can find one). I'm told the old diesels can be murder to start in really cold weather.
Check the chassis and bulkhead for rust, that's where they go first.

Discoveries are a good deal cheaper, get one of those and put a big plastic tray in the back. Much more civilised in traffic and as good off road unless you plan on getting silly.

Monst

Firstly. I own a 90 - Ex Military 2.5 N/A diesel. and ride road bikes and MTB. My road milage is about 4000 miles per year. Milage in the Landy is about the same.

To dispel a few myths.

A 90 and a 110 are exactly the same except the 110 is longer..So thus the turning circle is the same. If it's a problem, just learn to do a 3 point turn.

The 2.5 N/A (ie non turbo) engine is; a) bomb proof; b) easy to maintain; c) will do 80 mph (eventually) and; d) will keep up with the traffic even at 60: e) if you want to keep up with other motor traffic, use the 'gear' stick..it's what it there for!.. Buy an ex military and thanks to the heavy duty suspension, Chassis, proper servicing etc you will have a car better serviced than any 'civi' car.

Also Landrovers are cheap to maintain...if not to re fuel if used daily...My 2.5 N/A does 27 mpg, but costs about £110 per year fully comp insurance, tax is at the normal rate.

A 110 will fit as many bikes in as you wish. A 90 will take a complete, i.e, no front wheel removed, road bike, plus a front wheel removed road bike. Comfortably. If you are into MTB then you would have to remove the front wheel to fit in a 90. Not in a 110, however.

Holyzeus

Where to start.....?
You'll be lucky to find a V8 apart from the 50th model which still commands big money.
A TD5 will be more refined and responsive compared to a NA or TDi but more reliant on electrics. As mentioned look closely at the bulkhead, chassis and rear crossmember regardless of age.
Landy's rot for fun.
How much is your daily mileage? A Disco is just as capable in the rough stuff, load's of room in the back with the rear seat's down - a real all rounder really. They have their own problems with rot, chassis, sill's, boot floor and rear inner arches.

Any specific q's ask away, i own a 90 and a Disco

Berk Bonebonce

Cars suck.

4x4 = climate change.

And what do you need a 4x4 for anyway? The ramp at Tesco's?

An inch of snow and they want a 4x4 ...

rake

you might find it hard to get comfortable beind the wheel if your over 5'6".
cheap to maintain unless you have any sort of a problem of any kind.
poor turning circle.
great fun to drive imo but dont be in a hurry.
unless your a farmer or other i cant see why theyre necessary, and bloody annoying if your in a car.

unixnerd

An inch of snow and they want a 4x4 ...

On the whole I agree. But up here we have 20" of snow and my normal car (even with its snow tyres) is going nowhere due to ground clearance issues. We had snow here until the middle of May last year. There are places where 4x4s are justified, just not very many in the UK. You might feel differently if you had snow for six months of the year.

batch78

Great when they work, the most annoying barstard things when they don't, if you've ever owned an Alfa you'll know the feeling.

Don't currently own one myself, have been considering it, but use one for work.

This week the heaters decided to stop working! Ice on inside of windscreen is not fun.

Last week the ECU was playing up and the oil filter decided to start leaking, £150 to fix all faults.

Previously, oil ingress of the wiring loom, seized fan, ECU twice, brakes, dampers, loose rear sliding window (its a pickup), little bit of rust, door wont close properly still, windscreen wiper failure then malfunction, got the touring car look going on at the minute, and yes the turning circle is poor.

Saying all that its covered 143000 miles, towed ridiculous loads, is 12 years old, scares people when you rev at lights and is quick enough through first gear, road speed is adequate and its an iconic vehicle.

Drive one, you may hate it, the cabins quite cramped and its certainly basic, but if your not worried about its foibles it will become the only car you ever need.

Will Snow

Berk Bonebonce wrote:

Cars suck.

4x4 = climate change.

And what do you need a 4x4 for anyway? The ramp at Tesco's?

An inch of snow and they want a 4x4 ...

I enjoy burning tyres, just to annoy you

rake

i think they ran the wiring for the injectors inside the rocker cover on the td5 (inside the engine) which is why the wiring loom gets oiled up. pretty stupid thing to do.

batch78

Yes they did.

Yes it was!

MattC59

Berk Bonebonce wrote:

4x4 = climate change.

Oh you poor misguided fool :roll:
My 4x4 Passat will do 48mpg with no trouble at all.

And because most Land Rovers are still in use, the lifetime carbon footprint etc is very low.

I'm calling TROLL !!!

guinea

There are very few people in the UK that ened a 4x4. I'm from the Highlands (not inn the middle of the Cairngorms though) and I've never been snowed in. All roads have, while open, been passable in almost any vehicle.

However, I recently bought a Land Rover (Freelander HSE).

Why?

It was the logical choice after my last car, a Renault Scenic. I have a farm back home and go and look after it. I need to carry stuff and go off road in a way that was impossible in a Scenic. I'm not talking about a dirt road, I mean across peat. I can't afford a car and a tractor, so this does both. The freelander is not a true off road machine, but it does what I need comfortably. It's all about the clearance and the 4wd.

Best thing is the heated window washers. I had -15C rated washer fluid last year and it still froze. On a damp salty road this means about 3 minutes of driving in a queue of traffic before you're blind. I pulled into a garage (in Aviemore) to defrost and even the tap in the garage had frozen shut.

However, I looked at a defender. For me it was just far too small in the cockpit. I couldn't do all day driving in it.

andy162

If I do get one it'll be a 90 Station Wagon. I certainly don't "need" a 4x4, it's not about that for me. I'm just struggling to think of any other vehicle that I can knock about, get my bikes in without any fuss, pay £10k for & then see a big chunk of that back when I sell up. Is there anything else?

I also like that fact that if I get 10 year old Defender it'll still be going strong in another 20. Can't imagine any Prius's going after 30years? So really the envioronmental arguement doesn't stack up.

As regards the comfort thing. I do find them a bit of a squeeze but I used one for a year or so when I worked for National Grid & got on with it ok.

Holyzeus

Regards the comfort thing you can get a "bulhead removal bar" which allow's you to re-fit the seats further back should you wish/need to. Also there is lots of different seats you can fit

Squillinossett

If your looking for one at a decent price, but in good condition drop me a PM, one of my clients is a car dealer who pretty much exclusively deals in defenders!

I can put you in touch if you need, and ask him to take care of you.

Pokerface

andy162 wrote:

If I do get one it'll be a 90 Station Wagon. I certainly don't "need" a 4x4

If you live in East Yorkshire you probably DO need a 4x4!

unixnerd

I recently bought a Land Rover (Freelander HSE).

I kind of dismissed those as they didn't seem to have much ground clearance and I know they used to (maybe they fixed it?) have head gasket problems. Maybe I'll give them another look......

guinea

unixnerd wrote:

I recently bought a Land Rover (Freelander HSE).

I kind of dismissed those as they didn't seem to have much ground clearance and I know they used to (maybe they fixed it?) have head gasket problems. Maybe I'll give them another look......

The ground clearance is higher on the Freelander 2, the gasket problems are long gone too.

If you want to tow and travel off road, then it is not as good as a defender. However, if you need it for trails and snow, with good tyres, it's fine. I think there's only 10mm clearance difference between them on comparable tyres. The defender gives more wheen options though as there's more space to play with.

Buckled_Rims

unixnerd wrote:

I kind of dismissed those as they didn't seem to have much ground clearance and I know they used to (maybe they fixed it?) have head gasket problems. Maybe I'll give them another look......

The gasket problem was with the Rover 1.8 petrol engine. It was a simple fix but costly. I can't remember any problems with the diesel engine.

http://www.freelanderheadgasket.co.uk/

nwallace

Monst wrote:

A 90 and a 110 are exactly the same except the 110 is longer..So thus the turning circle is the same. If it's a problem, just learn to do a 3 point turn.

The 90 and 110 refers to the wheelbase, so to maintain the same turning circle the 110 must have more steering lock.

Old SAABs have an insane amount of lock that lets me turn a SAAB 99 in less space than a shorter wheelbase hatch. It really chews up the tyres though.

unixnerd wrote:

An inch of snow and they want a 4x4 ...

On the whole I agree. But up here we have 20" of snow and my normal car (even with its snow tyres) is going nowhere due to ground clearance issues.

Previously mentioned SAAB is struggling with Ground Clearance in places even in Dundee/Fife and it sits quite high and is designed for Scandinavian conditions (would like to have the engine preheater that was standard in Sweden).

andy162 wrote:

Can't imagine any Prius's going after 30years? So really the envioronmental arguement doesn't stack up.

What are the batteries made of and what's their expected life? Most will probably be running exclusively on internal combustion after 5 years.

Holyzeus wrote:

Where to start.....?
You'll be lucky to find a V8 apart from the 50th model which still commands big money.

May be difficult to find, but there are plenty of Rover V8's around so perfectly feasible to build one.

Holyzeus

Don't get me started on Prius's....

I was referring to original factory v8's which are desirable and scarce

nwallace

Holyzeus wrote:

Don't get me started on Prius's....

I was referring to original factory v8's which are desirable and scarce

Aye, I realised you were meaning ones that were built as V8's.

A mate has a Range Rover that started off as a V8 Petrol Automatic, it's now got a 2.5L Diseasel and a 5 speed box.

unixnerd

For someone who's just running one in the winter on very few miles a year the V8 makes sense. I drove a '93 diesel automatic Disco from Dundee to Aberdeen once for a mate and struggled to stay at 70 a good bit of the time, the auto box was dreadful with the diesel. Seem to be a fair number of V8 Discos on ebay. I drove a manual V8 '96 Disco at a Land Rover open day and it was much nicer.

Loads of V8 Range Rovers of course, some at silly prices no doubt due to needing lots of work!

By the way, do Freelanders have a high / low ratio gearbox like their big brothers?

What year did they start putting rear anti-roll bars on Discos? The '93 rolled like a pig.

Holyzeus

Just seen this ad on a Landy forum i'm on


I thought i'd offer this on the forum first and see if there was any interest there would be in my V8 90 before it went onto ebay.Only selling truck as i am going to build a 110 for a Overlanding trip to N Africa and for use with business.

Just had a complete ground up rebuild
Rust free painted chassis with new rear crossmember
Totally rebuilt 3.9 with uprated cam/weber500/4 branch sports exhaust system
+2" springs
+5 terrafirma shocks with rear challenge mounts
terrafirma turrets/rings
caster corrected radius arms/double cranked rears
x5 265 A/T with rear swingaway carrier

Basically the whole truck has been gone through with every nut/bolt changed(mainly stainless)
Hopefully looking for about £4-4500
Any thoughts or comments


www.re-bourne4x4.co.uk
h

nwallace

unixnerd wrote:

I drove a '93 diesel automatic Disco from Dundee to Aberdeen once for a mate and struggled to stay at 70 a good bit of the time, the auto box was dreadful with the diesel.

For those that don't know the nature of the A90 between Dundee and Aberdeen, if you're not going up hill then you're going downhill. Anything vaguely underpowered struggles to maintain 70 on that road, and anything that isn't underpowered is doing 90 to 100 between speed cameras.
Think the only exception is the flat straight past the AM Philip Iveco dealership and in the Mearns between Stracathro Services and Laurencekirk.

Never driven an Automatic Diesel, but Mum's 3 speed Auto SAAB needed a fair bit of work with the kickdown and controlling when you let it change gear to get it going well.

unixnerd

Your photobucket link doesn't seem to work. How well do the soft tops seal? I'd have thought they'd be a bit chilly in the depths of a cold winter.

mrdsgs

you might want to check the comments about the space in the back for bikes

i have a 110 Td5 Station wagon

Unless you fold down the middle row of seats you will only just get one road bike in diagonally across the back with the front wheel removed.

If you remove the middle row of seats or get a hardtop (no seats or doors in the middle, more like a van) then you will get about 4-5 road bikers in side by side with front wheels on, no problem.

In a 90 you will be surprised how little space there is in the back. You will only be able to get a road bike in with front wheel on if it protrudes between the front seats where the cubby box is usually fitted.

Holyzeus

http://s1014.photobucket.com/albums/af262/rjp2558/

This link should work, no idea bout door top's but it is a Defender........
Two thing's on earth are visable from space, the great wall of China and the gaps on a Land Rover

Chiggy

They're a heap of trouble to keep on the road.

stratcat

I had an ex army SWB Airportable series three aka lightweight 88''. I couldn't get my trek mountain bike in without taking the front wheel off. With the forks touching the bulkhead there wasn't much room behind the wheel to close the tailgate.
With the longevity of these vehicles, from a carbon footprint point of view over their lifetime they are a lot better than modern throw away cars. Its the pretend "lifestyle" 4x4's that are the problem imho. I forget the number, but something like 90% of the landrovers ever made are still roadworthy. I miss mine when the weather is like this. I'd have another one, but I do a lot of miles for my job and couldn't justify the fuel costs. I'm 5'11 and had no probs behind the wheel, but they aren't the most luxurious vehicles especially at this time of year. Mine had a canvas tilt and it was drafty, nothing a wooly hat and gloves couldn't solve.
The ice on the inside of the screen was a bit trickier to solve