Land rover Defender

Yeah! I'm always a little jealous of Rosco with his Defener..(We drove Landrovers of various configs in my six years army,did some wicked things with them (accidently,of course) and never had one let me down..Even drove them from Innisfail to Mt Isa,on the dirt roads,some of the time..Depended who was looking..Radio is a wonderful thing,jus make sure you're not on the good Captain's frequency..The fun one was the SWB gun vehicle.A cut down 4-cyl SWB Landie. I was a 106mm recoiless "rifle gunner..Magic .5 Springfield semi auto on top..Fired that till target hit,white phosphurus puff,then fire the big one..As four fifths of the blase exited the vents in the breech block,on our first test,it blew all the metal around the mudguards away..4/5 out rear & 1/5 out muzzle + "re-coiless".That's why later gun rigs had cut away guards.Sporty. Course,firing the 20 pounder & .30 Browning machine gun in the Centurion was a "gas".They paid us to do that..I would have paid them to do it..(If I had a dollar,that is)..I miss my sniffs of cordite..Reminds me of when I was on leave from Vict to Qld,I bought four cans of,wait for it,"Picnic Point Mountain Air" from Toowoomba..We all got around in a huddle in the barracks,Puckapunyal,opened the cans and breathed it in.."You're jokin'! you ask :-)!MPG:6!

Which brings up just how hard the Army pushed their vehicles . Civilian cross country usually means select the best line of approach and adjust speed for comfort . Army cross country often meant select the line of approach dictated by the tactical situation and go flat out regardless of any consideration for comfort or vehicle damage . For the Landrover with a 106mm recoiless this meant they could ambush a Centurian tank and then outrun its 22.5mph mates . Big shock was to find that a 35mph Leopard could catch the Landrover . The one thing that would break on the Landrover was the axle . This was considered a good point because it protected the rest of the power train . Every Landrover carried spare axles and they could be replaced quickly .

7.62mm is even faster and the Leopard has a couple to deliver a good spray

Our 1994 Landcruiser 80 series 290,000km is completely dry , actually it has never had an oil leak! Regards Ken.

Snailbait,
You landrovians wonder why tojo/nissan owners insist on putting crap on your chosen vehicle? Why pretend?

I was looking at a defender at one stage, got sick of looking at thrashed and rusted troopies. Rang a rover specialist to ask about inherent problems, said I'd heard they have problems with oil leaks etc. They guy wet himself, "if its got no oil leaks then its not a landrover!"

I think the next generation of land rovers will be a totally different story ie-D3. Look forward to seeing the new Defender now they actually seem to have some kind of focus on quality contral. Probably be an all independent trendite poser car but might surprise. Will take a long time before people like me trust the name after all the problems they've given in the past.

Matt

you must have got the only good one they made hang on to it its a collectors item
seriously mate had an 01 td5 the dealer had it more than i did other than oil leaks ,refusing to start and having to wear gumboots if it rained it wasn't too bad don't know why i bought a Nissan instead.

There must be two, I've got a 2001 TD5 and no real problems to speak of, certainly little in the way of oil leaks..............

Snailbait & Landie
sorry to sound so negative but I had such a bad trot with the one I had it was second hand and cheap ( now i know why ) after purchase i discovered it had a history of problems which the dealer knew of but failed to fix for the previous owner after 3 mths he offered to take it back as trade on nissan have not looked back-still have the nissan maybe i had the dud, but i would not have another one
regards Kev

Hi Ian
Thanks for reply .You are right done more research

since Have put the gun back in shed. HA HA.

Landies are good but theirs a lot to learn.

Another question run off problems 300tdi timing belt did modification kit fix this problem .
Mine has been done seems ok done about 30000km since
Also any one know who sells Tachos to suit Defenders
Regards Axle

There was a problem with the timing belt mechanism in the early 300Tdi engines. Well, not so much the timing belt itself, but the injection pump mounting bracket which, it assembled wrongly at the factory, would stress the timing case and cause mis-alignment of the pulleys and idlers, causing the belt to run off the front of the pulleys and rub against the case - and eventually break...

Depending on the build date of the vehicle (VIN number), there were two rectification kits produced. [If you wish to send me your VIN (click on my Thermoguard logo to get to my email link), I can let you have the VIN ranges concerned.]

The No.1 kit was quite extensive (and expensive!) and included a complete new timing case, injection pump bracket, new crank pulley, tensioner, idler and timing belt. The No.2 kit (for later VIN nos. which presumably already had the modified pump bracket) had 'only' the new crank puley (with flanges either side of the toothed pulley), plus new tensioner, idler and belt.

As far as I know, there are no ongoing problems with engines with the correct kit fitted [ours has done another 110,000 km and another replacement belt - the old one showed no 'odd' wear, since being 'kitted']. BUT, if an early engine had belt problems and was NOT fitted with the No.1 kit , it would continue to wear belts prematurely. The LR Technical Bulletin says the new timing case should be marked with a 1cm square of yellow paint near the injection pump - but I've never seen one so marked, even though I know the No.1 kit has been fitted.

So, if you happened to have one of the early engines which had a problem (and not all did - it depended on 'luck of the draw' on the assemly line, AFAIK) AND it's had the correct kit fitted, it should be quite OK.

Now, just in case the large and vocal anti-Land Rover faction out there is about to start frothing at the mouth about 'unreliable Land Rovers' again, I would point out: All the information about these problems (including the official factory technical bulletins) is readily available on the web - is this the case with similar problems with Toyotas (for example: 100Series IFS diff failures) and Nissans (Patrol ZD30 engine failures)?

Sorry, forgot to mention, VDO make diesel tachos that will work from the Defender's alternator pick-up. 'Speco' also make a good range of instruments as well, but I don't know if they do a diesel tacho.

I have a circuit design that will allow a 'normal' spark-ignition tacho work from a diesel alternator or crankshaft pick-up but it costs about $100 to build, so it's not economical unless you already have a good tacho you wish to adapt.
Ian