Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i Land Rover Monthly

On Sunday December 10 large parts of Great Britain woke to a fairly decent covering of snow. It was our first proper fall of the winter, creating chaos on the roads and closing hundreds of schools in the process. It snowed for most of that day in my village. While the police urged motorists not to travel unless their journeys were absolutely necessary, I (carefully) drove my Land Rover to the next village for a pub lunch. I do love my Sunday roasts. On the way we stopped at one of the steepest hills in Bedfordshire. About 20 kids were zooming down it on their sledges before taking the slow walk to the top to do it all over again. My Defender was the only vehicle in attendance. That day…

IS THIS what the new Defender will look like? The first spy shots of the long-overdue model have finally appeared, and the motoring press have got rather excited, but here at LRM we reckon this is a ‘mule’ – in other words it has got the new vehicle’s running gear, but not the bodywork. Instead, a crudely butchered Range Rover body has been dropped on to disguise it. From side-on, with half of its back doors, it looks like a big chunk of the body has been chopped out to suit a wheelbase similar to the outgoing 90, although rumours from Solihull claim it is unlikely that such a short wheelbase will make production. According to a report in Auto Express, who published the spy shots, JLR executive Dr Ralf…

FRUSTRATED FARMERS, adventurers, aid workers, construction engineers and everyone else bemoaning the absence of the utilitarian Defender from Land Rover’s line-up are expected to be eager customers for the new Discovery Commercial, which was launched by JLR just a week before Christmas. By scrapping the second and third rows of seats, Land Rover have created 1856 litres of flexible load space, while still affording driver and passenger levels of comfort and entertainment never experienced in the much-missed Defender, which went out of production more than two years ago. Discovery Commercial shares the underpinnings of the Discovery, including wide-spaced double-wishbone suspension at the front, with advanced multi-link layout at the rear, to provide responsive handling without compromising off-road capability. There’s a choice of Ingenium 2.0-litre SD4 (240 bhp) or 3.0-litre TD6…

COUPLING FILTER PRICE £27.70 This Gen3 coupling filter for the Freelander 2 was never made available by Land Rover. Will fit Freelander 2s up to 2015. ebay.co.uk CRANKED REAR RADIUS ARMS PRICE £136 Take away the strain on your chassis bushes with this pair of cranked rear radius arms. Will fit a Defender, Discovery and Range Rover Classic though they must have standard ride height suspension set-up. The arms have been zinc passivated with a yellow heavy-duty powder coating. rimmerbros.com DOOR SECURITY KIT PRICE £29.99 Protect the doors of your Defender from being nicked with these easy-to-fit door hinge security kits. Even if the thief manages to remove the exterior bolts they won’t be able to remove the doors thanks to these hinges. Made from pretty strong stainless steel. Includes…

THE CAMEL Trophy had begun in 1980, when three German teams driving Ford U50 vehicles, which were licence-built Jeep CJ5s, had completed a transit of the Trans-Amazonian highway from Belem to Santarem in Brazil. But it is with Land Rover vehicles that the event is best-associated because, for the second event in 1981, Land Rover began a partnership with the Camel that would continue until 1998. Over the years, every then current model of Land Rover vehicle was used: the Range Rover V8 in 1981 (Sumatra) and 1982 (Papua New Guinea), the Series III 88-inch in 1983 (Zaire), the One Ten in 1984 (Brazil), the Ninety in 1985 (Borneo) and 1986 (Australia), the Range Rover VM Turbo diesel in 1987 (Madagascar), and the One Ten again in 1988 (Sulawesi) and…

Wouldn’t it be great if time travel was possible? I would pay good money to go back to 1957 and watch my Dad weave his 500cc Norton Dominator motorbike along Yorkshire’s twisting lanes. Science tells us we can’t travel back in time, but I know that classic car restorers do it all the time. It occurs when we liberate a wreck from a farmer’s field intent on returning that car back to factory-fresh originality. And then again when we return to the location of important events in our car’s history and hold-up faded photographs to recreate the scene. There is something deep, even ancient, in our urge to connect with stories in the past. This story is about two veterans of Lode Lane who, in 1994, felt an urge to…

IN HIS spare time Alan is chairman of the Tay 4x4 club, and loves a good session of off-roading. “I’ve been with the club since the early days when I was still driving the 90,” Alan reveals. “I’d already bob-tailed one of the Classics, and had great fun driving it off-road. I also used it at a lot of competition and trial events, where it performed very well. I then moved the vehicle on, and acquired a Whitbread V8 buggy. I still use this on club off-roading days. I christened the buggy ‘Bertie’, and it was originally set up as a comp safari. I’ve since altered the vehicle to use for winch challenge work.” Although he enjoys winching, Alan is a little concerned that the challenge is getting beyond the…

On January 18, 1996, Land Rover formally announced that it had been awarded a contract worth in excess of £200 million for a total of 8800 vehicles, of which most would be the Defender 90/110 TUL/TUM models though about 800 would be Defender 130 XD-based ambulances. The Defender 90 HS and 110 HS (the the suffix standS for Higher Specification) were codenamed WOLF during development by Land Rover and the Defender 130 HS Battle Field Ambulance was codenamed PULSE. I know this codename for a fact as I had to sign for the keys of one of the prototypes in 1996.…

The Peterborough 4x4 and Vintage Spares Day is a new event for 2018, and is organised by Mark Woodward. The event will take place in the Pavilion Hall and Cattle Buildings at the East of England Showground in Peterborough. Details and prices for trade stands can be found on the website and can be booked online, too. For the public the event runs from 9.00 am until 1.00 pm and admission is £6.50. Details of this and other 4x4 Spares Day events can be found on the website. 4x4sparesday.co.uk…

This is the moment we’ve been waiting for. We’ve welded, repaired, rebuilt and reassembled almost everything we need. And now we’re almost ready to start it up. The last episode was a bit of an unusual one, in that we had to do the same job twice in essence: test-fitting the bodywork before painting the new bulkhead, then fitting it all again when it came back from the paintshop. The bulkhead is the pivotal part on the whole body, as everything comes out from that datum point. With that job done, James and I are almost free from the major component repairs. From now on, we’re literally like an assembly line, bolting on items, and building a Land Rover. I say almost free from component repairs because, while we were…

New doors are the only answer to the common white-spot corrosion that riddles side and tail doors on Series models and the early Ninety and One Tens through to the Tdi Defenders. Many doors are repaired with filler and/or GRP and repainted, but the corrosion always returns, aided and abetted by moisture working together with the mix of steel frame and aluminium outer skin. Fitting a new door is straightforward enough if you can buy the exact type that was fitted to the vehicle, so that all the latches, locks and window gear can be easily swapped over. But with older vehicles, like our 1989 Ninety here, some parts become obsolete or superseded, and we’ve had to fit a slightly later door pattern that has involved some jiggling to make…

Where did you find this D2? At a dealership in Melbourne. It had only had two previous owners; the most recent owning it for seven years. It was in excellent condition, showing 134,000 km, and was the model I was after, with the reinstalled centre difflock. It was inspected by a reputable Land Rover specialist in Melbourne and passed with flying colours. I then flew from Sydney and drove it back – about 940 km – and it ran like a dream. What are your plans with it? To keep it as original as I can, while modifying it for off-road touring, weekend camping and fishing trips with my wife and two young kids. I’m a desert driving fan, so modifications will be aimed at that role, without sacrificing around-town…

IF YOU Google ‘Daniel Morgan’ and ‘Land Rover Series III’ the top link (at the time of writing) is Land Rover UK’s PR Twitter account sharing a video of his 1972 Series III pulling an arctic lorry up a hill. Despite it only being two days since the incident passed, the video had close to 46,000 views, while on his Facebook page it had 1.3 million views. That is what you call going viral! The 21-year-old takes up the story: “We woke up to nearly seven inches of snow on Sunday [December 10] where I live in Bromsgrove, West Midlands. My girlfriend and I went to check up on my Nan and then as we were coming back saw a few people in trouble. I had already towed a BMW…

WITH PRICES starting from just under £168k, the new Range Rover SVAutobiography is a bit out of reach for us mere mortals – unless we win the lottery that is. So what do you get besides a vehicle that is lovingly hand-finished by the Jaguar Land Rover Special Vehicle Operations (SVO), then? For starters, it has huge reclining seats with hot stone massage function and heated calf and foot rests. As passengers stretch out in the 1.2 metres of leg room they can also make use of electrically deployable tables, 10-inch touchscreen entertainment screens and a concealed refrigerator (perfect for cooling the champers). They don’t even need to wait for a chauffeur to close their door, as there’s a button inside to do it. For those who can afford it,…

Send us your shot email patrick@lrm.co.uk  to feature your pic in LRM…

Cracked chassis We all have to start somewhere, and my life of welding up old vehicles started back in 1987 with a Triumph Herald 13/60 and an arc welder that I bought from Hal-fords for about £50. Back in those days, MIG welders were only for the wealthy: a small MIG outfit would have cost more than I paid for the Herald. So most DIY car restorers used arc (or stick) welders. For those readers too young to have come across one of these, an arc welder consisted of a very large transformer in a metal case, with some means of controlling the output (either a rotary knob or a series of switches), an electrode holder (a plastic handle on the end of a long, heavy cable containing a spring-loaded…

“I love cars and bought this Defender to try and preserve it for the future” Edward Watson thought he had it all. Living in the Suffolk countryside, working in London and driving a Range Rover Evoque. “I used to love driving the Evoque down to London and back. It really came into its own whenever I encountered potholes or water. It was much better than the Audis or BMWs that I’d owned before it.” In July 2017 Edward’s life changed for the better when he picked up the latest copy of LRM. On the cover of that issue was a Ninety that had been tastefully restored by John Brooks of cult4x4.com for a client in Germany. That story made Edward realise that there was something missing in his life. He…

THE OLD Ninety sat outside its owner’s house, month by month getting a little shabbier. Moss grew in the sliding window channels on the shady side of the drive, while lichen had began to encrust the panels on the sunny side. The rag top had become bleached in the summer sun and then rotted away in the damp of winter, while the brushed-on drab olive paintwork grew steadily drabber. The ex-military Land Rover looked lost, but it certainly wasn’t forgotten by the family that had owned it for more than a decade. It even had a name: Oscar. “I bought Oscar in March 2003,” says owner James Thompson. “Ever since childhood I’d loved military Land Rovers and the tales of derring-do, like the pinkies used by the formative Pink Panthers.…

FAST-FORWARD ALMOST another quarter-century and what has happened to the vehicles in this epic tour? Chris bought YVB 155H directly from the company in 1979 and 38 years on he still owns her. You can see 155 on display at the JLR Heritage Works in Ryton. M322 CVC was sold from the company and her current whereabouts is unknown. M535 CVC was also sold from the company and was spotted briefly on eBay in 2014 only to disappear back into the secondhand market until resurfacing again in 2016. This is where Richard Hopkins joins the story. Richard is well known for his remarkable restoration of M751 CVC – the P38 Range Rover that, in 1996, belonged to the Police Special Escort Group and was the control vehicle in the funeral…

Not a day goes by in the UK without someone reporting a Defender or Land Rover stolen. While in some cases complete nicked Land Rovers are then exported to other countries, often they are just broken up for their parts, especially the no longer produced but still universally adored Defender. Each year millions of shipping containers leave UK ports as this form of freight is relatively inexpensive. Exporting broken up car bits has become a lucrative business. In the UK the government are more concerned with what is coming into the country than what is going out, they just don’t have the resources to check each and every container. Policing the stolen Defender or Land Rover parts market is an impossible task in a police force already under massive pressure…

After a 17-hour budget airline flight which confirms why we decided to drive around the world, we arrive in New Zealand’s biggest city, Auckland. The harbour and green patchwork pasture greets us as we descend into a damp-looking spring morning. The Pamina ship, which is carrying our Defender down the Pacific, is due to arrive in a few days, so we settle into life as backpackers, exploring the city and working with our agent to get the car released as soon and smoothly as possible. Our first task is to get the customs clearance. As we are temporary importing the car into NZ on a Carnet de Passage, it is pretty simple. We fill in a customs declaration form and submit a list of items in the car and after…

With the exception of a very small number of prototype and pre-production vehicles built in the first half of the 1990s, the only Wolf and Pulse Land Rovers manufactured were produced for the UK and Dutch Ministries of Defence, with the latter procuring the vehicles for Royal Netherlands Marine Corps units working together as part of a joint amphibious force. Externally the Dutch ambulances, which of course are left-hand drive, are virtually identical to their British siblings but they have aluminium chequer plate on the bonnet, wing tops and door sills. Like the Royal Marines Winterised & Semi-waterproofed Pulse 130 ambulances, the Dutch Marines versions also have raised air intakes on the right forward door pillar, but these are of a different design and tucked under the cab overhang so…

The 2018 ALRC National For 2018 the Association of Land Rover Clubs National Rally returns to Stainby Quarry, near Grantham, Lincolnshire – a site just off the A1 that’s easily accessible from both North and South. It’s a venue that offers some great terrain for the competitive events, plus fields suitable for caravans and camping. The National Rally will again be hosted by the ALRC Council, with support from member clubs. Details are still to be confirmed but it’s expected the National will follow the format of past years and include RTV, CCV and Tyro Trials, Team Recovery and Comp Safari, plus the annual Bike Trial. The National will take place on its traditional date the Spring Bank Holiday weekend of May 24 to 29. Further information, event regulations and…

STEVE MILLER CONTRIBUTOR 1985 NINETY YEAR: 1985 MILEAGE: 160,000 ENGINE: 300Tdi POWER: 111 TORQUE: 195 MPG: TBC I found myself in a bit of a predicament recently – one that I don’t want to repeat. Just last month Patrick and I drove to Devon for the LRM pub meet at the Hartland Quay Hotel, near Bideford. My choice of transport for the couple of days had to be the Discovery 3, rather than my daily driver MINI Cooper S. I arranged to pick Patrick up from Kettering station along the way for what was a 650 mile round trip. With the company paying the fuel bill, it wasn’t too bad. Patrick used the few hours travelling time to take full advantage of the comfortable Disco by spending his time working…

The braking system on a Land Rover uses a master cylinder operated by the brake pedal to force fluid through the brake pipes to the brake callipers (on disc brakes) or the brake cylinders (on drum brakes). The hydraulic action and force exerted by the brake fluid on the pistons in the calliper squeezes the brake pads on either side of the brake disc to operate the brakes at each of the wheels. Likewise, with drum brakes, the fluid hydraulically acts on the brake cylinder, which pushes the brake shoes outwards against the brake drum. Drum brakes are found at the front and rear of Series Land Rovers, while later coil-sprung Land Rovers have disc brakes at the front and can have disc or drum brakes at the rear, depending…

HAVING RECEIVED acclaim for its Flying Huntsman 110 6x6 Double Cab Pick Up and Wide Body models, Kahn’s latest coachbuilt 6x6 is set to become a reality very soon, bringing (in their words) “an element of adventure, engineering and romanticism to even the most seasoned of Defender owners and enthusiasts” Having created a vehicle to rival some of the most outrageous models from Jeep Wrangler, Mercedes G Wagon, and indeed, Range Rover, this teaser sketch is very much a statement of intent. According to a report in Top Gear magazine, it will get a 6.2-litre LS3 V8 with 500 bhp; the brakes and suspension will get a boost in performance too, and the overall width will be increased by six inches. More information will be released in the coming months.…

IS THAT AN ELEPHANT I SEE? I would like to thank Billy Best for taking the courage to point his finger at the elephant in the room (Letters, Winter). It needed to be done, and it took someone as forthright as Billy to do it. Billy is oddly silent about what he does like, but I guess that he drives a late Discovery 1 or older Defender and has a penchant for engine snorkels, knobbly tyres and chequer plate. Perhaps he takes an occasional trip off-road and sometimes explores the continent to find some secluded hilly lanes. Nothing wrong with this, it’s all great stuff. But here is the elephant in the room: to read about these exploits in a magazine is as exciting as an evening being forced to…

Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be – it’s much bigger than that. That’s why the music world is awash with tribute bands paying homage to star acts that have either split up or departed. Abba and the Beatles are now history, but it’s a history being recreated every night in concert venues all over the world by acts like the Bootleg Beatles and Bjorn Again. It’s that same rose-tinted yearning for the past that is responsible for early Series Land Rovers fetching such high prices. But what happens when the old Land Rover of your dreams is so rare it is impossible or too expensive to buy one? Well, you could follow the lead of the tribute bands and recreate the legend. That’s what father and son team Alun…

With the Defender out of production and the wait for its replacement proving interminable, enthusiasts are satisfying their hunger by modifying or renovating older models that may otherwise have languished in the barn or rotted away, forgotten, in the corner of an overgrown field. To exacerbate the problem, buying secondhand Defenders isn’t easy, as we all know with prices soaring and availability not extensive. So all this means there are an increasing number of pre-1990 models being snapped up and brought back to their former magnificence. One such example has been beautifully restored and rebuilt by the brilliant team at Gumtree 4x4. The Land Rover in question is a 1989-registered One Ten V8 County Station Wagen sporting bodywork in the original luscious Coniston Green, one of our favourite hues. The…

Setting off from Blackpool at 7.45 am for the club’s fourth-ever greenlane day, the sun is shining as we meet up with the rest of the club members at Burton in Kendal Services on the M6. Seventeen members of the Blackpool & Fylde Land Rover Club have turned up for the day. After a chat, a brew and group photos, we split into four groups. The leaders for the day are Neal Bedford, the club’s greenlane officer; John Coe, club chairman; Nick Ormiston, competition secretary; and Andy Ball. Our group’s fleet consists of two 110 Defenders, an ex-Military 90 and 110, and a Freelander. We head off at just after 9.00 am to start our first lane, near the village of Ashes, just north of Kendal. As navigator I opt…

4x4 Adventure Tours are running a UK weekend 4x4 adventure tour on January 21 and 22 in the Welsh Borders. This is their first tour of the new year and is described as being “scratchy in places and not suitable for newer vehicles”. The cost is £70 per vehicle; most tour routes are an average of 50 to 60 miles and usually entail six to seven hours of driving. It starts at around 9.00 am and aims to finish around 5.00 pm. Further details of this adventure tour can be found on their website along with future dates of all their 4x4 tours in 2018. 4x4adventuretours.co.uk…

The tailgate lock on this 2011 10-plate Freelander 2 was not working correctly and was described as “having a mind of its own” by the vehicle’s owner. The tailgate was sometimes unlocking and opening on its own, or whenever any of the four doors were opened. Also, if the tailgate was shut, it could at times open and unlock when the doors were locked using the central locking. And, if closed, it would not unlock when you pressed the release handle to open the tailgate. This is not an uncommon fault on the Freelander 2 and is caused by a problem with the switch in the tailgate release handle. Also, the location of the tailgate handle and the aerodynamics of the back of the Freelander 2 means road dirt and…

The best way to get warm is to not get cold in the first place; that’s what we tell our kids, so it’s only proper we heed the same advice. The prospect of working on a vehicle with cold hands and feet can be demoralising for many, especially long-term projects, and put a dampener on motivation. One affordable solution is an electric space heater. Unlike old bar heaters that only offered detectable heat if you were millimetres from them, these modern heaters feature high output elements and fans to circulate warm air to every corner of your garage or small workshop. As a bonus, the four tested here also feature cold, fan-only settings, so they can cool you in hot weather, too. They’re not powerful enough to use as an…

1991 200Tdi DEFENDER 90 OFF-ROAD AND winching legend David Bowyer is selling this fully-equipped and uprated 200Tdi Defender 90 – and is open to offers. Devon-based David needs no introduction to LRM readers. Besides being the best-known off-road and winching expert in the UK, he is associated by many as the face of Land Rover shows thanks to his arena appearances, where his role as ringmaster saw him in charge of everything from winching demonstrations to kiddies' egg and spoon races. This is a very rare opportunity to buy one of his own personalised Land Rovers. The blue 90 was his personal greenlaning vehicle for many years, hence its seemingly endless list of modifications and improvements, which we're about to list. So make yourself a cuppa, get sitting comfortably and…

WHEN YOU’RE buying a Land Rover there’s always a temptation to stretch your finances and get that model you can only just about afford. But if you do so, make sure you’ve set aside a contingency fund for the stuff that can go wrong on any secondhand model. If you’re buying a fairly new model from a dealer, the most expensive eventualities are probably covered by the warranty, but not always, so do read the small print. For those of us buying a vehicle that’s not in the first, or even second, flush of youth, a warranty is unlikely, so anything that goes wrong can prove costly. Factor that in at the time of purchase. A few hundred pounds set aside will take the sting out of a replacement gearbox,…