Innholdsfortegnelse for August 2022 i Land Rover Monthly

BACK in August 2019, before anyone had even heard of COVID-19, Ben Metcalfe and his seven-year-old daughter Hope drove a 1955 Land Rover more than 1200 miles from John O’Groats to Lands End to raise money for the Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust. They took two weeks to complete their challenge and we covered the story in our December 2019 issue if you want to find out more. Now affectionately known as ‘Groats Landy’, Ben’s world-weary 67-year-old LWB 107 pick-up hasn’t hung up its hat just yet, as the father and daughter team are now planning their next trip: home (Hampshire) to Iceland and back via Sweden and Norway. Travelling through 14 countries and over 12,000 miles in a car that’s not likely to make it without breaking down, is bound…

Send us your shot Email your pics to patrick@lrm.co.uk and you could see your Landy in LRM…

LAND Rovers leak. Everyone knows that. Water leaks in from above, and oil leaks out from below. Some of this is down to age and poor maintenance, but a vehicle body assembled from a large number of panels bolted together will always be harder to waterproof than a unitary construction welded shell. Back in the Series II days when the vehicle interior was mostly painted metal, a bit of water on the floor didn’t matter too much. But on newer vehicles with a fully carpeted interior, water leaks can do a huge amount of damage. The worst problems are usually in the footwells where the carpet and underlay soak up water like a sponge. The owner is often blissfully unaware of how much water is getting in until the entire…

IT is five o’clock on a Friday, and an immaculate-looking 110 is backing out of the workshop of IRB Developments. If you’ve just planned and built the Land Rover you’ve always dreamed of, in almost record time, where is the first drive of that new car going to be? For Chris McCormack, whose car this is, that first drive isn’t a tentative tootle around the block. Instead, he barely gets time to walk around the finished car before he has me jumping in the passenger seat, and we head 50 miles away into the countryside for this LRM cover shoot. If you’re a social media user or recent show attendee, you’ll recognise Chris as the bubbly chap proudly demonstrating his latest products from ORE 4x4. He’s the man behind the…

LAND Rover describes the 130 as being designed for ‘adventures for up to eight occupants’. Available in five-seat and eight-seater guises, the new 130 gains an extra 340mm behind the rear wheels compared with the Defender 110 to create space for a three-seater third row of seats and a giant amount of luggage room – up to 2516 litres with all the seats folded flat. The car’s specification has been ramped up with additional luxury materials, equipment and technical features in a bid to justify the Defender’s elevation to be considered an alternative to Land Rover’s halo model, with the price of the 130 range-topper, the P400 130 X, just breaching the £100,000 mark. At launch the new Defender 130’s engine range comprises two petrol and one turbodiesel, all three…

WHEN a show boasts its own smartphone app, then you know the organisers are not messing about and have put every effort into delivering a world-class event. Mind you, the 28,000 attendees of the Overland Expo West certainly needed an app to navigate the vast number of activities on offer, the 406 trade stands, numerous new vehicles to ride in, plus the fantastic off-road-focused educational talks. I’m in the US city of Flagstaff, Arizona, where the event has attracted overlanders from all over the globe for more than ten years, effectively becoming the largest adventure show in the world. Overland Expo West is the ultimate rendezvous for all overlanders, off-roaders, van-lifers and adventure motorcyclists. While every single brand in the market presents its latest gear and equipment offerings or newest…

WRITER’S Rovers updates are often about my Series I, so it can be easy to forget it isn’t my only Land Rover. My 1995 Range Rover is still very much here, but I bet you’d probably forgotten I had it. I almost had. But that all changed recently. I don’t know how your Land Rover enthusiasm was sparked, but part of mine was reading the first generation of Land Rover magazines in the early 1990s. I grew up with Discovery 200 and 300Tdis as the family car, but also had brief trips in hard dash Range Rovers – and the odd Camel Trophy Discovery, but that’s a tale for another time. As well as being ferried about in a Disco, each month I read about people using them as intended;…

PURCHASE if you’d like, but also consider subscription or rental – that’s the new message from Jaguar Land Rover’s revamped online showroom, as it seeks to educate customers about different ways to have a newish Land Rover parked on their driveway. The digital showroom, first launched in 2019, has been overhauled to include subscription and short-term rental options, in addition to traditional forms of ownership, Personal Contract Purchase (PCP) or Hire Purchase. Visually refreshed and with fewer steps, the online platform includes new features such as a document portal and live updates on the status of orders. For customers seeking a subscription alternative to ownership, ‘Pivotal’ offers a simple, flexible ownership experience. A single monthly payment (starting from £850) covers rental, insurance, tax, servicing and repairs – leaving just fuel…

Td5 QUADRIVIUM REMAPS PRICE: From £240 CONTACT: empiretuning.co.uk SUPPORTING two or four maps within your ECU, this kit allows you to switch between standard and high-performance engine maps on the fly at the press of a button, to suit your use and driving style – from daily driving to back road shenanigans. All options can be tailored to your personal requirements. BUMP AND GRIND PRICE: £9.50 CONTACT: Britpart stockists Protect your Defender, Discovery 1 and Range Rover Classic’s axles with this new bumpstop. FUSE BLOCK PRICE: £67.50 CONTACT: Britpart stockists This all-new fuse block will fit Defenders produced between 1987 and 2006. It is supplied with 40 connectors. UTILITY SEAT PRICE: £94.80 CONTACT: machinemart.co.uk Working on our Land Rovers is what we do; now you can do it from the…

I tried the garage one last time, got through, and have now booked in the Lightweight for, well, quite a bit of work. Now I just have to dispose of the remains of a disastrous attempt at a car boot sale carried out in my brother’s Range Rover. Having badgered the Fella into handing over anything he didn’t need – and a set of crockery he quite possibly did – just so I could have stuff to sell, I had returned with almost everything and piled it shamefacedly into the back of the Lightweight to hide the extent of the failure. So I’m braving a second attempt. As standing around in a field at 6.00am on a Saturday morning is an unappealing prospect for most, it’s just me and the…

WE love our Land Rovers, but they didn’t just go from a drawing on a page to a final product. To reach the point of being a production item doesn’t just happen overnight. Many weeks and months are spent designing, prototyping, making, testing – then redesigning and repeating the process. New vehicles undergo complex and rigorous testing programmes, where pre-production test mules go through every type of test, check and verification you can think of before you and I can buy them. In the late 1960s the process was simple, even for a vehicle such as the Range Rover – just eight initial prototypes were needed for everything from barrier-crash testing to cooling and braking tests – but things moved on, rapidly. By the L322, Range Rover development testing lasted…

ROY Preston has been a Land Rover enthusiast for well over 60 years and during that time has been a keen trialler and off-roader, an active clubman, a pioneering preservationist and a regular on the Land Rover show scene. He’s also one of life’s gentlemen. Such is his enthusiasm for the first-generation Discovery that he founded G-WAC Notes, an informal digital newsletter intended to unite the emerging community of people who were researching and saving the pre-pro and early production vehicles. It also encompasses all other Land Rover models carrying the fabled G-WAC registration numbers. This in turn led to the creation of the Project Jay Preservation Group, of which he is co-founder and chairman. I’m meeting Roy at his North Yorkshire home and am keen to know what first…

IT was a long time coming when Northern Monkey 4x4 Club finally managed to hold its Easter Trials event near Macclesfield. It was originally intended as the then new club’s first trials event, pencilled in for the 2020 Easter weekend, but obviously Covid put a halt to proceedings. Winding back a little further, the Northern Monkey 4x4 Club was established in early 2019 and with its Facebook member numbers rising, the founders decided that if it could get enough interest in paid memberships, the club would apply for MSUK registration. This would allow the club to host its own trials rather than attending others. The response from the Facebook members was better than expected and the rest is history. After a few taster events in 2021, this Easter members were…

ARES is the latest coachbuilder to breathe new life into the old Defender. For those of you who are not familiar with the name, Modena-based ARES offers design, development, manufacture and car sales all under one roof. And despite being relatively new to the scene, ARES has established quite the reputation for highly bespoke and unique cars… at a price! Its latest product for example – this limited-edition V8 hardtop – is priced from €235,000 (ex-local taxes). So what do you get for a smidgen over £200k? Well, ARES claims that no detail is spared in the painstaking creation of this Defender. First of all, it’s devoid of all visible body bolts – something which we think is a bit of shame, but when you’re fitting larger rear windows, carbon-fibre…

Memories of Nigeria Firstly, thanks for a great magazine. My life would not be the same without it. At the moment I live in Spain and use a 2002 Defender 90 – it’s a great machine. Today whilst sorting through some old pictures I came across these and thought they may be of some interest to you and the readers. I lived in Nigeria for just over 50 years and during that time I fitted more than 1000 Range Rovers with air conditioners, which my company imported from the USA. Hence my connection with Leyland and Range Rovers in Nigeria. Of course, after some time Leyland caught on and started fitting factory air-con units back in the UK. In 1974 I was asked to prepare a Range Rover for that…

NEXT Easter will see Australia celebrating Land Rover’s 75th anniversary in Cooma, New South Wales. I am thrilled and already thinking about which vehicle I want to take. For the 70th anniversary I was living in Australia’s capital which meant just an hour’s drive. This time, I will be travelling from Brisbane which, according to Google Maps, is 13 hours, 17 minutes away (1300 kilometres). I know it is doable in a day (I have done Canberra to Brisbane which is around 1200 kilometres (yes, in my IIA), but I think perhaps it’s more sensible to tackle the trip over a couple of days. Better still, how about forming a bit of a convoy? What I enjoyed most about the last Cooma event was meeting all these people I’d got…

I had a call from the owner of a Series III. He had asked his local garage to fit a new clutch and now the vehicle was making some strange rattling and grating noises. The garage had said, “nothing to do with us, mate,” and told him he needed a new gearbox. Diagnosing odd noises via telephone is seldom very satisfactory so we agreed that he could drop the vehicle off at my workshop, I would see if I could diagnose the fault(s), and we would take it from there. To make matters a little more complicated, I was told the noises only occurred when the vehicle had been driven for about half an hour. The fuel gauge showed nearly empty so I chucked a gallon can of petrol in…

MALVERN’S Three Counties Showground is one of the favourite show locations in the UK. It’s in a great area and I have spent many hours driving green oval products along the muddy tracks of nearby Eastnor Castle, home to Land Rover’s legendary testing facility. Now only a few miles away, at the Three Counties Showgrounds, I am once again engaged in my favourite activity, hanging out with large numbers of Land Rovers and their interesting owners. What sets LRM’s May Malvern 4x4, Land Rover & Vintage Spares Days apart from our other Spares Days? It has to be the VIP parking for Land Rover drivers, with over 100 of them pre-booking for the day. Why park there? It is away from the busy main car park and lies within the…

SEVERAL months ago, I wrote a brief update in my column in LRM about the work underway at Dunsfold to convert the parts storage and servicing buildings into a new museum to house the vehicles in the Dunsfold Collection. I mentioned the generosity of the volunteers who are giving up occasional Sundays to join working parties and wrote that Dunsfold would welcome any LRM readers who wanted to help out. Several readers contacted me and have become regulars on the team, but the most astonishing offer came all the way from Norway. LRM reader Atle Gandrudbakken emailed to say that he and his wife, Hilde, would be visiting the UK in early summer and would be delighted to join us for a day. It turned out they would be taking…

COLOMBIA is a country famous for coffee, carnivals, Shakira and Pablo Escobar. So, it was a great surprise when LRM recently received an email from the Colombia Land Rover Series I Group, informing us of their recent gathering, which was only their second ever. So how many Series Is are there in Colombia? According to my sources there are around 60 of them. Not bad for a little country that lies at the top end of South America. This second-ever gathering of this rather exclusive group was held in the municipality of San Francisco, Cundinamarca, which is about a two-hour drive from the capital city Bogota. Obviously, it takes a wee bit longer if you are driving it in a Series I. A total of seven Series Is attended this…

THIS 2003 Discovery 3 Td5 was, at one stage, owned by myself – with plans to rebuild it and get it back on the road. I had purchased it from a tame independent Land Rover garage in County Antrim, where it had ended up without an engine, and a chassis needing repairs. The engine had been removed to keep a Defender, of similar age, earning its way in life. At this point, Frank Jamison called me and asked if I could take the cannibalised D2 away for a fair trade price (I’m starting to miss those calls – it’s been a while Frank…). I have been known I have been known to buy quite a few ‘projects’ over the years and hold them in abeyance for such times as I…