Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Land Rover Monthly

WE’RE back in South Africa’s wonderful little beach town of Zinkwazi, where the roar of the ocean thrashing against the shore is accompanied by exquisite birdsong in daylight and a cacophony of mysterious insects at night. Our return holds the added appeal of the Fella’s father’s old Series III. I had the honour of driving Martin’s 1970-something green-painted beauty with its roll bar and fetching bikini canvas a year ago and I’m hoping for further adventures. A few hours after arriving, I find the Fella sitting behind the wheel with the engine running. Graciously conceding the driving seat to my excited self, he says: “You drive. I’ll shut the gate.” I reverse out and off we go. Apart from the idiosyncrasies each old Land Rover possesses, it’s a comfortingly familiar…

READERS might recall that about four months ago I put together a 300Tdi engine using a bottom end bought cheaply off the internet and the remains of another engine bought far too expensively by one of my customers. The resulting mongrel ran much better than it had any right to: I was happy, and my customer was happy, until one Sunday afternoon I had a message to say that the engine had stopped dead, and that the valve rockers were no longer moving when it was turned over on the starter. It sounded very much as though the cambelt had broken, unlikely though that seemed on an engine that had only done a couple of thousand miles. New parts do fail sometimes, and my best guess at this point was…

THE hierarchy and status of Land Rover models is in a constant state of flux, the order changing as time and experience alter our perceptions. A Series I was once a simple agricultural tool for the farm, but who today would think to put a cosseted 80in to such use? Likewise, try to find a cheap Discovery 1 to take off-road these days. At the time of its launch the Discovery 4 was often cited as the most practical all-round Land Rover to date. Comfortable, economical, spacious for families or tip runs alike, eating motorway miles one minute, and lifting wheels off-road the next – except, of course, that a D4 was too expensive for most owners to consider venturing too far away from the tarmac. And with the car…

TODAY it scarcely seems possible, but in late 1990, when the model was launched, hardly anyone wanted to buy a Range Rover CSK. What wasn’t to like? A limited-edition, individually numbered two-door Range Rover finished in seductive Beluga Black with a bespoke interior trimmed in American walnut and soft, perforated Sorrell leather that echoed the Palomino trim of the first Velars, built to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the launch of the Range Rover. Then there was the bored-out and very sporty 3.9-litre version of the glorious V8 engine, as well as anti-roll bars, stiffer springs, sports dampers, and ABS brakes to steady the undercarriage. There were chrome bumpers too, not seen on a Range Rover since 1969, when they were trialled on at least one of the seven engineering…

1995 RANGE ROVER CLASSIC VOGUE SE Miles: 94,900 Power: 182bhp Torque: 230lb-ft MPG: 19 1957 LAND ROVER SERIES I Miles: 28,000 Power: 52bhp Torque: 101lb-ft MPG: 21 TYRE TIP: CHECK YOUR DATES The tyres on the Classic are due for change. The tread is nowhere near worn, but they’re starting to show cracking on the sidewalls. They were fitted early in 2013, so I’ve done well, as the tyre industry recommends they are changed at six or seven years old. Except they’re made with a date stamp, and mine say 2011. That means when they were fitted, I’d already lost two years of that suggested seven-year lifespan. If you’re having new tyres, always check those dates, because if you’re buying new tyres, there’s an argument the date on their sidewall should…

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SERVICING is an investment in our Land Rovers to help keep them in top form. In doing that work, we all have those little extra jobs that go a little bit further, to gain additional benefit. One of the simplest is to flush the heater core whilst doing a coolant change. A warm driving environment is something we expect in a vehicle, though it should be remembered that in the first Land Rover a heater had to be ordered as an option. Those days are long gone, thankfully, and ample cabin heat is now a prerequisite when driving. A heater works by using a small heat exchanger or matrix mounted behind the dashboard which connects to the engine’s cooling system. At working temperature, engine coolant is pumped through the heater…

NEED TO KNOW TIME: 1 hour COST: £4.49-59.99 DIFFICULTY: MODELS: Series III, Defender to 2002. TOOLS NEEDED: Socket and spanner sets, propshaft nut tool, drain pan, torque wrench, bearing driver set, hammers, dot punch, wheel bearing outer, Allen key or drill bit, brake cleaner. PARTS AND COSTS: Salisbury diff pinion oil seal, leather, to 1998 (AEU2515G), £4.49; pinion seal, rubber, 1998-on (STC4401), £4.69; updated flange kit, (STC4457), £59.99; JGS4x4.co.uk. WORK SAFELY: Raise and support the vehicle securely on rated equipment. Wear the correct PPE at all times. Dispose of old oil responsibly at your local recycling centre. IT’S a running joke that all Land Rovers leak oil. Perhaps it’s true that they dribble and weep slightly more than the average car, but leaks are still problems that need to be…

What initiated this winter project? Our Landy has primarily been an overland travel vehicle – we use it to go camping and exploring. Since owning the Land Rover we have had a few different set-ups in the back, each one slightly different trying to maximise the space we have to work with. After a trip to the Arctic Circle, spending five weeks in the back of the Landy, we knew we needed to up our game in terms of storage and organisation. This led us to researching Defender camper conversions. We made the decision about our expedition to Africa before we planned any work on the Defender. As our expedition will see us on the road for a long time we knew we needed to make some changes and create…

COINCIDENTALLY, once I had buttoned up the repairs to the 300Tdi, my very next job was a timing belt change on another 300Tdi-engined Defender, this time as part of a routine service visit. This was a factoryfit 300Tdi which sits a long way further forward in the engine bay than the one I had just been working on. Even with the fan and cowling removed, there isn’t a huge amount of room between the radiator and the front of the engine, but I soon had the front cover off, revealing another large pile of rubbery fluff and a belt which had been badly worn along its front edge. A short history lesson: as originally designed the 300Tdi had shoulders on the tensioner pulley to stop the belt wandering off the…

THE REVS Restore project brings people together, encouraging community, providing a place of support for times when people are facing challenges in their lives. How many times have you gone to a Land Rover event, spoken to like-minded people and come away with lifted spirits? This is the same idea. The cause was kindly donated a 1975 Series III 109in by Tim Compson, for a group restoration project supporting REVS aims – hence the name: REVS Restore. The 109in has a bit of interesting history. It was initially supplied to a UK dealer as a standard Marine Blue truck cab and then converted to a mobile water pump for airport work. Although unclear at what point, it was then exported to the Falklands where it was pressed into airport duties…

CHARLIE Baron’s daily driver is a 2004 Defender 90 Td5 but, like most of us, he always knew that one Land Rover was never going to be enough. There are already others in the family: dad Rupert drives a 2012 110 station wagon and also has an immaculate 1958 Series II that was restored by DLR in 2018 and won the Best Restoration class at the Land Rover Legends show in 2019. Charlie decided early last year that it was time he acquired an older Land Rover as well, something interesting and preferably with a V8 under the bonnet. An early Range Rover classic was the initial target, but that’s not quite how things worked out. “I couldn’t find a decent Range Rover classic for my budget, and I didn’t…

2004 DEFENDER 90 Td5 Mileage: 111,103 Power: 185bhp Torque: 245lb-ft MPG: 28 THE Land Rover Td5 engine is a very fine piece of mechanical and electrical engineering and has proved to be very reliable and tuneable over the years. The five-cylinder diesel is normally very easy to start, as long as everything is in tip top condition. If your Td5 engine becomes more and more difficult to start, it is a sure sign that something is not quite right. I recently encountered two Td5 vehicles at my workshop that were difficult to start or refused to start at all. The first one was a Discovery 2 that was in for a new chassis. It had been driven to me but the owner reported starting difficulties. In fact, having been sat…

WORK SAFELY RECENT reports of the Ineos Grenadier and images of it ploughing competently and unstoppably over challenging Scottish moorland tracks (see LRM contributor Gary Pusey’s own driving impressions, p70) made me feel emotional for the days when our classic Defenders ruled this type of terrain. They looked so much the part, just as the Grenadier blends perfectly into that environment. It’s so obviously designed and engineered by people enthusiastic about vehicles, people brave enough to be dismissive of fashion and electronic novelty. Galvanised body, and a galvanised chassis with a 12-year perforation warranty – if I had a spare 60 grand I’d buy one just for fun, and go places in it. The great sadness is that Land Rover hasn’t produced this…

THE UK’s Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) has recently released the new car registration data for 2022. It makes fascinating reading. Overall vehicle registrations were down two per cent on 2021 with 1.6M cars registered last year, which seems to be the lowest annual total for 30 years. Of these, only 83,000 were diesel-powered, a reduction of 40 per cent on 2021, which surely indicates that Michael Gove has got what he wanted and the diesel car is, to all intents and purposes, dead and buried. The picture regarding electric vehicles is mixed, with sales of diesel mild hybrids (MHEVs) down 27 per cent while petrol MHEV sales were up by 11 per cent, and plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) were down 12 per cent. Sales of hybrid electric vehicles…

BRIGHT streaks of sunshine peep in through gaps in the door tops. A faint whiff of EP90 rises from beneath the floor panels, and the elephant hide seat offers little in the way of comfort or support. From under the bonnet, the familiar sound of diesel clatter cuts through the air, reverberating inside the tinny hard top. We’re rolling, and the engine note smooths out to an off-beat thrum. The turbo whistles, the revs climb higher, then a split second later we’re hit by a tidal wave of torque and all hell breaks loose. Both axles bounce against the salty tarmac as all four tyres scrabble for grip and the engine starts to sing, and the scenery blurs, slows, blurs, slows, then blurs again. ‘‘That’s the only problem with this,…

I’VE really missed my regular road trips. I enjoy driving my Land Rovers on long journeys to interesting places far more than I like taking them to shows and events, but I haven’t had a decent road trip since before the pandemic. That’s why I was rather excited last autumn to receive an invitation to join the first global media drive for the Ineos Grenadier in Scotland. The Highlands are beautiful in the autumn, so I hatched a plan to drive north in SYD, my 1990 3.9 Range Rover, play with the Grenadier for a couple of days, and then call in to see some old friends before returning south. SYD has spent a lot of time in Scotland, either as transport and occasional overnight accommodation back in the days…

Watch the video YOUTUBE.COM/ LAND ROVER MONTHLY WHAT a fantastic start to 2023. You turned out in droves to pick through thousands of Land Rover and vintage parts, both inside the Three Counties Showground’s vast sheds and outdoors in the sunshine, to make the first LRM Spares Day of this year a real hit. The ever-popular Stockman’s Café was packed all day – which is hardly surprising given the excellent full English breakfast it serves – and the displays put on by the Series One Club and Series II Club were a big draw, with a great range of Land Rovers to enjoy. In fact, there were interesting Land Rovers everywhere; you could spend all day looking around the car park admiring what other enthusiasts turned up in. It was…

NEED TO KNOW TIME: 6 hours COST: £474.12 DIFFICULTY: MODELS: Defender 90, 110, 130. TOOLS NEEDED: Drill and drill bits, trolley jack, circuit tester, wire strippers, terminal crimpers, spanners and socket wrenches, mallet. PARTS & COSTS: LED halo headlight units, £40 per pair, numerous online retailers; stainless steel door fitting kit, £15.18, YRM Metal Solutions Ltd; galvanised Series-style front door conversion kit (bottom half), £407.94, SP Panels Ltd; single-sided adhesive foam tape, £11, YRM Metal Solutions Ltd. WORK SAFELY: Wear protective gloves and safety boots when handling heavy objects. Wear eye protection when drilling and using power tools. Wear protection and gloves when cutting metals with angle grinder. CONTACTS: SP Panels, sp-4x4.com, email: ask-sp@outlook.com, Tel: 01514 867636. YRM Metal Solutions Ltd, yrmit.co.uk Tel: 01388 488150. THE build up of this…

The story so far… This Freelander 1 station wagon with its early L-series 2.0-litre diesel engine was bought for £300. Of course, it needed plenty of work to turn it into a reliable long-distance vehicle, and so an extra £700 was budgeted for parts, with the labour being on a DIY basis to keep the costs down. Initial assessment pointed to a serious engine cooling problem, but that was easily fixed. Then there have been leaking fuel pipes, a leaky injector seal, inoperative handbrake, new camshaft and fuel pump drive belts, new differential mountings and a professional interior clean to add to the bill. Last month a relatively expensive new screen wiper linkage and non-essential cosmetic trim items pushed the project close to budget, with little cash left to tidy…

Sun 5 Mar NEW FOR 2023! Ripon Racecourse, Boroughbridge Rd, North Yorkshire, HG4 1UG. landrovermonthly.co.uk/information/ripon-5-march Sat 11 – Sun 12 March TYRO AND RTV TRIAL Weston Underwood, Milton Keynes cvlrc.co.uk COMP SAFARI Tredinnick, Cornwall cdlrc.com P&D RTV AND CCV TRIAL Norwood, Mansfield panddlrc.uk Sun 12 March SOUTH WEST TRIALS CHAMPIONSHIP ROUND 3 Buckholt, Frocester, Gloucs awdc.co.uk CCV TRIAL Pluckley, Kent sroc.co.uk RTV TRIAL Dunnockshaw, Lancashire landroverclub.co.uk 4X4 PAY & PLAY DAY Canewdon, Essex 4x4er.co.uk PAY & PLAY DAY Aldermaston, Berkshire 4x4-withoutaclub.co.uk RTV TRIAL Crieff, Perth, Scotland, slroc.co.uk 4X4 RTV TRIAL Cross Hills, North Yorkshire yorkshireoffroadclub.net Sat 18 – Sun 19 March AWDC COMP SAFARI Neath, Swansea, Wales awdc.co.uk SAXON EXPRESS Bovington Tank Museum, Dorset armymotorsports.co.uk/ Disciplines/4x4-Navigation Sat 18 March YORKSHIRE MOORS 4X4 GUIDED TOUR York ardventures.co.uk NORTHUMBERLAND LAND ROVER TOUR…