Freelander in the snow

Peco said:

There seems to be a good amount of treat on the tires. Perhaps they just aren't suited to snow though:

Click to expand...

Them aint snow tyres, certainly wont help you in the white stuff, have you checked for the prop yet,

Take a picture of under the car rather than the tyres and let someone else here decide whether the prop shaft is missing.

We have Pirelli Scorpion Sync ST on our Td4 Hippo, offroad, snow, whatever you throw at it, it's only stopped by ground clearance generally, mighty impressed with the baby landy in the last couple of years we have had it now...I have driven the same greenlanes in my old heavily modified Disco offroader, the hippo only got stuck when she started scraping underneath

hippolover said:

Take a picture of under the car rather than the tyres and let someone else here decide whether the prop shaft is missing.

Click to expand...

Ok I did this. Have a wad of pictures, is it the part in the middle, back or front though?

Peco said:

Ok I did this. Have a wad of pictures, is it the part in the middle, back or front though?

Click to expand...

can't quite see from here

In between the back wheels, right in the middle there should be a 2" thick shaft coming from the middle and run forward to under the front seats where it goes into a round biscuit tin shaped thing then another shaft towards the front. If any of that is missing then you have front wheel drive only.

Here's a couple of pictures. I think it might be in the second picture, not entirely sure though:








What you guys think?

Yes you have a complete prop shaft,and alot of rusty bits.The under side of mine must have been waxoyled? at some time in the past,...,also the tyre wear could be down to wrong tyre pressure.

Pictures too large to be good (takes ages to load and seem to be unable to get complete pics through), but just to show you how things "should" look here a couple of (resized) pics. showing the middle (vcu) and how things look towardes the front and the rear from the middle out.

Nice clean garage Willo i am well impressed

Gordon

Gordonthornton said:

Nice clean garage Willo i am well impressed

Gordon

Click to expand...

Thank you. This is mainly the result of my SWAMBO's efforts of "pushing" me ......

OldIrishWulf said:

Yes you have a complete prop shaft,and alot of rusty bits.The under side of mine must have been waxoyled? at some time in the past,...,also the tyre wear could be down to wrong tyre pressure.

Click to expand...

I wonder if the rust is part of the reason for a faulty VCU or it's just old and defunct.

Well it's all there, could be failed into slip rather than locked up.

Not the best tyres for the snow but should still be reasuring capable

Wonder if the ABS/Traction control is working

Gordonthornton said:

Nice clean garage Willo i am well impressed

Click to expand...

With tiled floor anorl!

Peco said:

I wonder if the rust is part of the reason for a faulty VCU or it's just old and defunct.

Click to expand...

It's your tyres, they remind me of Goodyears GSD3 absolutely useless on snow but superb on the black stuff

Yer, replace them with Michelin Synchrones or Pirelli Scorpion's when they due. Last set were originals on mine at 80,000 miles!!!!

Just worth a note as well actually......

I fully intended to have Scorpion Sync ST's refitted when we had them changed last time, in error the garage fitted STR's, the STR is a more road bias tyre, tho still capable its not got anything like the nicer agressive and tractable pattern of the ST variant, we had a brand new spare wheel with an ST put on with 3 brand new STR's, we have currently done about 15/20k on those tyres since and the STR's are nearly knackered front and rear, however the single ST is still in really good shape, if they still do the ST I would choose that over the STR anytime, not that the STR is a bad tyre, just the ST is better IMHO.

I think the ST may be a harder compound as opposed to the STR. You may get a bit more road noise because of this but I think its worth it for the offroad punishment they may get.
I had a pair of each on my FL1 and the year code for the tyres that came off was 2003! The fitter noticed a bit of side wall cracking which he mentioned you only tend to get on older tyres. Thats when he checked the code and realised they were originals! I had done just under 80,000miles.
Pirelli's were slightly cheaper when I went to change boots, plus the fact that he had 4 in stock! SOLD!

Jods a goodun all round then eh

Yer they are definately harder, there is still around 5mm left of the ST, STR's are down to around 2.2mm at best, all got the same miles on them, as the hippo is not an exactly quiet car anyways I can fogive a little extra tyre roar if I manage to source another set of ST's

Northern Irelander said:

With tiled floor anorl!

Click to expand...

Yes, it was included in the set.....