The prices are coming down, usually because of lack of owner maintenance. Which I can tell wouldn’t be the case for you, so bargains are around. Just look at it as a new chapter in the learning cycle
seems to me the FL vcu thingymebob is more trouble than my electrickery
anyway good luck in the search for a bargain.
J
I only recently chaned mine at 156,000 miles. Being honest with you it probably should have been done sooner than that, but I believe the reason mine never created any problems is the first 88,000 on my freelander were long drives doing 30+miles each way commuting, for four years. The next 14 years its been doing mostly short journeys, so assuming the VCU was getting tired, I envisage it building up some latent torque in it, which it could then dissipate while stood still.
For example, if I drove it the 3 miles to my workshop for an afternoon playing spanner monkey, it would wind up a bit on the way there, then while I was at the workshop for say four hours, it would unwind while I played spanner monkey. When I drove home, 3 miles agian, it would slightly wind up again, but also unwind while stationary over night. Also being in north East Scotland, where the roads are usually covered in rain water and or tonnes of salt and grit, either or both of these on a roads surface effectively lowers its coefficient of friction, possibly allowing the small amount of torque wind up to disspiate by letting one of both axles slightly over or under rotate.
I think that if my freelander had continued to do ~22,000 miles a year in our ownership of it, as it did in its previous owners time with it, that viscous would have wrecked the other components in the transmission, namely the rear diff and the Intermediate Reduction Drive (transfer box) long before 120,000 miles. I also think that since the previous owner, and I both kept ontop of the tyre maintenance, and it has spent most of lits life running on relatively new tyres, that also helped eek the VCU out this long.
Living in scotland, a country that gets more rain fall per year than Borneo, I do not want to run on "semi slicks" as I call tyres on their last few millimetres of tread. Furthermore, its meant to be a mild offroader, while my freelander is never going to be an ultra-4 "Truggy" competition truck/buggy, but I don't want to get beaten by a damp muddy hill because my worn road tyres cannot get any grip, or stuck like an audi A4 quattro in 2cm of snow. So our one has usually ran either all terrains or mud tyres, change from muds to all terrains about easter, and back to muds about November, so the tyres aare changed and rotated twice a year.
I changed my VCU 156,000 mile VCU more to futureproof the cars reliability, than to remedy any issues experienced. It showed no signs of transmission wind up, but all the same, I was aware that at this mileage on it I was effectively playing russian roullete with the other components in the driveline by having such a high mileage VCU. I also know that making it to 156,000 on an origial VCU without problems is an edgecase and possibly a record? This "future proofing" is also the reason for a lot of other work I'm doing on the car just now, such as new wheel bearings, renewing and refurbing all the brakes etc...
However, if you budget on chancing your viscous at a more sensible mileage at somewhere between 80,000 & 100,000 miles, you are almost certain to dodge the transmission windup back diff and or IRD shredded bullet. and at say £400 for a
new genuine GKN viscous with new bearings, assuming you fit it yourself rather than pay a garage labour rates to fit it, it works out at works half a pence per mile travelled, you probably spend more on screen wash than that? OR assuming your car does the theoretically typical 10,000 miles per year, its £400 every eight years, less than a pound a week to budget on the VCU. What ever way you crunch the numbers its not that much trouble if done properly. Neglect it though and it will bite a sizable chunk out of your ass, what are you looking at? A couple of grand for a recon IRD + Diff + new VCU & Bearings? Ouch!