New Defender - anyone interested?

goonarmy said:

I loved my fender on Denstone extra traction, great for what I needed it for. It was like a paddle steamer over wet clay. Horrible on the road and noisy but didn't do hardly any of that.

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Always found road mileage in Land Rovers a bit of a bore, to be honest.
Surviveable if you have to do it, but a car is more comfortable and better on fuel.

Turboman said:

Always found road mileage in Land Rovers a bit of a bore, to be honest.
Surviveable if you have to do it, but a car is more comfortable and better on fuel.

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And better on yer ears and the rest of your body.

Few companies round our way using sign printed base spec 90 hard tops as work vehicles. The coil suspension versions drop thier arses on the floor with any kind of weight in the boot. Got used to seeing them with thier noses pointing to the sky.

In 10 years they'll be like the D3 and early D4s are now; you pays your money and you rolls the dice. Not sure how these ingenium engines are gonna last but they can't be worse than the Ford engines.

TheMunster said:

Few companies round our way using sign printed base spec 90 hard tops as work vehicles. The coil suspension versions drop thier arses on the floor with any kind of weight in the boot. Got used to seeing them with thier noses pointing to the sky.

In 10 years they'll be like the D3 and early D4s are now; you pays your money and you rolls the dice. Not sure how these ingenium engines are gonna last but they can't be worse than the Ford engines.

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I blame the soft coils on those who have become accustomed to the damned EAS system. Real suspension on an off- road vehicle should not be marshmallow based.

Quick follow up:
Had a tyre change at the dealer, finally got rid of the Continental RXs, which were ****e. Now have Continental TS850 winter tyres which are the only winter tyres currently available in 255/65 R19. Pirelli do an all season Scorpion tyre but I wanted a dedicated winter tyre. I bought the tyres elsewhere and had them fitted at the dealer. The 19" alloys I bought off ebay didn´t have TPMS sensors in them and it seems that these are in short supply with no stock anywhere, even JLRs UK warehouse. So I had to take out the ones from my factory steelies and put then onto the alloys. Bill came to approximately 130EUR including new valves. Not cheap but it involved quite a bit of faffing about. They agreed to store my steelies for free until the TPMS sensors are back in stock and fit them.

That was a tuesday and wednesday saw the first proper snow so managed to get that sorted in the nick of time. The tyres and JLRs terrain response were absolutely superb in the snow. I even managed to tow a VW Passat out of the snow... but sadly didn´t get any footage or pics of that. The Defender handled it with ease and I had a chance to finally use my new tow ropes and D-shackles. I only put them in that week just in case anybody (or I) needed help. I had ordered the solid tow eyes on the back of my landy.... these were and probably still are only available on the X-trim but I saw on Powerful UKs website that you can buy them separately as a genuine JLR part. I sent the video and part numbers to my Land Rover dealer just after I ordered my Defender and he ordered and fitted them before I took delivery of my Land Rover. To be honest I had forgotten all about it and was very impressed that he didn´t . Anyway, money well spent in my opinion! The guys in the Passat were very thankful and also commented at the ease with which the Defender pulled them out.

Below is a pic of my first snow drive.

I also managed to do my first longish motorway drive that day. Around 250km there and 250km back. The car is incredibly quiet even at speeds of 150kph... I really mean quiet. I have never driven a car this quiet. You get some wind noise from the mirrors, but minimal engine or road noise and no vibrations at all. I was very very impressed. Definitely even quieter than my previous Discovery 4. And much quieter than the Amarok I drive for work. My Defender is on springs and the body roll was minimal... I would deifinitely say it is better planted than the D4. Definitely rolls less as well. Average fuel consumption was 10.7 litres per 100km, which is probably better than expected and pretty much the same if not lower than any other similar sized vehicle I had driven. Temperature was around 0°C.