Disco Vs Trooper - shocking result!

Yes, I think I admitted to that a while ago. And your point is?

Reply to
Richard Brookman
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Lighten up, it's a joke.

Reply to
Richard Brookman

meaningless.

built..

horsepower

Well my Trooper has the 3.1 and 113hp. My Land Cruiser has 200 hp yet does not have double the towing capacity nor anything like double the performance towing a reasonable 2.5 tons. In fact horsepower has a very loose relationship to towing capacity. My 2.5 naturally aspirated 67hp Land Rover has the same towing capacity as the Land Cruiser which has three times the power [and performance in this case LOL ]

certainly

200TDi

I have had lesser vehicles which are also quiet, the X5 and ML270 are not bad considering. The 3.1 Trooper is probably quieter than the later 3.0. All of these are better than any Mazda 323 that I have driven.

Huw

Reply to
Huw

So what's wrong with Land Rovers? Well it's probably quality control at the factory. This means some, and I say again, some, new vehicle buyers experience niggling faults. Occasionally there are serious faults too but this is not unique to Land Rover. The Land Rover Discovery officially tows 4 tons with coupled brakes, though I've towed over eight!, is a better off roader, and a better on roader than any Ford, GM, Jeep or Japanese 4x4 in the same class. Its box chassis, unit construction and aluminium body work will ensure that it will retain its integrity long after the other pretenders have dissolved into literally a pile of junk. Average life of any Land Rover product is now over 25 years, and that's in a wet British climate, with 30, 40 and even 50 year old models in common use, not just as vintage cars for sunny Sunday afternoons, but as daily work horses, hauling trailers on farms and still beating the opposition off road.

In 2000 I was making a film in the Mole National Park region of Ghana, hundreds of square miles of rugged bush without roads. The Chief Ranger told me that of all the many vehicles that had been donated by Toyota, Nissan and Mitsubishi over the years, none had survived the work. The only vehicles they could use at the time were a huge 4x4 agricultural tractor and the original Series 3 LWB SW Land Rover he was issued with when he started the job some 20 years previously. It had out lived them all. As far as he was concerned the superior durability and functionality of the Land Rover needed no opinion from the incognisanti to prove a point.

For all of Land Rovers niggling faults their products have a unique integrity and will continue to be the bench mark that others try, with little success, to match.

Reply to
Moving Vision

On or around Wed, 26 May 2004 21:04:53 +0100, Moving Vision enlightened us thusly:

'cept that Ford own it now...

and more to the point, I suspect that the defender as currently built is going to be the last separate-chassis design. The new ones are going to be monocoques, which might well be the beginning of the end.

The great strength of the Land Rover is it's ability to stand up to abuse and still work - a lot of this is due to that bloody great chassis and live axles - getting it far enough out of line that it'll not work takes some serious effort. Build it all with independent suspension and a monocoque stressed shell and it'll be much more prone to go wrong after medium-sized impacts.

OK, I had a font end on my 110 which bent the track rod and pushed the bumper into the front wheel. But I got it rolling again with a couple of spanners (to unbolt the bumper) and a jack (under th trackrod to straighten it a bit), and had I been somewhere remote, I could have unbolted the trackrod and driven over it or something to get it straight enough to drive normally.

The same sort of impact on most things would probably have broken the front suspension and twisted the body.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

built

Since the new one will be based on the Disco 3, then it will have a separate chassis.

it'll

Is there a problem with the newish Range Rover or Shogun? I've not heard of any.

Maybe. Maybe not. The main problem in the future is to do with designing for safety IMO. In many instances this is likely to compromise easy and cheap repairability. An impact such as you describe will likely blow an airbag or two. IMO this is a fair compromise.

Huw

Reply to
Huw

If I have to explain it, then it's not worth it.

Reply to
hugh

We got the obvious Wales/Cumbria/sheep thing. Was there anything else?

Reply to
Richard Brookman

so was my comment..

Reply to
Ray Laughton

With an Isuzu Trooper the story would had a happier ending.. In Africa most vehicles (except donkey carts) have shorter working lives due to the driving habits of the locals :-/ The old LR survived due to its being simple to operate and its cast-iron constitution.

It proves that old Landies are simple, they may be as tough as Troopers.

Reply to
Ray Laughton

In the end HP (and gearing to a lesser degree) still determines how much you can tow or not, surely? Its one thing to have a relatively underpowered LR certified to tow 2.5 tons but your LC can probably do it 3 times faster. Did not realise the 3.1L Trooper had 46hp less than the 3.0L, suppose this will reduce the longivety of the 3.0 engine?

Thats not too difficult, on the highway I have to jack the radio up to full blast at speeds above 130km/h

Surprise

Reply to
madiba

The legal system and manufacturers build strength leading to recommended maximum capacity is the determining factor in the Western World.

Both are rated to 4.0 tons with certain conditions. No, I can assure you that the LC will not tow three times faster. Well, maybe up steep hills. Both can tow such loads at around 35mph on the level and, for safety reasons, slower down even moderate gradients.

suppose

Not at all. If you have a basically good one, then it will likely last a very long time indeed. However, no vehicle is perfect and the Isuzu

3.0 direct injection engine has had a checkered reliability record. When they fail, they are difficult to repair.

Is that about 90mph? I don't think that my 3.1 can reach that. Up to

70mph it is quite refined. My LR110 is absolutely flat out at 60mph, which it will reach only on a very long straight or downhill.

The road and engine noise in some of those models is amazing, considering all those that I have tried have had petrol engines and all the 4x4's since 1988 I have owned have been diesel.

Huw

Reply to
Huw

functionality

In my experience the series 111 LR was far less reliable than the 90 and 110. They were also far more difficult to repair. For instance, the gearbox, which was prone to failure, had to be removed through the passenger compartment. Broken halfshafts were a very common occurance. They remained in production around 8 years too long, allowing the Japanese, primarily Daihatsu, to gain a foothold and establish the Japanese as credible alternatives in general.

It is easy to gloss over the problems now that most of these Series

111's that survive are toys or pets of some kind. At the time, their customers deserted them in droves due to the superior reliability and diesel performance of Daihatsu in the UK and Toyota Worldwide.

It is a huge credit to Land Rover that many Series 111 survive in service. It is a rare sight indeed to find an early 'breadvan' Daihatsu, although there are plenty of mid-Eighties square fronted ones still about. Their demise is mostly due to rust. This is also true of some LR chassis but this can be patched while the early Japanese just turned to flakes and fist sized holes all over LOL This applies just as much to early Isuzu and particularly Nissan. I remember driving a Patrol soon after they were launched in the UK, the engine was a revelation. I don't think it would have survived a decade, even with the almost compulsary third party undersealing.

Huw

Reply to
Huw

I was interested in your comments. Here in Australia Daihatsu four wheel drives have never been very common, although many owners swear by them.

The market, which was 90% Landrover in the early sixties, was taken over at least 75% by Toyota Landcruiser by the early seventies - in other words about ten years before the Series 3 stopped production, and Landrover has not seriously challenged this dominance since. (As an aside, since then the four wheel drive market has expanded enormously, with many more players, and Toyotas overall share is far less now).

From my experience there are two reasons why Toyota has managed this - firstly, superior on road performance compared to the Series 3, and secondly, a vastly superior dealer network, since they had mass market cars as well and Landrover did not.

Diesel engines did not enter in to it - at the time I am talking about you could not buy a diesel Landcruiser (but you could a Landrover - I owned one). Build quality and reliability did not enter in to - I drove new Landcruisers in the desert in 1965-66 so I know what I am talking about. Although The Landcruiser had some advantages in reliability - the axles did not break, although the semifloating rear axle bearings tended to fail, and were a major job to replace. Steering was appalling even when new, and the reliability of the electrics made Lucas look good. Dust leaks were as bad as Landrovers, and the bodies fell to bits. The seat frames broke under the weight of western drivers. The fuel tank arrangement was a death trap (fuel tank under the seat like the S3, but above the floor, so that any fuel leak pools on the floor).

Despite this Toyota managed to take most of the market from Landrover, helped by the fact that Landrovers were in short supply from the early sixties to the early seventies and a large part of Australia's quota was taken up by military orders. Toyota kept the market by rapid improvement (floating rear axle, improved steering, body improvements, quality improvements, four speed gearbox) and a good dealer network. This at a time when Landrover, under Leyland's control, was losing its mass market (Austin/Morriss) and hence dealer network, and was static in design and deteriorating in build quality. By the time the Stage 1 arrived the market had been lost, and the high price of this in both the V8 and Isuzu diesel variants served to limit the extent to which it was regained. The 110 has always been a minor component of the market here, and the 90 only arrived a year or so ago.

JD

Reply to
JD

On or around Thu, 27 May 2004 22:37:25 +0100, "Huw" enlightened us thusly:

130 KPH is just over 80 mph.

new toy will cruise at that quite happily with more to come on the level. I suspect it'll top out about 95, I know that the 3.9 RR will hold a steady

100, but mine's "only" a 3.5
Reply to
Austin Shackles

On or around Thu, 27 May 2004 11:58:01 +0100, "Huw" enlightened us thusly:

airbags can be sorted.

A similar impact in the citroen I had previously required major surgery to the front end. It was certainly well beyond a roadside bodge to get it going again.

Obviously, a Citroen BX ain't a LR...

I'd not looked in enough detail into the disco 3 to find out that it was still separate-chassis, though I suppose I must have known once. I don't see how you can build something equivalent to the defender without.

Mind, there are far too many electronics on it to make it viable as a thing to take off into the jungle and be able to bodge. I foresee an increasing market in rebuilt-as-new pre-electronic vehicles... and quite honestly, the latest TD5 is really not suited to developing nations in e.g. Africa with no realistic infrastructure to keep 'em running.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

Obviously

A Defender version destined for the Jungle might not need such electrickery. Of course, if one were to buy it in the EC with the intension of using it within the EC, then there will be no choice. It will come with the latest emissionised engines and crash protection, both primary and secondary, to meet the relevant local legislation. This will require electronic control, not least for the engines because they cannot lower emissions without.

I foresee an

Africa will have to get an infrastructure to repair these things. Think of the job creation opportunities. As it stands, very few LR are sold from the UK to those countries. It would be sensible to continue building the present vehicle in a third country to meet their local and more basic needs. They certainly cannot be economically built in the UK. The UK market requires 'value added' for any local build to be viable. Our cost and political structure is so anti-industry that there is little industry left.

Huw

Reply to
Huw

Daihatsu was well marketed here from the mid Seventies on. It still had a high market share here when volumes elsewhere dictated that production was no longer viable. The same applies to Trooper. In fact I believe the Trooper was gaining market before its demise due to migration of Daihatsu owners.

Diesel dominated the market here even in the early Seventies but Toyota did not have a diesel until early Eighties and then only in the

60 wagon and light Hi-lux pick-up from '84 on.

Landrover,

dealer

quality.

Land Rover have a woefully low market share in most regions. Well below potential. Despite their undoubted ability and long term durability, they have had low build quality, high running cost/repairs and a high purchase price. This combination does not lead to high sales in any country where their unique attributes can be substituted by something else. Initial cost is not the highest factor IMHO. If that were the case, then the Land Cruiser would not sell in the volume it does, because it is damned expensive everywhere.

Huw

Reply to
Huw

I'm not sure of the mph, but Austin seems to know. My top speed is about 175km/h

Reply to
Ray Laughton

What do you estimate the overall LC share of the Aussie market to be now? 50%? Are they now predominantly diesels?

Reply to
Ray Laughton

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