Future of TD5

I though that the only land rover engine made by MG rover was the (k-series?) petrol engine in the freelander, of which land rover have huge stocks to get them by until the model facelift and new engine goes in, now sure when that is.

Regards. Mark.

I thought it was in-house, but ICBW.

2006 Freelander is going to need something in place of the BMW 2.0 diesel. I'd guess something about 150hp, and viable to share with Mondeo / Focus / Volvo V50....

Now this I do know. Exports of V6 Freelanders has been suspended due to lack of engines. There are none left.

Huw

The 1.8 is probably a different kettle of badgers though.

The 2006 Freelander is a brand new model, not a facelift. The production line is new, and at Halewood.

On or around Fri, 01 Jul 2005 11:09:55 +0100, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:

Ford TDCi I should think.

Austin Shackles came up with the following;:

Which, in the Mondeo and Focus, certainly is a cracking engine. ICBA myself, but it might be interesting to look at the relative weights of a Mondeo and Freelander to see what the likely power difference might be ...

I don't believe there are any significant numbers of petrol engines left. They don't tend to stockpile these things by the thousand because it costs too much to do so in storage and intrest charges.

So it would appear. In all probability they will share Ford engines with Jaguar. Not a bad thing because Ford engines are now as good as any.

Huw

Powertrain are responsible for the V6 as well I think. One of the mags says Freelander is being withdrawn from the US pending new model to conserve engine supplies, sales had dived anyway. The demise of the K series engine is no great loss although a deal was done apparantly to ensure supply.

TD4 is BMW and I can see them dropping that soon. Having had both ford focus and volvo V50, I can see nothing wrong with using modern Ford diesels in the freebie.

With regard to the TD5, it's in house but rumour has it that Ford diesels will be used in the Defender as TD5 won't meet emmission regs. i assume it will be one of the Transit Engines.

Sean

73FL74 101GS 1984 110 2.5D Medway Military Vehicle Group

Nothing else would make any sense. They aren't likely to buy in an engine from elsewhere and it would be a brave man who suggested developing a brand new unit bespoke for the Defender!

On or around Fri, 01 Jul 2005 17:16:35 +0100, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:

I'd've thought they'd use the V6 from the disco.

The current transit engines would be underpowered, I'd have thought, unless they do a more souped-up one.

Not sure how big that is - it's a V, rather than in-line for a start so fitting it might be an arse. Two turbos as well, and god-alone knows how much ECU / wiring / sensor complexity.

And then there's the transmission it's connected to... I spose they could make it fit the R380, if it's up to the torque.

What are Peugeot fitting it to? It's a joint development with them IIRC.

They tried but the factory has shut. Period.

Lets hope they use one of their more refined and torquey units. The Mondeo

150hp would be great AFAICS. and it is already used in two states of tune at the new factory home of Freelander.

Huw

Far too expensive and not easily packaged into a Defender I would think. As it is the Defender is far too expensive to produce in the UK and they are pushing their luck with present pricing. They need a cheaper engine and a more economical way of building it. Since they are pretty well stuck as far as the present design goes they have two or three alternatives. They can try and build it cheaper. This might mean cheaper [may need not mean inferior] major components or it could mean building it somewhere with ultra low labour costs or a combination of both. Or they could redesign the whole thing to be cheaper and easier to build to a consistently higher standard. They could combine this with other cost savings as mentioned above.

Since I don't believe the build volume can ever recover to levels that would justify significant investment in a new model then they are fairly stuck with cost saving for the existing outmoded model while watching their market share flow away. It is possible that volume would build sufficiently given a new model to justify investment in it but frankly the major agricultural markets are in such a poor state and the military market being increasingly choosy, it is hard for anyone to put forward a case for that investment.

Huw

On or around Fri, 01 Jul 2005 18:17:42 +0100, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:

The 2.4 duratorq in the LDV vans is only 100 BHP though, in TDi form. Dunno if that's the same as the TDCi in the mondeo, or whether that's another engine. nor do I know if they can up the power on it.

'course, there's always the Iveco 2.8 TDi - are Ford and Iveco still linked?

Only one turbo in the Land Rover current installation. All engines are increasingly dependant on all kinds of sensors and computers and it is inevitable because it is led by emission legislation

No problem. Ford must have a number of suitable gearboxes or could build one and use it in other applications to gain volume and justify it.

Huw

Oi, leave me out of this! Badger.

It would also be a brave man who didn't realise that a lot of Defender owners (the ones that use them as Our Lord Wilkes intended) are not impressed with the Td5's lack of low speed torque. The 200/300Tdi's are sorely missed.

Richard

Ford recently announced their intention to "re-capture" world markets. To do that they need to go back to basics and invest in a proper replacement for Defender (which is enjoying the highest sales for years at the moment) - or leave it alone. From talking to Ford engineers at various meetings/seminars a few years ago, just after they bought LR, the engineers are well aware of Defenders inconic status. I doubt that the marketing men are though, or have any concept of what the vehicles are *actually* used for.

The miltary market is dead - almost all export deals for Defender have been blocked one political issue or another (handing them on a plate to the competition who have no such scruples). An order for 500 vehicles would, I suspect, be declined if it involved any additional design, never mind the cost of the endless utterly pointless trials involved (the system that brought us the Reynolds-Boughton RB40 - 'nuff said).

I don't know about other UK areas, but LR have completely re-established themselves in the Peaks, the move back to Defender is extremely noticable.

Richard

On or around Sat, 2 Jul 2005 08:03:21 +0000 (UTC), beamendsltd enlightened us thusly:

Since I can't believe that they can't tune the thing for low-speed torque if they want to, is this driven by the emissions legislation?

I note that the military carried on having 300 TDis after the introduction of the TD5, but I think that was due to the battlefield reliability/serviceability thing. Also, a mechanical pump TDi might be the only thing that'd survive (apart fomr a basic carb petrol engine) an EMP.