Last Land-Rover for mere mortals?

|| 'tis a fact that LR still make TDis for the army, AFAIK, or did so || until very recently.

Not now - stopped 'em last year. Wonder what the army will use now, as they apparently rejected the Td5 as "non-field-repairable" (and other issues with the ECUs being susceptible to damage from passing ray-guns or something). Probably something made elsewhere than Solihull.

I'll second that and add that they are not updating the Defender fast enough. They have lost the plot and the market to the [mostly] pick-up opposition. I haven't seen a serious business user, like a farmer, with a new Defender in a very long time while the pick-ups are ten a penny, especially Nissan and the new Mitsubishi. In fact combining the figures of just these two examples sold over the last six months is likely to dwarf the figures for the antiquated Defender. Someone should get off their corporate arses and give the business customer what he wants or the whole business will collapse if fashions change against big expensive playthings.

Huw

ALL engines sold in Western Europe, America and some of Australasia need computer control to meet the last, latest and future emission regulations. There is NO choice in this matter and NO alternative, whether you like it or not.

Huw

This is a sign of old age because I remember my dad, who is 80, say just this over and over back in the 60's

Huw

Yes, my 110hi-cap has always handled like shit with more than 3/4 of a ton on board. That is even with heavy duty suspension. No complaints with most other aspects though, for a late 1970's design. However, it is yesterdays model which is no longer the vehicle of choice for its target market. The same happened on a smaller scale when the Series III was kept in production for too long and it took a while for the Defender to regain the market. This time, I fear it is too late.

Huw

I'd read that the army were replacing them with a thing from Iveco, designed from the outset to resist land-mines, unlike the Defender and Hummer. It's not got a triangular-section body though like a proper blast-proof truck, but that needs big size. It also uses the Iveco

3.0 litre common-rail diesel.

(Hunts for article on disk)

Iveco LMV (Light Multirole Vehicle). The article states that the British Army has 400 of them available to them to be modified by Alvis and called the "panther". This was in Autocar, 13th December 2005.

Also;

Then again I'd also read that they'd decided not to go for the Iveco and had chosen something else. I sense a woman's hand at the controls. Suzuki Vitara?

You are right that they will not use the TD5 which, in any case, will not remain in production now for more than a few months yet.

Huw

Your wish for a 'simpler' and more serviceable engine will soon be met by the very mass produced Ford four cylinder diesel Transit engine. In fact it is not 'simple' at all because it has to meet EuroIV regulations.

Huw

Huw uttered summat worrerz funny about:

Here Here!!!!

Come on Landrover.... I'm looking for a replacement for the Disco in a few years and I'm currently looking L200 and Navarna, much as I love the marque.

Lee D

Um, Santana are still producing what is basically a Series III with a

2.8 TDi in it.

Alex

On or around Mon, 22 May 2006 21:22:39 +0100, "Huw" enlightened us thusly:

Mind, I bet it could be done mechanically if someone wanted to invest the time and effort. More to the point though, there could be a more graceful degradation, so that if the electronics fail it sets a usable set of parameters which let you carry on driving meaningfully.

On or around Mon, 22 May 2006 17:35:17 +0100, beamendsltd enlightened us thusly:

mind, leaf springs in general give you a crap ride and way too much unsprung weight.

I'm all in favour of simplicity, but there's nothing that complicated about the rangie/defender coil set up and it improves the ride amazingly.

As for Huw... you have a trade-off in a real 4x4 between stability and articulation. If you only use it on smooth surfaces, you could put sod-off ARBs on and stop it wallowing, but then you'd much more easily get stopped on uneven terrain by lifting a wheel.

OBD is mandatory. Not sure how you'd do that mechanically... :)

On or around Tue, 23 May 2006 00:06:46 +0100, Alex enlightened us thusly:

yeah, but it's not a 2.8 TDi, it's an IVECO. There is a lot in south america producing the oversized TDi, but that's a different animal.

The IVECO is a damned good engine, used in trucks up to about 6 tons... but it's not a simple mechanical engine.

I imagine that if you had a failure mode that was normally usable, unlike the limp home on a car I'm having a problem with atm that restricts rpm to 2000, then chavs and thieves could modify it to defeat the system, hence it would be less clean.

Is OBD a standard, i.e. the same system for all makes?

I've recently come across an aftermarket engine control system for big engines converted from diesel to natural gas. In principle you could piggy back this onto an engine who's engine management had failed but this wouldn't help if the failure were cause by something in a sensor or the high pressure fuel system.

AJH

Sort of....

There is a minimum implementation, which must be to a published standard (E-OBD II). The manufacturers then use the system for all manner of other things as a superset of this standard, and keep very close rein on who sees the protocols for those.

On or around Tue, 23 May 2006 07:44:06 +0100, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:

what exactly *is* OBD?

oh, and buggrem, just incidentally.

It's a car diagnostic bus specification, includes the required plug, wiring, data formats, data speed etc, it allows you to plug an analyser into the connection and read off various sensors, fault codes etc. On some cars you can even re-programme the ECU via it.

It can be dead useful, my plastic rocket uses a different but similar bus type, from that you can read off and log things like mass air temperature, barometric pressure, throttle position, injector duty cycle, exhaust Co2 content, knock sensor triggering etc and use it to diagnose engine complaints. The forums I am in can even be used to post the data logs from runs and get help on diagnosing quite complicated problems. You can even use it to get telemetery details from fast runs for bragging rights, or to calculate instantaneous fuel consumption figures. Or at least you can if your car isn't in bits.

*sniff sniff*

You don't generally need expensive kit for this kind of thing either, just an interface board (mine cost £30), a computer and software, which is often free.

Can it be retro fitted to engines that have all the sensors and closed loop gumph?

I'm having a lot of trouble finding an erratic engine miss as the engine warms up and goes to closed loop running, fine from cold till then.

AJH