Ed Evans Talks Technical
Internal combustion versus electric
“In the case of old Land Rover diesels, all that’s needed is to show them a decent battery, and they’re away”
Twenty years after the first electric Land Rover appears in the showrooms someone will be out there restoring one, hopefully having first learnt something about high-voltage electrics. Imagine spending a couple of years rebuilding your electric Land Rover until the time finally arrives when you can start it up. You press a switch and some lights come on. You press the accelerator and the vehicle slowly creeps out of the shed in absolute silence. Compared to a combustion-engined Land Rover, the event is an utter anti-climax.
But all is not lost. The electric car has wi-fi, so you stream in the soundtrack of an old diesel engine and bask in the sound of an ancient starter motor spinning a dormant diesel into life.
It fires up, splutters and settles into a rhythmic tick-over. You imagine flicking the accelerator and hearing the revs rise in a powerful, vibrating crescendo. You experience what it was like to have resurrected a living and breathing powerhouse. Then you switch off, push it back in the shed, and check the ads in Vintage Land Rover Monthly and consider taking out a second mortgage to buy one of the few remaining Land Rovers with an engine.
I’m not complaining about the future, more celebrating the present – after two years dormant, my own Series III diesel has just fired up for the first time. We all rebuild engines that start up perfectly again, and everyone puts a classic vehicle away and finds it starts up again years later.
In the case of old Land Rover diesel engines, all that’s needed is to show them a decent battery and they’re away. But none of that detracts from the absolute joy of hearing an internal combustion engine come back to life again.
Sure, it’s essential when a vehicle is laid up to leave the engine in a good state of tune and service, and to check carefully before starting it up.
And if an engine has been overhauled, it’s obviously essential to rebuild it meticulously if it’s to start again on the button. But the cleverness in all this is in the design of the engine.
Combustion engines are an engineering masterpiece of hundreds of components that are all interdependent on each other – we are merely the butler who attends them.