X8R Limited
We profile a UK firm that make replacement OEM quality parts for a fraction of the cost
WHAT’S your favourite tool for fixing your Land Rover? Is it a hammer or a laptop? While many of us love the good old days of being able to fix a car with a bit of chewing gum and a pair of the wife’s tights, times have moved on. Modern Land Rovers are packed with electronics which make them more efficient, connected, comfortable, faster and safer. But they also have a reputation for being a nightmare to repair.
Luckily, the skills of the people who repair Land Rovers have evolved too, and a new generation of technicians has emerged. They wouldn’t know what a carburettor looks like, but can fix seemingly-terminal faults with a tap of a keyboard.
But parts still wear out and fail, and replacing them is an expensive business. Even when a tiny component has broken, often a whole unit will have to be replaced at eyewatering expense. It will be the same specification as the one you are replacing too, so is probably destined to fail in exactly the same way in a few years.
Luckily, there are entrepreneurs who have spotted this gap in the market and are constantly redesigning products to make Land Rover repairs cheaper and better. One of the best known is Kieran Mannings, owner of X8R Ltd. He has been re-engineering parts to fix and improve cars for just over a decade, sending his components all over the world and saving owners hundreds on each repair.
Kieran originally set up the company selling parts for Honda scooters (X8RS – hence the name) when he was just 16. A few years later he became infuriated by the boot lock on his girlfriend’s (now wife) Renault Megane. It broke and the only way to open it was by wiggling a pencil inside it. A new latch from a Renault dealer was £150, so Kieran took it to pieces, found the cheap plastic ring that had failed and replaced it with a stainless steel part. It worked, so he started selling them online and the business took off.
He then searched forums and asked around in the trade to seek out other common car problems which could be fixed with a bit of ingenuity. He discovered people were making a decent living selling all sorts of bodges, including a Citroen glovebox repair which used a bathplug. He knew he could do better, so began designing properly-engineered solutions.
“I don’t know why car makers do it, but some of the parts they fit are completely unsuitable for the job. The materials won’t last or they’re just poorly thought through,” he says. “Some of it is cost cutting, or a need to save time in development, I think. But it’s the poor owner who has to pay in the end.”
X8R now employs two designers to try and find alternatives to these shoddy or unsuitable parts. Prototypes are made using 3D printing and tested before suppliers are commissioned to mass-produce the new and improved components. They are then sold online, either direct from the X8R site, or through Amazon and ebay.
From his premises in Ramsgate he now sends out tens of thousands of parts around the world (he has outposts in South Africa and the US) – most of them for Land Rovers.
Garages and even main dealers are regular customers, knowing that an X8R kit will often give them a cheaper and easier way of getting a car back on the road and making sure it won’t fail again.
X8R’S investigation of Land Rover parts was a natural development, and not just because some of the components are ripe for re-engineering. Kieran and his father are Land Rover fans, and own several Range Rovers between them. A P38 and L322 sit looking a little worse for wear in the company car park, having being used for product development work. Other Land Rover parts are scattered around the warehouse, being used for testing or photography.
Some of his best sellers are air suspension rebuild kits, and his company sells 15 different packages of parts for all of the systems fitted to Land Rovers, from the Dunlop set-up of the P38 Range Rovers, to the Wabco used in Discovery 2s and the Hitachi compressors for the more modern models.
The cheapest kit X8R sell is a £17.99 fix for the Wabco airsuspension compressor fitted to the Discovery 2. The first
"We want people to be able to do our fixes at home, or for a garage to be able to do it quickly”
sign that you are in trouble is likely to be the noise of the compressor working overtime to try and keep the suspension inflated. This is usually followed by the dreaded warning light on the instrument panel. It’s usually caused by the plastic piston ring inside the compressor wearing out over time, meaning it has to work harder to create any pressure as it can’t get a good seal.
A new compressor unit costs more than £400, but X8R developed a new, tougher piston ring which can be fitted with the help of an instructional video. These guides are key to the X8R philosophy. Kieran says: “There a lot of parts we could make for cars, but we don’t as they’d be too complicated to fit even for a competent DIY mechanic. We want people to be able to do our fixes at home, or for a garage to be able to do it quickly. That’s why we spend so much time and money on video, it makes a real difference for customers.”
The Hitachi compressor unit, fitted to later Discovery 3/4s and the Range Rover Sport, needs a fix which is more comprehensive, as it is the entire plastic end cap of the compressor which fails. X8R’S replacement is made from billeted aluminium and fitted with a more durable gasket which should never fail again. It costs less than £40, or £70 with a kit which includes filters and other bits which might need swapping while you have the compressor in pieces.
It’s not just suspension parts which fill up the X8R
warehouse though. Another best seller is a fix for Td5 starter motors, which turns a £100+ bill for full replacement into a £14.99 repair. The common cause of the fault is worn contacts and plunger parts in the solenoid, so rather than replace the whole starter, X8R’S kit only has the parts which commonly wear out.
The other big Td5 woe which X8R can banish is fuel leaks from the pressure regulator block. This is usually caused by the diaphragm or seals inside the block failing. Instead of a £150 replacement block from the dealer, X8R’S £55 overhaul kit allows you to replace the failed seals with upgraded parts made of better materials which will last longer.
Failed seals and other components also blight the BMW diesel engines fitted to Freelanders and L322s, and again X8R have kits to replace them with improved components at a fraction of the main dealer cost.
The smallest Land Rover part sold is a set of door latch springs for the Discovery 1 and Range Rover classic, which use the infamous British Leyland era 'universal' door handle. The cheap original parts are notorious for snapping or becoming weak over time, so X8R replacements are made of stronger stainless steel. A pack of six – one for each door and a spare – is a tenner. It’s been one of X8R’S best sellers for nearly a decade.
One of the biggest issues for X8R is copycat companies who buy their parts, replicate them and then sell them for a fraction of the price. “It’s really tricky because we put in a lot of work, but we usually can’t take out a patent as it’s a reengineered part. We have to find another way to compete, and that’s the quality of our parts and service. So, we make sure we have really good instructions and a video. And we go all-out to get 100 per cent feedback on our sales.”
The fixes engineered at X8R might not involve a hammer or welding torch, but there’s little doubt that they are keeping Land Rovers on the road by making them cheaper and easier to fix. By improving on the original design it should also mean a one time repair. X8R is proof that technology has brought the ‘make do and mend’ mentality bang up to date.