SHED: LAND ROVER DEFENDER 300TDI
MORE TRAVELS, MORE REPAIRS.
THE ADVANTAGE of having two toys in the shed is that when one doesn’t start you can drive the other one. Having said this, my Defender has never let me down (knock on wood) but it does seem to spend an inordinate amount of time in workshops having bits and pieces repaired or replaced, so it’s lucky I have my everreliable Series IIA shorty to get around in when I need it.
Of course, constant maintenance is one of the tradeoffs of owning an older vehicle instead of a newer one. And while it might cost a fair bit of dough to keep the ol’ Defender on the road, it’s still more affordable than the repayments would be on a new 4x4 wagon.
So, what are the latest Landy trials and tribulations? You may recall I recently spent a wad of cash having the injector pump overhauled. Once this was sorted the lift pump started leaking, so this was replaced at the next service interval. Everything went well for the next couple of months, but then I noticed the temperature gauge climbing towards the red zone on a freeway run to Marulan. I backed off and it dropped back down, but whenever I tried to nudge it up to the 110km/h mark the temperature gauge would correspondingly nudge its way up to the red mark.
It was at Marulan that I got to drive the Defender on a racetrack, using it to ferry photographer Phil Cooper around the
Pheasant Wood circuit for 4X4 Australia’s mud-terrain tyre test. This was bloody great fun, but, suffice to say, I won’t be entering the Defender into a race anytime soon.
The next big drive was up to Coffs Harbour for the 4X4 Australia advertiser’s weekend, and on the freeway drive north the temp gauge also headed north. I subjected the Defender to two solid days of pretty gnarly off-road driving in the Coffs hinterland, and this proved no problem for the cooling system at all. In fact, I had an absolute ball, with the Defender’s long-travel suspension, front and rear air lockers, great low-range gearing and pre-dinged panels combining to make light work of the tricky tracks. But when I
jumped back on the freeway for the drive south, the faded and bent temp needle continued heading the other way.
The boys at Roving Mechanical have since upgraded the tired-looking cooling system, fitting a new copper radiator, a new viscous fan, a new thermostat, and even a new temperature gauge. The result? Nothing much has changed. The next port of call will be to check the vehicle’s earth which, if poor, can mess around with the accuracy of the temperature gauge.
Of course, a head gasket could be the culprit, too, but there’s no coolant loss and no telltale cloudy engine-oil signs. I hope it’s just the earth; I’m not in the mood to spend more money on the Defender right now, because it could prove my old vehicle/ new vehicle expenditure comparison to be a falsehood.
On a more positive note, I picked up a Defender cargo barrier the other day for 20 bucks! Winning.
LONG-TRAVEL SUSPENSION, FRONT AND REAR AIR LOCKERS AND GREAT LOW-RANGE GEARING COMBINED TO MAKE LIGHT WORK OF THE TRACKS