Busy ever since
A bit of TLC sets up the Defender 90 for a month of hard work
MY Defender 90 had not been particularly active earlier in the year but it did get the love that I was on about last month – the paint is the only thing that is green now. The mossy deposits are gone (she got a wash), the front speakers have been fixed, rear speakers installed and a new audio head unit has been fitted. This was all in advance of a busy few weeks that I had planned for the faithful Td5 workhorse.
Towing another Land Rover on a low-loader trailer behind a Defender 90 is all in a day’s work for her, even if the Land Rover in question is a heavier 110 model. Towing this combination some 380 miles, from Belfast to Ipswich, is a long and relatively slow task, but the 90 took it in her stride. When I do this sort of work, it always makes me chuckle at the towing
advice often seen for caravan owners and the like – advice that says the towed trailer should be not more than 80 per cent of the tow car (or whatever it is supposed to be). Defenders and many other Land Rover models are rated to tow 3.5 tonnes (or 4 tonnes with air brakes), and do so without issue – while they weigh just over half of that figure!
The rather fetching 110 was safely delivered to my friend Dan, who is going to work his special magic on the exhaust system. Then it was back up the country to Doncaster to collect my usual four to six weekly load of new Land Rover chassis, before the dash up to Scotland to make the ferry at Cairnryan. Even the usual load of chassis on the trailer would make the combination heavier than the 90 – probably around 125 per cent of the weight – but the towing was easier than the heavier 110 load.
Back in Ireland, there was an unusual towing job for the 90 and the flat-bed trailer during the Easter weekend – delivering some new kitchen work tops to Co Donegal and bringing back the ones that were the wrong colour. Thankfully the weather was brilliant; with lovely spring sunshine all weekend and not even a hint of rain, so the 14-foot-long work tops did not need any extra covers to protect them from inclement weather.
And so it was back to Jordanstown, for my Defender 90, for a more sedate life again; just being called upon for short journeys and easy towing jobs. One of these was getting a non-runner V8 90 from the yard and into the workshop. A tow ball was fitted to an old front bumper on the front of the sick Land Rover and my towing bar – a 7 foot length of strong steel with a towing hitch on both ends – was used to tow the V8 to outside the workshop. My friend Gerald (who steered the V8) and I could not manage to push the V8 the last bit into the workshop, so the towing bar was employed again to push the Land Rover in – this time with my Defender reversing. It turned out to be a sticking transmission brake on the V8 that made it too hard for us to push. I’ve never been a fan of working on nonrunners. Can you tell why?