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TWO Defenders,Yeti and a Subaru!!!!
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Both the year 2000 Defender 90 I had, and the 2008 Defender 110 that followed (also now sold) would have gotton out. If you specify ABS on them, which I did, you also get traction control and it works very well. In any event it's not that much of a hardship avoiding mireing a side, and making sure either the front or rear axle retains grip
If you use one seriously off-road, there's a wide choice of aftermarket lockers for the diffs.
I had Defenders as I did a lot of miles towing a heavy trailer.
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I would have thought owning a farm did qualify as off road?
subaru have a excellent rep for their 4wd system, but i'm suprised a defender is so poor.
I've read that modern cars often come with a very high reverse, so not ideal in 4wd mode?
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Our Defender 90 farm workhorses are 2000 and ‘04 pickups, the ’04 with and the ’00 without Traction Control. The TC system is pretty primitive and notoriously unreliable. It’s supposed to brake a spinning wheel in order to divert drive to wheels with grip. Does it work? No sir! From time to time we get out to admire the fact, watching the wheels spinning away uselessly, that in reality a Defender of that vintage is 2-wheel-drive and NOT 4-wheel-drive. No one, other than our 2 local Land-Rover garages and every farmer for miles around, ever believes this but it’s true. And simply NUTS. Is it still the same now? I dunno – farmers can’t afford new ones. What happens on a Defender of our vintage is when things get slippy you engage the Centre diff-lock which sends power to both the front and back axles – whoopee. But on neither of those axles are there then axle diff-locks so you get, in reality, 2 wheels driving, not 4, just like on an ordinary car with no diff-lock or limited slip you get 1 spinning wheel, not 2. It’s NUTS. Sure you can get ‘aftermarket lockers for the diffs’ but have you tried using those? You can’t steer any more for starters! And try then disconnecting them covered in mud or ice. And aren’t Defenders meant to be rugged farm-type workhorses? Mercedes have great manual axle diff-locks as does the old 4x4 Panda. The Subaru system gets all 4 wheels turning spectacularly and the Yeti’s Haldex system seems good, certainly a whole world better than a Defender’s on wet grass or ice.
And as for “avoiding mireing a side” - imagine a steep farm track with, as so often happens, ice in one track, nice hard in the other. So what does the 2-wheel-drive Defender with its 2 wheels spinning away on the icy side do about that? Answer – it doesn’t – bring on the Subaru or almost any other 4x4!
So why do we have the b***** things then, complete with their cr*ppy build quality? We often wonder – but they’ve got good pick-up bodies for us, not too high up to lift dead sheep into like a Hi-Lux, good engines, excellent springs, those good 3 front seats. And what else is there? Our neighbour’s old Panda 4x4 which he converted with a hacksaw into a pick-up, that’s good. Otherwise?
What we’d all like is a proper & properly built new Defender that works … but the pics so far of the proposed replacement look like it’s designed to Defend Sloane Square rather than putting dead sheep into.
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The reason an Impreza Turbo did so well is that it probably has a limited slip diff at the back, possibly front as well - the Subaru Outback (Legacy estate on stilts) gets a rear LSD on low powered versions as well.
Defender sales have to finish by end of October 2015 as it cannot be developed/modified to meet the new safety regulations coming in then. The proposed India-built replacement has been put on hold due to Tata's poor situation in Asia, so for the moment you need to start looking elsewhere.
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Yes RT - but where? What else is there simple and not too posh that really likes getting filthy inside & out? World War 2 Jeeps were just the thing! Look at the Hilux - ok if too high and cramped once-upon-a-time but look at what they've done to it now. No longer a dirty work-horse - too posh by half. So what IS there?
I suspect the problem is production-volume. Pople like us who really do want a work-horse are getting rarer I suspect ... the townees are on the ascendant!
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Even in a Subaru, I had to remember to turn off the traction control to get it to drive all four wheels properly. On snow going up a hill, it would brake a spinning wheel and create a lot of smoke from the brake pads. With the TC off, the tyres spun until they melted some snow and gained traction. Simples.
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Yawn!
How about a 1998 120HP 5 cyl Sprinter engined (from the factory) Steyr Daimler Puch LWB Van.
Actually a "G" Wagen in drag.
Truely a 4 wheel drive with 3 locking diffs.
Auto gearbox, hi to low and 2 to 4 indectably selectable on the move
Does 24mpg regardless of duty cycle.
Factory fitted tow bar and 13 pin electrics.
A pity we didnay get the A/C and cruise control.
But it got fabously comfortable Recaro seats with arm rests.
Kinda fancy an old school Toyota Land Cruiser Amazone the noo.
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Which Subaru did you have Happy B? In our [utterly wonderful] Imprezza you couldn't turn of TC - there wasn't a knob!
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Better get a proper 4WD L200 classic shape. Old fashioned mechanically shifted hi and lo range, rear diff lock, huge ground clearance, with the right off-road tyres they are just about unstoppable.
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L200/Mitsubishis used to be good things for Highland farmers except for USELESS approach and departure angles which had them stranded like beached whales. [Defenders are better at this and Wranglers are good]. But now L200s - my God, the "Warrior"! - have gone all urban and posh [as have Toyota & the Hilux, and are now useless with longer wheelbases and so even worse break-over angles] - though yes, the 4x4 systems on both are a whole world better that the Defender'd 2x4 daft-to-the-point-of-dishonesty system. [L200s & HiLuxes etc are great on the flat, USELESS if it's genuinely up & down like switch-back - they just get stranded]
Dieseldogg was/is exactly right about a Steyer D Puch van but of course you can't get them any more, STP having, so v. sadly, gone bust/all over the place. SDP did make the greatest of all [for us] 4x4, the Haflinger, a thing of real genius but it was too small/only 650cc for a farm vehicle - where did the dead sheep go? - fantastic and ultra-practical tho' it was. I think SDP made/make? the 4WD system for the Fiat Panda - a much more serious contender for us these days than a L200, so long as one is prepared to take a hacksaw to its nice bodywork!
Anyone else have any suggestions/recommendations? It's a real problem for us.
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I've just clocked up over 5,000 miles of trouble-free motoring in my Dacia Duster Access 4x4 (the base model, £10,995 with 4WD).
A very practical, no frills car, definitely not posh. There are rumours that a pick-up version will be developed.
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Interesting DrChris,
But even Dacia have done it - it IS going all posh, it's just done it!
Does the Duster 4x4 have properly locking diffs, front & rear? If so, a pick-up might still be ineteresting.
The Jeep Rubicon is pretty good at all this but its body is too small - we need a bit more of a pick-up - like a Defender 90-size.
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oh and focuused, the L200's ground clearance on standard tires is a whole 50mm LESS than a Defender's [ 250 v 200mm] but the Defender also has a whole lot less interfering bodywork and other crap - it's got 325m [other than the axles] ground clearance before you start scraping things off - and then getting stuck - the problem with L200s.
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