New Defender (rant)

[greenlandy]

wheeljack888 said:

I hope you will be pleasantly surprised by this engine.

So do I. I'm more upset about the cosmetic changes then the engine. It just seems that the Landrover community are screaming out for a diesel V8 and what do we get?

Off topic did you or have you ever worked with these?

Imagine how well Rover/Perkins would have done if they'd managed to keep the heads on!
My mate has one of these babies in his workshop it sits there gathering dust.

[Liszt]

greenlandy said:

wheeljack888 said:

I hope you will be pleasantly surprised by this engine.

So do I. I'm more upset about the cosmetic changes then the engine. It just seems that the Landrover community are screaming out for a diesel V8 and what do we get?

Off topic did you or have you ever worked with these?

Imagine how well Rover/Perkins would have done if they'd managed to keep the heads on!
My mate has one of these babies in his workshop it sits there gathering dust.

Is that the Iceberg diesel V8?

[greenlandy]

one of the few still to be in one piece.

[wheeljack888]

greenlandy said:

Off topic did you or have you ever worked with these?

Imagine how well Rover/Perkins would have done if they'd managed to keep the heads on!
My mate has one of these babies in his workshop it sits there gathering dust.

Funnily enough I did my grad-training at Perkins Engines, but when they designed the Iceberg I'd barely started at infants school!

I did have a chat with some of the old-boys who worked on it, but unfortunately they weren't very complementary! The problem was that whilst it was a fine gasoline engine it was poor engine to 'diesel-ise'. For example the over-square bores are an absolute no-no for diesel combustion as it makes for very poor bulk charge motion, compression volume to crevice/dead volumes ratio, and high surface area heat loss. These problems are exacerbated even more if Nat-Aspirated as they were planning! The other problem was the general construction of the engine and carry-over dimensions. The bank-offset restricts the conrod bearing width to a rather small ~0.85" (IIRC) which then limits the peak gas pressure that can be applied to it, and diesels are extremely violent. Of course this transmits to the main bearings and aluminium crankcase, and they were just so weak they had to make huge cast iron-cradle for it. As you mentioned the head bolts had little structure to bolt into! Then there was the cost of having 8 injectors and an 8 piston fuel pump (or maybe two 4 piston pumps)..........




Sorry about about that, I do sometimes go off on one! But it was probably one of those ideas that from a managers perspective looked good but the engineers absolutely dread because they have to actually implement it!

With regards to the TDV8 in other vehicles, the biggest problem is simply gearboxes. We could get a lot more torque out of the V6 and V8 but have to limit them. Manuals are particularily poor for torque capactity because the variable nature of clutch application from users exacerbates the spike loads through the input shaft (slush boxes have a much smoother take up). Making the gearboxes stronger means making them bigger or reducing the number of gears. The daft thing is with all this torque from the new diesels you don't need as many gears but customers want more gears because it's better down the pub!

[greenlandy]

wheeljack888 I'm not worthy to post bad things about engines you are a god on all engine matters.








P.S. Fancy fettling my 200tdi?

[Rowanjed]

I hopefully, rightly assume that those who are 'ranting' about the engine and rear seats realise that landrover have no option but to make these changes do to euro4 legislation on the emissions and that as of feb 2007, no seats are allowed with lap belts or side facing!

I have been in one of these new vehicles (not running) and it feels just like a defender as we know it now. It is still called a defender although the front badge has been changed to match the rest of the marques with Land Rover.

I sell these vehicles for a living so, along with most of you, have high expectations for this new vehicle as it will affect my livelyhood ofcourse. I do have a TD5 Defender as a hobby off roader which is fantastic to use so i hope this new engine will do the same. I have been assured by the engineers that it will be.

[speedyellow]

I'm really hoping that the new engine will be much more like the 200/300 TDI's, reliable, bullet proof and great off road. The TD5 was never a great off road engine unless you fitted an auto box due to the lack of low end torque... even as a tow truck a 110 TD5 with a large car trailer was hopeless at hill starts.. low box was called for sometimes...

Good on landrover for keeping the truck alive when it would be easiest to kill it given the ford current financial position!

[notthehamster]

That dash sure is UGLY! It looks like a gigantic brown crab. I like the old rover idea of having an easy L/RHD conversion though, and it surely cannot be worse to use than the old one. As for the engine, 4 cyls will be less characterful than five, but perhaps more reliable. On balance, 6/10 Land Rover. Must try harder.

[rickslack]

Why on earth have they got rid of the vents at the front! Its the most simple ventilation system ever and works brilliantly. Why didnt they sort the heating system out and leave the vents in. muppets!

[peetbee]

rickslack said:

Why on earth have they got rid of the vents at the front! Its the most simple ventilation system ever and works brilliantly. Why didnt they sort the heating system out and leave the vents in. muppets!

I think that's what they have done as part of of the redesign of the dash. Anyway, those vents never worked as well on the Defender as they did on my old Series 2a, perhaps they should have gone back to that