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Ralph Furse

New Member
As some of you may know the Defender basic design hasn't changed a lot since the first one. For obvious reasons its still built on a very hard steel chassis. Meaning that if you hit anything front on, hard, unlike most monocoque cars the defender wont crumple, it will stop dead. The driver flies forward and then stops dead as the seat belt engages. There is a high chance if your driving at speed that your neck will break as no one wears a HANS device while driving normally. So my question is, is there a way to stop this, ive heard that is maybe possible to add a bumper to the defender that slows the car as you crash, does anyone know anything more about this ? I would appreciate anything anyone knows about this. Thanks
 
If you are in a defender you won't be at speed. If you are that worried drive a freelander, they have crumple zones.
 
The safest and most reliable way to avoud neck injury is to make sure that you don't crash!
However, someone experimented years ago with fitting heavy duty springs and shockers onto the front bumper, which had rods fitted into tubes to rertain the orientation of the bumper!
Unfortunately,I lost touch with Buggsy who died a number of years ago, so I don't know what happened to the 'experiment'!
I suppose you could always try re-inventing it.
 
Ralph Furse said:
As some of you may know the Defender basic design hasn't changed a lot since the first one. For obvious reasons its still built on a very hard steel chassis. Meaning that if you hit anything front on, hard, unlike most monocoque cars the defender wont crumple, it will stop dead. The driver flies forward and then stops dead as the seat belt engages. There is a high chance if your driving at speed that your neck will break as no one wears a HANS device while driving normally. So my question is, is there a way to stop this, ive heard that is maybe possible to add a bumper to the defender that slows the car as you crash, does anyone know anything more about this ? I would appreciate anything anyone knows about this. Thanks
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I built a custom high strength bumper for my 90 with all laser cut steel, seam welded and galvanised, I incorporated several "crush" zones and designed in some flexibility to allow for accidents - I hope never to test it. At low impact stuff with a soft enough object the bumper will remain unscathed but not so strong and rigid to transfer full impact via the chassis in a bigger bump.

The first thing I did was elongated the fixing holes on the bumper and used special washers so although the bumper is clamped down tight it can slide back during an impact, I created pre-creased brackets which hold it to the chassis and I also designed the ends of the bumper to fold in (lower than the height of the wing so it shouldn't damage the wing unless it is driven up).

A lot of Defenders crumple zone is in the car you hit, however if you hit something equally as rigid or a brick wall this won't help.

Just take it easy out there and have your wits about you is what I say - people who make these into rocket ships are just insane and have no chance if they crash.

I reckon a Defender is one of the safest vehicles to be in in the city at city speeds and the sort of accidents we see in the city, however interestingly a lot of people do come off quite well in bigger higher impact crashes but I am not sure if that is just luck with a brick hitting a small tin-foily car?
 
Contrary to popular belief Defenders do have rather good crumple zones. Its called the other car!

Unless you hit something very solid like another Fender or a truck should be fine.

If youre that worried buy another car.
 
Agreed with above, in the event of an impending crash aim for the vehicle with the best crumple zone, you don't both need one, so long as one of you has a crumple zone you'll be ok.
Don't buy a motorbike, you will never sleep.
 
Surely if you are driving a defender you are never going fast enough to have an accident.

And if you are worried about safety wouldn't an airbag be another thing missing that would be cause for concern?

I recommend you don't get an older series vehicle, have all the lack of crumple zones of a defender combined with static seat belts or no belts. The only safety feature they had was a top speed of 50mph if you were lucky!
 
dag019 said:
Surely if you are driving a defender you are never going fast enough to have an accident.
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You may not be, but the vehicle that hits you might.

And I think side impact was as big a concern as frontal, the doors are only flimsy alloy and no room for side impact bars.
 
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Is there a way to stop this -

Buy a freelander instead, plenty of crumple zones on that.
 
Turboman said:
And I think side impact was as big a concern as frontal, the doors are only flimsy alloy and no room for side impact bars.
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There is plenty of room for side impact bars, they are called rock/tree sliders and make the side just as solid as the front and rear giving protection to the passengers within. The OP was talking about a bumper so I was assuming a head on situation.
If you are going to consider all crash scenarios you wont fair too well in a roll over in a defender unless you have a cage fitted, and you will be even worse if it is a soft top.

Best option as has been stated by discomania is to keep vigilant against every other idiot on the road!
 
dag019 said:
There is plenty of room for side impact bars, they are called rock/tree sliders and make the side just as solid as the front and rear giving protection to the passengers within. The OP was talking about a bumper so I was assuming a head on situation.
If you are going to consider all crash scenarios you wont fair too well in a roll over in a defender unless you have a cage fitted, and you will be even worse if it is a soft top.

Best option as has been stated by discomania is to keep vigilant against every other idiot on the road!
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Rock sliders are quite low down, so they won't protect against impact from a 4wd, or a truck, or similar.

I never considered crash scenarios when I drove my Ninety, I have always been a defensive driver, and spending most of my landrover time off road, was aware that rolling in the steep fields was a much greater risk then anything in my small road mileage.

These days I drive a Mondeo Titanium, which presumably has every kind of safety feature known to man. I am still not hoping to test them, though! :)
 
dag019 said:
There is plenty of room for side impact bars, they are called rock/tree sliders and make the side just as solid as the front and rear giving protection to the passengers within. The OP was talking about a bumper so I was assuming a head on situation.
If you are going to consider all crash scenarios you wont fair too well in a roll over in a defender unless you have a cage fitted, and you will be even worse if it is a soft top.

Best option as has been stated by discomania is to keep vigilant against every other idiot on the road!
Click to expand...

I had a discussion regarding rock sliders years ago with a guy at a LR club day out, we were pondering the benefit of sliders in a side on crash and we decided that they would probably do a good job to reduce the impact the vehicle made into the passenger cabin, we also reckoned if the right set of conditions existed such as off road tyres, there is also a good chance the Defender would slide sideways pushed by the sliders, we also sadly figured that some cars might submarine and tip us over!

A little digression here and a small hijack: I want my 90 stock as possible, however after seeing some crashed/rolled Defenders recently I am tempted to put a single loop roll cage in when I remove the tub in the early spring - what do those of you with with roll cages think of that? I hope it would keep the roof up beyond the driver and passengers head in a roll over? I was thinking of just welding two big brackets to the chassis with a flat plate that meets the tub floor - neoprene gasket between them then I can have a loop bent and weld 2 big flanges to it to mate up with the plate under the tub floor.
 
When you say the chassis wont bend/crumple at all you are right to a point, but if you hit something solid at just enough speed you might not get badly injured but what will happen is the chassis will twist and or crease just enough so that you can’t really drive it safely/legally but it quite difficult to repair, it means that these modern cars that have sacrificial zones are very clever as hopefully the sacrificial bit is inexpensive and the rest of the car is untouched
 
Grem said:
When you say the chassis wont bend/crumple at all you are right to a point, but if you hit something solid at just enough speed you might not get badly injured but what will happen is the chassis will twist and or crease just enough so that you can’t really drive it safely/legally but it quite difficult to repair, it means that these modern cars that have sacrificial zones are very clever as hopefully the sacrificial bit is inexpensive and the rest of the car is untouched
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Yes indeed, I would say from an engineering point of view the worst accident would be a head on smash with something pretty solid - the bumper would transfer the force clean down the chassis rails with little in the way of twist.

US fire trucks have sprung bumpers for nudging stuff - like the project mentioned above. That would work a bit but space is a bit limited behind our bumpers.
 
Grem said:
When you say the chassis wont bend/crumple at all you are right to a point, but if you hit something solid at just enough speed you might not get badly injured but what will happen is the chassis will twist and or crease just enough so that you can’t really drive it safely/legally but it quite difficult to repair, it means that these modern cars that have sacrificial zones are very clever as hopefully the sacrificial bit is inexpensive and the rest of the car is untouched
Click to expand...

One of the big safety issues with chassis landrovers is that in a frontal impact, the driver will often have their foot on the brake at the moment of impact.
With no crumple zones, and a massive steel brake pedal, the shock from the impact will often result in horrible leg and foot injuries.

discomania said:
Every time I hear the song "Down in Mexico" - which I enjoy - I do also sadly think of the poor girl with a tyre tread on her face!

Alexa has just been instructed to play it!
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Good choice!
 
Ok, so first off trees and walls don't move so you tend to notice and avoid them. With that out of the way we'll assume we're talking about collision with another vehicle. I've been unlucky enough to be passenger in another vehicle, complete with crumple zones, which was in a collision with a lorry (Well, unlucky and lucky.im still here) We were hit kinda head on from front o/s corner. Crumple zones worked but not as well as expected due to angle, anyway coming to a dead stop from 60mph is fec***g sore whether it's got a crumple zone or not. Airbags both failed!!! My seat broke when I was on my return flight from the dashboard direction.
I sustained a lovely seatbelt bruise, the driver's collar bone was broken by his seatbelt, we both had minor whiplash injuries (both ex farmers and rugby players, necks like bulls and as many brain cells) but neither of us broke a neck. As I said, we were lucky.
The point is airbags and crumple zones are fine but you still come to that sudden stop. I'd rather be in my defender. If youre belted in thats the best you can do. There's no accounting for idiots or someone taking ill at the wheel. Drive assuming everyone is an idiot while making sure you're not one too. Otherwise, as others have alluded to, maybe the defender is not for you.
 
Old school Volvos used to have ‘sprung’ bumpers, I remember our 740 as a child, built like a tank.
Try your local breakers, see if they’ve got one and tape it to the front of your Landy. Let us know how you get on.
 
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