You are getting worried about nothing , if it was down to excess heat being radiated from drivetrain , then your gearbox etc would have died long ago.
From years of experience , I can tell you its down to the warmer than average weather we are having lately , Land rovers operating in hot climates (eg Australia ) have had this problem for years , its down to the ali, being a particularly good conductor , In Australia with a V8 you can feel the heat radiating from the seatbase thru the carpet.
It is not possible to touch any of the metal attached to that area of the vehicle , I have even seen series vehicles with opening flaps set into the front portion of the side doors to try and get some cooling air into that footwell area . The air is coming in thru rad and getting heated as it needs to be or the engine would overheat . It also picks up heat from exhaust system . Even the old series landies , had heatshields fitted to the exhaust pipe both underwing and underfloor , to address this very problem .
The final word is , there's nothing you can do about it ! , apart from covering the hot areas inside the cab , as even putting insulation in the engine bay will still allow conductive heating from a small exposed areas. Wrapping exhaust with a good quality insulating strip will help a little , and also trying to get air that has not gone thru rad , ala little vents on TD5 front wings , etc might drop it a bit , not much tho.
We used to cook meat pies , and taters underbonnet , so look at the positives , winter , and shivering in front of defender will be back soon enough
Yes, we still don't know that there's anything on Hub's machine operating outside normal design tolerances. Whilst gearboxes do get warm, the major source of heat is the engine and radiator. Only a small proportion of the calories in that oil we burn goes into pushing the car forward. It's particularly noticeable when driving steadily at above 40 mph as the air is blowing through and hitting the bulkhead, getting funnelled down the transmission tunnel and making fancy Mandelbrot turbulence patterns under the seatbox. All of which enables it to give up its heat, like a heat exchanger, so it's rapidly conducted through into the cab and ultimately into the passengers. You'll just have to get sweaty and keep the windows open.
its a well know condition if engine was producing too much heat it show on gauge or over heat , drive a series 3 hard on a long journey and ep90 will over heat, obviously its more noticeable on hot days
Yes, I've had this problem with a Series II Forward Control we used to have in the mid 1980s. If we bought a load of sand in Taunton and took it home over the Quantock hills the transmission would be very warm indeed by the time we arrived. The later ones don't seem to have the same problem. Even if the gearbox is getting a bit warm (and I think she'd need to be towing uphill to do that), the major source of heat has still got to be the engine, 'cos that's actually got a fire inside it.
Well, the ATF in automatic transmissions can even ignite in some circumstances, but the Land Rover engine is burning a litre about every five miles, so you'd need a very savage gearbox indeed to keep up with that rate of heat output. After all, it's more than most central heating boilers can burn. Plus if it were the gearbox you'd get a lot of other symptoms - noise, vibration, fumes, poor gear changes. My money's still on the engine. Anyway, time for bed now.
Well, the ATF in automatic transmissions can even ignite in some circumstances, but the Land Rover engine is burning a litre about every five miles, so you'd need a very savage gearbox indeed to keep up with that rate of heat output. After all, it's more than most central heating boilers can burn. Plus if it were the gearbox you'd get a lot of other symptoms - noise, vibration, fumes, poor gear changes. My money's still on the engine. Anyway, time for bed now.