As my daily drive, I use my 15yr old 140K+ TD4 every day. Some days it just feels worn out, every knock, rattle, uneven running or even creaking wipers make me worried about the possibilty of expensive bills. Other days however - like today - it drives lovely and smooth and everything works just as it should, even the folding mirrors and all the windows. I expect now I've posted this I'll be starting a new thread in the next few days about some new issue giving me concern.

Does anyone else have this sort of experience?
lol, yeh, I get those feelings to.

I had the timing belt change once because of weird noises coming from the engine - no one else in the family could hear anything wrong, the mechanics I took the car to couldn't hear anything wrong - but I could, so had the belts changed. Belts are the only thing I give the car to a garage to do.
 
Thanks for that @Hippo, I had it in my brain that the front and rear diffs were different ratios resulting in consant drag being felt by the VCU, which put load on the VCU and thus heated the fluid. As I understood it the fluid failed because it slowly got cooked and became overly viscous transmitting most if not all of the torque from the two diffs at different rotational speeds into each other. And as such, long drives like dual carriageway / motorway exacerbated things on an iffy VCU because the difference in the ratios front and rear,it was a constant load on the VCU heating it up making it even stickier allowing the front band back diffs to have an arm wrestling match.

Its interesting that they don't need too much time to unwind, but if they can unwind, that plays nicely with my thinking that short journeys will be better for them than longer ones, and having done half its mileage running around locally, that had probably helped mine at least even a little.

I'd been looking at D3/D4's... having read various comments off here I'm quietly going off the notion, as since I discovered the fate of our old disco I've been feeling an empty pang in my soul yearning for another discovery. To let you understand, we used to have 300tdi discovery, to which which I had done a new boot floor, both sills, partial floor pan, 4x new calipers discs and pads, retrofitted heated sats to it, fully lined the interior with sound deadening, new front bumper and rubber bull bar, snorkel, parking sensors, brand new sony bluetooth head unit and brand new speakers, including wiring in the tailgate boom box to a preamp out from the headunit,two sets of wheels with one having chunky tyres t'other having A/T's on them, we loved the vehicle and thats why rather than patch a bit here and there I had replaced whole sections of the vehicle.

I regrettably sold it to a guy that was a friend at the time, he duly ran it into the ground, taking off the alloys with chunky tyres and selling them on gumtree for £80, took off the rubber bull bar and was going to skip it complete with the brand new headlights, I saved it before he managed to take it to the dump, he put on a 2" lift partial kit, as in +2" heavy duty shocks and +2" heavy duty springs, in his own words the shocks would have been as well being straight bars of steel, it didnt have the extended brake lines or caster adjustment arms or cranked rear arms, so the geometry was now to hell in a wheel barrow. He then ripped out the sound deadening etc.... His mistreatment of the motor was one of many dickish traits that came to the surface withi him, hence he used to be a friend. There were many other things outside landrovers that he did that soured our relationship, but the final straw for me was when I recently discovered that when it needed a bit of chassis welding for its MOT, he had sold it on gumtree for "Spares or Repair" for £300.

You know as well as I do someone's going to buy that as spares, flog engine & Gearbox, the 24 spline axles, weight in the shell and chassis and call it a nice easy £500 proffit. So he killed my old disco, and I've since been greiving it, yearning for another disco, but equally aware that if I bought another D1 I'd most likely be starting at square one and need to stock up on welding supplies again. D3/D4 I thought hmmm....
Heat is a by product of the sheering effect int a vcu. If they get too hot it damages the fluid inside, then it's feked.

There is no wind down on a vcu. Stress in the transmission is just released when you stop applying it. Think of turning a torque wrench on a wheel nut. When it clicks you have applied enough force to tighten the nut. There is no unwinding when you release the pressure you put on the wrench to turn it.

When yer flog a motor its theres to do what they want with it. Yer have to let go. I know it is hard because some of us become attached to our vehicles. But that's life.

A D3 or D4 isn't a cheap vehicle to own. No matter what peeps who own them tell you, they're full if eggspensive parts which like to be replaced. Bushes and brakes are under a lot of stress as its a heavy vehicle. Hence they need replaced more often. Some will tell you they're cheap to do up but they don't factor in the hundreds of hours keeping them going. If yer do buy one then do so only after reading up on the faults. Eggspecially crank snapping.
 
Believe it or not after five months of ownership...

Put it in reverse on full lock and went round and round ha ha

Nothing to report as it just rolled and didn't immediately stop thank fully!
 
There will always be some drag from the VCU, as that's a "feature" of its design. The faster you make the internal plates rotate at different speeds, the more the fluid resists the that rotation. This means that there will always be drag across it, more so at higher speeds. If there's no drag, or very minimal drag, then the VCU has failed open circuit (very unlikely), or it's been badly refurbished (actually quite common), removing it's ability to transfer drive, which is kinda pointless.
 
TD4 (my wife's car) passed MOT - one advisory on track rod end (they last 5 minutes!)

TD4 5 Door in Black (no longer required) passed MOT - now in For Sale section of LZ and on the Bay of E.

Friends car dropped off for diagnostics. Looking like low pressure fuel line from LP pump based on fault codes.
Will record them, clear them, drive it and probably fit a new LP pump (it had a Chinese one a year ago!) say no more.
 
Today I did this...
20200222_185752.jpg
 
Like it!! How did it pull the 6 wheeler and weight? I have a similar photo with a Ford 103E on trailer and have pulled many Freelanders back to my lair!!
 
Like it!! How did it pull the 6 wheeler and weight? I have a similar photo with a Ford 103E on trailer and have pulled many Freelanders back to my lair!!
To be honest I wouldn't want to do anything any heavier. At 60mph it was very unstable (sway) so cruised at 50. Struggled on the power front too (especially as my ron box is bypassed at present). I reckon the total towed weight was about 1500 kg so towing up to the 2080 kg rated limit of the vehicle wouldn't be fun. On the plus side, reversing it was super easy.
 
I used a flatbed, like the one you used once, bit scary and snaky. A car trailer with a lower centre of gravity and the vehicle sitting down between the wheels is a load more stable.
 
had to replace my side light led`s,due to nearside remaining dimly lit when ignition is off.
tested terminal for power but it didn`t register on the test meter. anybody had similar problems on a fl2.
replaced with original spec bulbs and no problems.any sensible replies would be muchly appreciated thank you.:D
 

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