Nice looking motor and nice low mileage for the age too. I should think you'll want an aircon re-gas for the trip you've got planned ;)

Bought my car with 70k on it at 7 1/2 years old. Assuming that it still had the original altenator on it it did about another 80k or so

Can any learned folk help with a quick query? I'm about to have my rear subframe replaced and I want to get new bolts in advance of the job being done. Upon checking the parts diagram and list the LR image does not make it clear which bolts are needed for where (see below). As you can see there...

Is yours manual or auto? On mine the auto box cooler failed, and at the time I discovered that it was a relatively common failure item

With my FL1 having been stood in my work car park for a month I decided to let it know I hadn't forgotten about it so on my lunch break I took it for a spin to put a bit of fuel in it, charge the battery, and give it a wash. Despite it being far less refined than the little Bimmer I'm currently...

Bugger. At least you had a donor window at your disposal. I'm going to try my fob with the key in the ignition next time I'm in it. In my mind I'm sure I've operated the locks with the fob whilst the key is in, but maybe not!

I managed to find a centre arm with them in on an early ES model. Fortunately it had the same colour leather in as mine so just swapped the whole arm over. It looked to me like it would be difficult to retro fit them and do a decent job of it, getting the leather trim neatly finished etc...

Top work. Glad you stuck with it, and if you keep it for a long time, some of that stuff you changed will no doubt have needed doing at some point or other.

In this current phase of work I'm doing recon rear diff, subframe and tank cradle. I intend to do the arms, but that'll be in the future. @andyfreelandy has some powder coated ones put aside for me that I need to get up there and collect from him at some point.

Dropped the rear subframe off to my local blasting and painting people. It'll be looking a bit different in a couple of weeks!

👀

This is all very impressive stuff. Nice to see a bit more proper engineering, knowledge and ingenuity. As interesting as Ali's build!

I'll challenge you on that being down here in Kernow! I did mine during covid, and when I went back to work two or three people asked if I'd had a respray. I was pleased with that. It doesn't look quite so good now. Sadly I took a bit of laquer off one of my doors pressure washing a while ago...

M Most odd. What's your thinking on this? How is it going to help you get to 250K?

I'm not sure of the value of a risky 2nd hand unknown IRD, but if you're going to to the effort, it's probably worth stumping up the extra 3 or 4 hundred quid for a fully reconned one from Bell surely?

So I've been running my TD4 auto for 11 years now. I bought it with circa 70k on the clock. It was smokey when I bought it and I eventually had to have the injectors changed. It's always remained smokey though throughout my entire ownership, but only at higher revs under load, and there is also...

Nah, not interested. I already have one. I was just musing over what the value might be based on your post asking exactly that for your son. There is an 05 TD4 auto HSE with 120k on it for sale near me for £1995 from a trader, so I would imagine it would be a fair bit less than that.

There is a caravan sales and repair company next to my workplace. They have a defender with a tow bar on the front to do all of their manouvreing. It's clearly their preferred method as professionals moving them around all day long.

To be fair, it does look great

Yep. Bought it with circa 70k on the clock at the beginning of 2013. It's currently undergoing a bit of a refurb at the moment to get it back to fine fettle, but I intend keeping it well in to the future. The current list of jobs are... Rear subframe replacement (and probably new fuel tank...