Hello, and welcome to the madness of freelander ownership! Wobbly gear lever is a very common rover trait - it'll either be the bushings or the pin in the gear knuckle. You can get rebuild kits on ebay for a few £ - look up "pg1 gear linkage" or the like for a repair kit. VCU can be checked...

There's a pressure switch in the receiver drier, you should be able to multimeter this out to figure out whether there's gas in the system. Or just buy one of the cheap pressure gauges from halfrauds that connects onto the system. I refilled my system with one of their stop leak gas packs...

I think with just the plastic roof off they do look a bit... stunted. Immeasurably improved with the roof bars still on though imho - the roof bars continuing the line re squares the car off and makes them look whole again even without the roof on.

I'd have thought a three door would be relatively easy? Just grab a commercial cage for behind the front seats, plate it and seal the edges, then make sure water can escape the fish tank in the back? Shouldn't need any cutting. The issue is waterproofing the internal bits and securing the...

Ugh, really need to get the 4wd back together on mine, with all this crap weather it's behaving like a dog on a polished floor. *scrabblescrabblescrabble* I'm amazed at how easily the front tyres break away from the lights - though k series and budget tyres combined make it a bit frisky.

Mine had a really annoying phantom leak like this, turned out to be the head gasket. Get the engine REALLY hot, then get a phone camera in behind the head under the intake manifold and snap a picture facing forwards. The area on the back of the engine above the water pump is extremely prone to...

EDIT: I retract my previous statement - they've done something clever like the IRD does:

Yeah, they have very non linear power curves on the higher performance models too - they'll jump 200hp in a matter of 250 rpm which must be pretty traumatic on the drive train. Interestingly looking at the diagram above they're set up identically to a freelander which is that they're FWD with a...

The '03 WRX engine has a peak torque just shy of 300NM 1st gear is 3.454 Final drive is 4.111 Which means at the centre diff they're popping about 4,259 NM of torque at the diff (I think.) Sort of similar to a freelander in first gear but remember that the 1st gear on a freelander is FAR...

Yeah, to be honest I don't think it's something that you'll ever really see in 99.99% of cases though - which I think is what hippo might have been getting at. The brakes on a freelander are actually pretty good and most of us drive them fairly respectfully (sometimes out of lack of choice, we...

If I remember correctly, all of the Scooby AWD systems use a visco coupling in the gearbox centre diff (and are just as prone to exploding the bearings as the freelander is!) Everything upto the WRX imprezas use viscous and it was only the heavier cars and the STi models that got 4wd and a true...

I'm sorry but the theory is sound. All cars are biased to lock the front brakes before the rears after all of the safety systems have failed as a last resort. This means that when you jump on the brake pedal hard in low traction the fronts will attempt to lock first. The vehicle does not get...

Oh yeah, I'm quite happy to admit that it's an in proportion thing, but don't underestimate it. Theoretically speaking, taking ABS out of the picture for a second. If you put both feet in to the brake pedal at 20mph in the wet, without ABS, the front wheels will lock first (and as you apply...

I think you missed my point entirely - I'm not talking about the point past the point of lockup where the ABS kicks in. (I'm entirely aware of how ABS works!) My point is that with no centre diff the drivetrain prevents a single wheel or an entire axle getting to the point of locking while the...

Reading that paper, one of the things that popped out I hadn't thought about - braking stability. In theory with a fully working VCU it should be almost impossible to lock a single wheel up - if you have front and rear axles turning at the same speed, we'll take that as a constant. This...

Interesting, the plates must have different sides and have a built in flex construction - IE recesses in one side to allow a pressure build up and flex the plate across or something. Salty beach sand? It's already rusting enough ;.;

The point was more that if one's faulty and transmitting random "immobilise" codes and locking the car, you won't be able to tell whether it's one of them. The alarm systems on these are pretty robust, they either have to have a massive internal fault or be receiving a shutdown command via...

That's a very interesting graph... can be modelled using an exponential if someone can really be bothered. I would theorise that the VCU was never meant to completely lock, just carry on through that curve until it hits the point of eventually flatlining. I have a feeling that regardless of...

Which engine? Does it do it with both fobs? (make sure when you take it out the OTHER fob is well away from the car.) Does the immobiliser light in the dashboard start flashing when the engine cuts out? Sounds like a faulty immobiliser unit to be honest, OR you're getting a brief power...

V6 Ratio is 1:1.0025 front to back Therefore back to front = 20 turns x 1.0025 = 20.05 turns so you should have gained 0.05 of a turn which should be somewhere about 3-4 inches out.