Freelander 1 Auto 1.8

My first Auto was a Skoda Octavia with a DSG gearbox and a 1.5 litre turbo diesel engine. It was hopelessly under powered until the turbo kicked in so pulling away from an uphill junction was downright scary. It wasn't possible to hold the brake and build up the revs as the accelerator didn't do anything with the brakes or even handbrake on. The Merc C Class I had until last year was much better that way but it goes to show OEM auto's even just a few years ago could be rubbish.
You are probably way too critical of the car because you built it, SWMBO will not be looking for fault the way you do but will just enjoy it as it is.

I had a Peugeot 607 2.2 HDI auto that was like that. It only had four gears and first was very high. Pulling out on busy roundabouts was a nightmare. I would have to stay back from the line and anticipate a gap, floor it, and run up to the roundabout so that by the time I got there the turbo would do something. Once the turbo got going it was fine.

The freelander is the opposite. It's very low geared and if I floor it it wheelspins and revs up to 6000rpm. It's really good at low speeds but not so refined at motorway speeds. It creeps forward in slow London traffic very nicely and will hold a steep hill without rolling back.

pscan.eu said:

I had a Peugeot 607 2.2 HDI auto that was like that. It only had four gears and first was very high. Pulling out on busy roundabouts was a nightmare. I would have to stay back from the line and anticipate a gap, floor it, and run up to the roundabout so that by the time I got there the turbo would do something. Once the turbo got going it was fine.

The freelander is the opposite. It's very low geared and if I floor it it wheelspins and revs up to 6000rpm. It's really good at low speeds but not so refined at motorway speeds. It creeps forward in slow London traffic very nicely and will hold a steep hill without rolling back.

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Stay away from Motorways.

Alibro said:

Stay away from Motorways.

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that's what my Jaguar XJ is for.

Alibro said:

My first Auto was a Skoda Octavia with a DSG gearbox and a 1.5 litre turbo diesel engine. It was hopelessly under powered until the turbo kicked in so pulling away from an uphill junction was downright scary. It wasn't possible to hold the brake and build up the revs as the accelerator didn't do anything with the brakes or even handbrake on. The Merc C Class I had until last year was much better that way but it goes to show OEM auto's even just a few years ago could be rubbish.
You are probably way too critical of the car because you built it, SWMBO will not be looking for fault the way you do but will just enjoy it as it is.

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When my daughter bought her first car she wanted a Mazda 2/Demio. The 3rd gen version about 2010.

They were all 1.3 autos and were terrible piles of pooh. She had been driving our 90's 1.3 manual Toyota Starlet and even she was devastated at how bad they were because that is what she wanted.

Then we came across a 1.5 auto and it was a completely different beast. It drives so much nicer with just the slightly bigger engine. Think she's had it about 8 years now and its still going good.

GrumpyGel said:

When my daughter bought her first car she wanted a Mazda 2/Demio. The 3rd gen version about 2010.

They were all 1.3 autos and were terrible piles of pooh. She had been driving our 90's 1.3 manual Toyota Starlet and even she was devastated at how bad they were because that is what she wanted.

Then we came across a 1.5 auto and it was a completely different beast. It drives so much nicer with just the slightly bigger engine. Think she's had it about 8 years now and its still going good.

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The DSG gearbox ion the Octavia was very nice in many ways but (I guess) because it had clutches rather than a torque converter the engine could not build up revs before engaging the auto clutch. It was fine on the flat but pulled away really slowly on any incline.
I wasn't sure the The 1.8 K Series mated to a Jatco transmission would be a good match but it seems to be better than we could have hoped. I had similar concerns about mating the Nissan Leaf motor to my TD4 Gearbox but it is great too so maybe they are less fussy than we thought..

Got our insurance sorted yesterday.
Everyone says that Admiral multicar doesn't do modified car insurance, but, it seems that if you have insured all your cars and your home with them for seven or eight years, and it's renewal time, and I suppose that they really don't want to loose you, they will.
They said that they could classify on their system as "transmission modification" and basically I don't think that they have increased our premium at all.
I'm not sure if it made any difference that it's a Freelander transmission just not fitted to that specific specification.
I did previously try Green Light.
They said that I didn't have enough mods as they are looking for at least five "off road" mods, so wouldn't even give me a quote, so when I said, ok, I'll do more mods then, then they said I'm gaming the system and still refused to quote.
Adrian Flux did quote but twice as much as Admiral multicar.

Just catching up on this project @pscan.eu . Stirling work! I'm very impressed. It's been great following you and @Alibro carrying out such major but different builds so well.

pscan.eu said:

Got our insurance sorted yesterday.
Everyone says that Admiral multicar doesn't do modified car insurance, but, it seems that if you have insured all your cars and your home with them for seven or eight years, and it's renewal time, and I suppose that they really don't want to loose you, they will.
They said that they could classify on their system as "transmission modification" and basically I don't think that they have increased our premium at all.
I'm not sure if it made any difference that it's a Freelander transmission just not fitted to that specific specification.
I did previously try Green Light.
They said that I didn't have enough mods as they are looking for at least five "off road" mods, so wouldn't even give me a quote, so when I said, ok, I'll do more mods then, then they said I'm gaming the system and still refused to quote.
Adrian Flux did quote but twice as much as Admiral multicar.

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It's good to hear you got the insurance sorted. I tried Admiral Multicar for my EV conversion but no joy. We've had Admiral multicar for a long time but they couldn't figure out how to put 'EV Conversion' into their system. They did give me a great quote for the van I recently bought though so I'm not complaining about them.
The only company that would quote me at all were Adrian Flux but they were kinda pricey.

Alibro said:

It's good to hear you got the insurance sorted. I tried Admiral Multicar for my EV conversion but no joy. We've had Admiral multicar for a long time but they couldn't figure out how to put 'EV Conversion' into their system. They did give me a great quote for the van I recently bought though so I'm not complaining about them.
The only company that would quote me at all were Adrian Flux but they were kinda price

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Maybe try Green Light next time.
However you *must* have five off-road mods in addition to EV mod, things like snorkel, suspension lift, winch etc etc and you might have to prove that you have them, however they are a lot cheaper than Adrian Flux.

pscan.eu said:

Maybe try Green Light next time.
However you *must* have five off-road mods in addition to EV mod, things like snorkel, suspension lift, winch etc etc and you might have to prove that you have them, however they are a lot cheaper than Adrian Flux.

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Are the mod policies much dearer in comparison to what a normal one would cost you?
For example - is it costing you 20% due to off-road mods?

Freddie17 said:

Are the mod policies much dearer in comparison to what a normal one would cost you?
For example - is it costing you 20% due to off-road mods?

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I don't have a mod policy at the moment so I can't answer that. I just have standard Admiral multicar with some leniency added by their retentions people.

Today I got the hill descent working it wasn't anything complicated. It seems to work with either the original 1.8 cluster or with the 2.5 cluster that I have.

I had unpinned the power feed from the plug that goes into the interior fuse box that powers the accelerator pedal switch and the hill descent switch from fuse 6 because I wanted to plug in power for bits of the automatic system into there, and then forgot that I had done that.

Today I spliced the wires together so that both are powered off fuse 6 and now it all works again.

I also installed a float sensor in the header tank but messed it up by putting it too low in the tank, so even with no coolant the float doesn't drop far enough to trigger, so I have ordered another header tank.

There's a couple of outstanding things that I would value peoples opinions on.

1. Because the engine is now maybe 30mm higher than stock, I had to extend the downpipe a bit so that it would clear the transmission. However maybe I didn't quite extend it enough. It was slightly leaking in a couple of spots so yesterday a friend rewelded it for me, but now there is a bit of nasty rattle when the transmission is put into D. I'm not absolutely certain but I think it's the downpipe rattling on the transmission. It's difficult to inspect without risking running myself over.

I always thought that it's a bit odd that the downpipe comes down off of the exhaust manifold and goes so far back before there's any flexible joint. It seems like a heck of a leverage to put on the exhaust manifold. Given that there's no flexi, would there be any harm in bolting the exhaust to the transmission to make it stronger and not rattle? I'm thinking to attach it via a long arm so that it can move backwards and forwards a bit for heat expansion but just not up and down. My Jag has the cats bolted straight to the bell housing and that seems ok.

2. Given that my IRD is now where it would be on a V6, because the Jatco transmission is in the stock V6 position and everything is indexed off of that, should I use the V6 prop shaft? I couldn't see any dimensional difference, but the V6 seems to have a much smaller weight; anyone know why? To recap, I'm using a V6 gearbox but a 1.8 IRD and rear diff, but the IRD is in the V6 location. I'm inclined to go with the V6 prop shaft, largely because I have one spare and lighter spinning mass seems better to me.

Today I found a hill steep enough to test the hill descent and it works! Forwards and backwards.