I don’t live on a perfectly flat road and I don’t usually have the option to find a parking space using a spirit-level. This means of course that when I open the rear door, it is either a two-person job or I have to hold the door open and use my free hand to load or unload. Why didn’t Land Rover design a better mechanism to hold the door open?
The standard fitting is a door stay bar that rolls in a channel on the door with a metal clip to attempt to be a retainer, but anybody with a Defender knows it wouldn’t hold custard nevermind a heavy metal safari door.
So I ordered a gas strut from eBay. Expect to pay £35-40. There are a few different kits out there with varying fittings. The one I bought looks like this and reuses the original internal bracket. The seller was “aw4x4-uk”.
Fitting is very easy.
Remove the metal door stay and the clip
Use the spacers to refit the bracket in the bodywork – you may need some slightly longer bolts for this job.
Attach the gas strut to the bracket and mark up where the other end meets the door when the door is open and the strut is still under 90 degrees from the back of the car. If your tyre is against your side-light, you are too far open!
Droll two holes
Fit two rivets
Done!
Use the existing bracket, spaced out so the strut doesn’t foul against the doorframe. I found that whilst it would seem sensible to fit the strut between the two arms of the bracket, the square head would not then swivel properly. You could file it to a round if you prefer and then adjust the height the other end using the plastic spacer. It doesn’t make a difference to the operation. Once you are happy with the positioning, drill and rivet the bracket to the doorIf you have a door card, you will need to cut it to allow for the strut. You could avoid this by fitting the strut higher, but my door had no other anchor point for the strut to be riveted to. This was fine for me and I suspect, the majority of Defender drivers.
I recently had my entire chassis replaced from the old rusty mess I had to a nice shiny, galvanised one.
As with most Land Rover owners who have just paid out for significant work that they didn’t do themselves, I started poking around underneath to both admire the result and to look for snagging work I needed to pick up. In doing so, I discovered something that maybe a few Defender owners are not really aware of.
My previous car was a CSW edition out of the factory meaning it had side windows, carpets and seats in the back but was otherwise the same as a hard top. Or so I thought!
It turns out there were a few other little tweaks to aid with sound proofing. One of these is the mudshield behind the front wheel. Go look at the back of your front wheel arch and see if it looks like this….
Other than the CSW edition, all Defenders chuck mud up onto the outrigger and are slowly dissolving their footwells. This is what eventually led me to admit I needed a new chassis. I could really do with this not happening again.
There is a great company you need to know about called Gwyn Lewis 4×4. I have no relationship with the mother than loving this simple but effective product – the mud shield. It is a plastic panel you screw in-place and it reduces road noise (a little) but mainly prevents mud being flung up to where it causes havoc.
That looks better doesn’t it. Worth the £30? I think so.
They also do panels for the other arches, but for me this is the place where these parts are essential. Don’t wait until your chassis has eaten itself.
My Defender is a 1999/2000 model. So basically it is the 300Tdi with an ecu and new engine thrown in it. Land Rover rebuilt the dashboard not long after my car was made and it seems rewired it. I however, have the “awkward middle child” variant of the car.
The rear wiper was beginning to die before the car went in for the chassis swap. It would take a full ten seconds to move across the glass. Now I have the car back, I thought I’d replace the motor as it finally died.
Fitting a new motor is simply a case of taking off the grab handle on the rear door, removing the door skin and then undoing a few bolts. One on the bracket, the bolt holding the wiper arm to the spindle and the one holding the spindle on the door from the outside.
The motor has two connections. One for power and earth and the other for the clever wiper park switch.
The switch on the dash provides power to the Red/Green wire and basically turns the motor on and off. I was getting no joy even with the new motor. I checked everything and discovered the earth to both connectors was duff due to this little bullet connector behind the speaker in the rear nearside corner. A bit of sandpaper and the connector worked perfectly and my wiper swung back into life. It would not however, park.
The electrics to handle the parking mechanism are clever but flawed. Let me explain.
You turn the switch on and the Red/Green wire delivers power from the switch to the motor at the back of the car. When you turn the switch off, the switch instead connects the Brown/Green wire to the Red/Green wire out to the motor. This wire comes from the park switch on the motor (obviously at the back of the car). The park switch gets power from the green wire and sends it out to the Brown/Green wire only when the wiper blade is NOT parked. As soon as the blade is parked, the connection between the incoming green wire and outgoing Brown/Green wire is cut. This is a lot easier to follow with the aid of the diagram above.
The problem here is that the power is delivered back to the switch on the dash (via the Brown/Green wire) before it returns back out to the motor. In my case, this wire is broken SOMEWHERE in the chassis. I need a different solution than rewiring the car.
All we really need is to link the Brown/Green wire out of the park switch to the motor Red/Green connector but only when the wiper is switched off. I have an idea….
By using a relay, we get the same result without the need for power to go all the way back to the dash switch. In fact, the complex rotary switch can be simplified into an on/off for the rear wiper and a push button for the rear wash jets. I’ll let you know how I got on…
Raptor Engineering make some nice stuff for Land Rovers, most notably the centre dashboard consoles for older models. They also make a metal replacement for the dashboard instrument panel. However, bolting a metal instrument panel onto a plastic frame is a little daft, so you will want a metal one of those too.
There are countless videos showing you how to take the panel off and swap the dials over, but none really tackle the mount itself. I had a bit of free time on Saturday so thought I’d finally get around to doing mine and showing how easy it is.
You don’t need to dismantle the whole dash or take off the steering wheel!
This is why I wanted to change mine
A previous owner had decided to use some kind of black putty (Sugru?) to hold a very broken instrument panel together. It looks awful and doesn’t actually work.
If your instrument panel is screwed on, unscrew it. Mine was falling off anyway.
You can unplug the instruments and take the panel away, especially if you are going to swap to the metal version. I wasn’t doing that today so opted to swing the panel away and support it using a bungee cord.
Bungee!!
There are four or five bolts and washers holding the top of the frame to the dashboard. Undo all of them except the one at the back left.
Leave this one alone for now
The “heating” controls on either side are held on with machine screws. Undo the two holding the left side on. You may have one to undo on the right-hand control unit, but you won’t need to undo it completely.
If your frame is still secured to the bottom strut, undo on both sides.
Now refresh your tea or whatever. If you need the loo, go now. If hungry, grab a sandwich.
Once refreshed, tackle that last both on the back left. You’ll need a spanner with an internal ratchet as there is limited clearance due to the vent pipe. Just get into as comfortable a position as you can and get to work.
And it’s free!
Not the panel is free, just slide it out and put the metal one on. Put one bolt in to hold it in position and get that annoying back left bolt done first. Once you’ve done that, the rest is easy. Be careful no cables are caught and check your car starts and all the dash lights work before screwing it all tight.
Can you see now why my instruments rattled so much?
After once having run my car battery down in a camp site, I thought I would put two ODYSSEY PC1500DT batteries in. During a later adventure, my alternator died some distance from home and that second battery got me home when the main one died. But Split-charging is a complicated subject and there are loads of expensive products out there. Do you want to know how to do it really easily?
If you want a system that intelligently monitors each battery and let’s you switch the starter battery at the press of a button, you need to look somewhere else. If you just want two batteries charging whilst driving so one starts the car and the other runs other stuff (or just acts as a live spare – when a mild bit of spanner action will let you swap over if you need to), then read on!
The secret weapon
Car batteries hold a little over 12v when healthy and the alternator pushes out roughly 14v. The potential difference means the battery will charge. (Apologies to all the electrical engineers out there for oversimplifying this, but this is a blog post rather than a text book.)
Ideally what we want is something that disconnects the second battery unless the voltage indicates the car is running. The Durite VSR above does just that.
Connect the earth of both batteries together using suitable cable. Buy one from your local Halfords or speak to your friendly autoshop if you are unsure which cable to use. You need ring terminals for these cables.
The Durite is clearly labelled, but connect one terminal to the positive terminal on the main battery and the other terminal to the positive terminal of the second battery. There is an earth connector which you need to connect to , yep, the earth of the second battery.
And you are done.
The red light comes on a few seconds after you start the engine and goes out when the voltage drops down below roughly 12.65volts, depending on the unit. If you draw power from the second battery, the starter battery is unaffected. So any accessories like fridges or mains invertors need to run off the terminals on the second battery.
What is this?
Now for a little bit of optional wizardy.
If you want to have devices powered up when the engine is running but off when you are on battery, you can use the same trick. However, you want to make sure that those devices don’t draw power whilst the car is starting. The trick here is to have a VSR that trips in at a higher voltage than the split charger and a cutout at the same or higher voltage.
It is up to you if you run this feed from the starter or second battery as it will only stay running for a short period after the engine is off and is thus not really a risk to the starter battery being drained.
Durite also do suitable units, but I opted for this one as it was a different colour and thus easier to identify. I later used a labeller, which in hindsight makes more sense.
Connect the positive terminal of the main battery to the terminal on the unit. The terminal for the second battery though, connect to a suitable fuse and use the other leg of the fuse as a source of power for your devices.
I run an Amazon Echo Dot and a 4G Wifi dongle off of mine. A couple of seconds after the engine is running, Alexa wakes up.
I also use this feed to power my DRL lights, but that probably needs another post…
I decided to replace my crusty old stock intercooler in the TD5 Defender and put in an upgraded and much larger Allisport variant. A simple enough job but you will need a hacksaw!
A previous owner put a TDCI front and bonnet on the car
Pop up the bonnet and undo the four screws to get the front panel off.
I painted my struts orange as an alternative to the “rust brown” they were before,
Remove the four plastic screws holding the cowl above the fan and move it out the way.
Undo the 13mm bolts (13mm socket) at the bottom of the struts
Undo the bolts on either side plate (10mm left and 13mm right – no idea why) to free the bonnet rest and remove it.
Undo this hoseUndo this hose too
With the hoses undone and the two bolts undone at the top left and top right front-facing holding the intercooler to the radiator, you can wiggle it free.
A little bit different
Getting the much bigger intercooler in is a little bit trickier.
The intercooler has two pins that drop into hoops either side of the radiator and two more on the front that fit into hoops hanging off plates either side of the engine bay, bolted to the Defender’s body.
Remove the right-hand plate (your right hand as you look towards the car) or at the very least, remove one bolt and loosen the other to swing it up and back out of the way.
The left-hand plate supports the bonnet strut. So either remove or support the bonnet another way when you remove the metal work.
If you do a trial fit, you may find your radiator has brackets that stop the intercooler getting close enough to the radiator for the pins to engage. If so, get out the hacksaw.
Trim this off
This bracket needs trimming back too
Fit the intercooler into the radiator brackets and re fit the left hand metal work to drop onto the front pin and secure in place.
The right hand pin may be more of a challenge, requiring you to get the hacksaw out again to trim a corner off of the bracket to stop it fouling the intercooler.
Cut along the red line
With both brackets down and the metal work bolted back into place either side, but not tightened up, put the front bolts in and then tighten everything up.
Don’t forget to connect the hoses!!
Quite a difference!
Put the front struts and bonnet support back in. If you didn’t unbolt the struts from the bonnet stop, it’ll make it easier to ensure bonnet alignment right about now.
If you own a Land Rover, especially a Series or Defender and live around London, you will have had to grapple with the Congestion Charge, LEZ and ULEZ. No doubt you have jumped around the TFL site to try and work it all out. Well, I thought I’d selfishly gather together the useful bits for people like me.
What are the Three Zones?
The Congestion Charge is the charge for driving in the very centre of London. It can always be avoided unless you actually need to go to somewhere inside it. It is clearly signposted where the charge begins and operates:
07:00-18:00 on weekdays
Not on Bank Holidays, weekends or between Christmas and New Year
All vehicles are affected, it costs £10 per day and you can set-up “Auto-pay” to save you having to remember to pay it.
The Ultra-Low Emission Zone covers the same area as the Congestion Charge Zone (orange bit) but will expand from 25th October 2021 (yellow bit) to be the inside of the North and South Circulars. The charges apply:
24 hours a day
Except Christmas Day
ULEZ costs £12.50 for most vehicle types, including cars, motorcycles and vans (up to and including 3.5 tonnes) and £100 for heavier vehicles, including lorries (over 3.5 tonnes) and buses/coaches (over 5 tonnes) that don’t meet the strict ULEZ standards. For Land Rovers, that means being Euro4 for petrol and Euro6 for diesel. You won’t be if your car is older than about 2005. So you’ll be paying the £12.50.
The Low Emission Zone covers everywhere inside the M25, but not the M25 itself. It operates:
For the Land Rover specific section of the rules, look here.
For Land Rover owners that consider they own a “car”, you may be surprised to learn that you instead own a “4×4 Utility” vehicle, which is NOT exempt. Check your V5C certificate to see what it says. If it is an “Estate Car”, it was a County Station Wagon or CSW when it left the factory and you are fine. Check your reg here to be sure.
If your car chassis number indicates it is a CSW AND it still has the side windows and seats, you can get a V5C corrected by writing a nice letter to the DVLA, then follow up with a similar one to TFL to ask them to amend their records.
If your car was retro-fitted with seats and side windows, you still own a “4×4 Utility” and will be liable for the charge. That’s why van-bodied Defenders are cheaper than CSW ones around London. If you are shopping for a new Defender,check the chassis number and V5C.
So what does this mean?
I recommend checking for yourself but basically:
CSW Drivers:
If you drive inside the M25 in a correctly-listed CSW, you don’t pay anything until you hit the ULEZ.
If you drive inside the North/South Circular after 25th October 2021, you pay £12.50 ULEZ
If you drive inside central London, you also pay £10 congestion charge
Non-CSW Drivers:
If you drive inside the M25 you pay £100 LEZ charge.
If you drive inside the North/South Circular after 25th October 2021, you also pay £12.50 ULEZ
If you drive inside central London, you also pay £10 congestion charge
For all the above there are various exemptions such as LEZ exemption for vehicles older than 1973.
Whilst getting my overboost issue resolved, a quite curious thing happened, all my indicators on my TD5 defender flash at the same time, no matter which way I turn.
The only indicator thing I touched was the front left one being half full of water, which being a sealed LED unit was a little annoying.
Front left indicator holding water very well
So I drained the water and ordered a new one.
Defender indicators are curious things. On older dashboards, the dash bulbs carry residual current on the “wrong side” when indicating but the bulbs don’t light enough to notice. With LED lights, this is a problem. The fix is one of three approaches; a “ballast” resistor to draw enough current at the light to make it equivalent to a bulb, an earth/diode fix to the dashboard warning bulb or an upgraded flash relay that knows about LEDs.
Checking my dash, I notice I have the YAC113530 integrated LED warning panel (October 2000), so there is no fix required there and in theory, no residual current problem.
Next possible culprit is the Flash relay. That lives behind the fuse panel, second one in from the left. Turn the indicators on and touch it to confirm. The click will be audible and easily felt.
So which relay did the previous owner use? It is an unbranded JM-90196R “3PIN 12V L.E.D. FLASHER” which seems to match a Bearmach part BA9714. I ordered a Wipac part to swap that out. The Wipac part is 4 pin (WFL7LED) listed as BA5193 and equivalent to PRC8876. So how many pins do I need?
It is also worth mentioning that the indicator switching goes via the overly complex Hazard switch to the right of the steering column. The switch has a number of connections:
For those fiddling with electrics on an early TD5 (before the 2001 face-lift dash), this page is a must read.
I swapped the light. No change. Swapped the hazard switch. Bingo! all resolved.
As I’m having trouble with my TD5 Defender “kangarooing” under hard acceleration, I did a bit of googling and asked questions on the usual forums. The kangarooing is apparently a known issue caused by either:
injector seals being worn
injector harness has oil in it
MAF sensor issues
Fuel regulator fault
Fuel pump fault
Well the pump was whining like a randy mosquito, so that got swapped, the injector harness swapped and the injector seals replaced. The red plug (C0158) at the ECU was removed, cleaned and replaced. No oil visible in there but worth a look. The turbo wastegate actuator was rusty, so I had that replaced when the car went in for MOT, thinking the garage can test the boost better than I can.
Still has the problem.
MAF disconnected next. Went for a drive and saw no difference. MAF was getting power. Maybe it was duff. New MAF, no difference.
I invested in a (budget) diagnostics tool from iCarsoft i930 to read what was going on. The Engine warning light isn’t coming on, so it isn’t anything the ECU is too concerned about, but I want it fixed.
The Error codes were:
Manifold pressure circuit fault logged low
Inlet air temp circuit fault. logged low
Multiplex input circuit fault logged low
1% reference voltage fault logged low
Driver demand 3 fault logged low
Manifold pressure reads as 42.75kPa and Ambient pressure as 0kPa. Science tells us air pressure at sea level is 101.325kPa, so something is weird!
As my TD5 is an early one, the lack of Driver Demand 3 isn’t necessarily a problem. Searching online, suggestions are roughly:
One of the sensors is duff and throwing out everything else
The ECU has in it oil due to the injector harness
The ECU hardness is worn and shorting out
The two sensors dealing with air pressure and temp share a common earth pin at the ECU and the pressure readings obviously require some kind of investigation.
I bit the bullet and replaced both sensors. The MAP/IAT was particularly gunky, so when a previous owner blanked the EGR, they didn’t bother cleaning the manifold or sensor, so I am pleased I swapped it out.
Gunky, due to the EGR which was blanked off long ago, but why blank the EGR and not swap the sensor? Well, because they cost about £100
The pins powering both sensors are live at the ECU and the sensor plugs, errors won’t clear on the iCarsoft and the problem persists.
Visual inspection of the harness indicates it looks sound, but maybe time to rip it out and replace it?
PSI Powerbox
The fact there is a PSI Power box wired into the ECU harness probably isn’t helping. It gives a kick of extra fuel when pulling away, but I have it unplugged for now whilst I diagnose what is going on. The box is a fudge to avoid doing a remap for more power, in combination with a bigger intercooler. My ECU is a “10P” variant, the chip is soldered on and not writable unless it is removed and a socketed one soldered in its place. Using this box avoids that.
As the intercooler in the car is stock, the poor old turbo is going to be working a bit harder than designed and to remove it from the troubleshooting, it is getting unplugged. Maybe once this is resolved and I invest in a new intercooler, I can plug it back in or rip it out entirely and get the proper remap done. But that is all for another day as there is no point remapping a duff engine….
From internet searches, it does seem other people have similar fault codes with the iCarsoft i930 on a pre-2007 Defender, despite the fact the device supports older ones like mine and has a menu option for it on the screen.
So, after mulling this over, I hired a Nanocom.
Nanocom
The Nanocom shows a few alerts, all of which are benign as I don’t have any of these things fitted:
10,1 aircon
10,3 tachometer drive
10,4 gearbox/abs
10,5 aircon clutch
14,1 aircon fan
14,3 tach drive
14,4 gearbox/abs
14,5 aircon
Nothing about the AAP, MAF, multiplexer etc.
There are also two other logged faults. One refers to the EGR being stuck closed (20,5), which is expected as the engine has an EGR blank fitted. The other…..
So a test drive showed the problem:
1.36 bar is a little bit high….
The TD5 engine will boost around 1.2bar with a stock intercooler. 1.4 is where the overboost kicks in. so When my the Nanocom is reading 1.36, it soon trips to 1.4 and the fuelling is cut by the ECU. On the Nanocom, the boost drops immediately to about 0.3, the engine “kangaroos” and the overboost condition is logged. So how do we fix this?
First let’s check the sensors are actually working, because we know the i930 warned they were duff:
They look fine and change as we drive. So sensors are good!
So how to fix the overboost?
There are some gizmos that can fool the ECU to ignore overboost, but the overboost control is there to protect the engine and I’d rather wind it back and make the bouncing go away. The correct way to handle this is to wind out the wastegate rod, making it longer and thus vent the boost pressure earlier. “Longer is lower”.
First I marked where the rod was set to:
Then used a 10mm to undo the lock nut and adjusted the rod so more space showed between the mark and the lock nut.
So what happens now? well, the boost only reaches 1.28 and no “kangarooing”. The Nanocom no longer logs an Overboost. Hooray!
With trial and error, I could wind it back a quarter turn, drive and test it and repeat until I know where the sweet spot is, but I don’t have the time and only hired the Nanocom for a week. I’ll look to buy one in future, but for now, I’m happy enough.
The door hinges on the Land Rover Defender can rust, creak and eventually run too loose to feel like the door is going to swing out forever when you open the door. The good news is, they are really easy to swap.
Buy new hinges and bolts. Paint the hinges using a rattle can of spray paint or some Hammerite. I decided to contrast the hinges against the bodywork black on white. The extra benefit being that black Hammerite is more rust resistant the plain old white enamel. Put a little grease in the turning surfaces and on the pin running through the middle.
These need to go
First-off, have a good look on the inside to see if you can work without removing the door card. Chance are, you can. Otherwise, remove the handles and window winder and pop it off using a trim removal tool. In my case, I was good to leave it in place. Soak the bolts in GT85 and put the kettle on.
Wind down the window. Make life a bit easier when going in and out the car. Put your mug of tea on the wing and get to work.
The trick here is to do them one at a time, starting from the bottom one. Undo the nuts on inside of the door or better still, use a spanner to hold the nut and undo the bolt from the outside. If you have a screw head, go gentle. If you have a torx or hex head, you will be in a better position. Remove just those two bolts and close the door again. You will probably have some shims under the hinge. Keep them and remember where you got them from.
The two bolts in the pillar are secured with metal clips. Undo the bolts and take the hinge off. carefully undo the clip. Clean up the paintwork underneath. Drop on some rustkiller. Install ht new clip. Lose it inside the pillar. Use another clip. realise you’ll be short of clips. Make a fishing kit using some twine and a paperclip to rescue the missing clip. Fix the clip again more tentatively. Step back. Sip some tea.
Rusty old bolts and the hinges are metallic blue. My car was originally Silver and painted white at some point in the past. So, somebody went cheap by using second-hand hinges….
Fit the new hinge to the pillar using new shiny bolts, not forgettign to resue the same number of shims as before. Preferably A4 marine with a torx head. A2 Stainless is an option if you want to save a few pennies. Don’t tighten the hinge up too tight but tight enough so it can help support the door.
Push the two bolts in for the door and carefully open the door, bearing in mind one hinge is carrying the weight. Put the nuts (preferably new nyloc ones) on the other side and tighten them up. Close the door and tighten the pillar bolts. I would go back a half turn or so giving a tiny bit of adjustment potential for when the door settles after the other hinge is in place, but that is up to you.
If the door seems a bit off, remember you have another hinge to do yet and at the moment the door is a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. If after doing both the door is fighting you, you can revert to the old shims to return the door to a similar fit as the older hinge had. This might be necessary if the door is old and mildly deformed due to wear and tear. New shims are obviously preferred, but you know, Land Rover.
The upper hinges are trickier. Fold the mirror back and undo the door bolts. Remove the nuts but leave the bolts in. Close the door if you had to open it. Having that window open is really rather useful right now.
Undo the pillar bolts and take the hinge off. The mirror will need supporting. Quite obvious but better to be wary than have to buy a new one. Once the hinge is off, remove the pillar clips and anti-rust the body work.
Put the hinge on a flat surface. The ground or a table or one of the seats is better than working on the wing so there is no risk of dropping the mirror. Unbolt the mirror from the hinge. Bolt it onto the new one.
Fir the hinge to the body work, then the door. Tighten it all up and check the door opens and closes OK. Loosen the bolts slightly to get it to settle rather than adjust the striker plate on the door because you’ll be fiddling for hours.
Stand back. Sip tea. Admire handiwork.
So much nicer
Repeat on the other side. Recycle the old bolts and hinges at your local recycling centre.
