Freelander off the road again, update time..... Drive shaft adventure....

[Marina door handles]

But what is it?

Some clues

Two of my existing cars have engines from other manufacturers, my Reliant Scimitar has the Ford Essex V6 and my Rover 827 has a Honda V6. My new car sticks to this tradition and has somebody else's engine........ (Not all models had foreign engines though).

Its a bit hairdresser but not a sports car but you could get a convertible option, although mine has five doors.....

At launch a lot of owners of existing cars from this marque didn't think much of this one!

 

 

 

 

[stuboy]

focus CC ?

[ruffgeezer]

Mini Clubman with PSA engine? 

[Marina door handles]

5 minutes ago, ruffgeezer said:

Mini Clubman with PSA engine? 

I see how you got there, its good but not right! 

[mintwth]

Range Rover ejoke? 

[Marina door handles]

9 minutes ago, mintwth said:

Range Rover ejoke? 

Nope! 

[big_al_granvia]

focus st with the t5 volvo engine

[HMC]

Rover 115D

[Wibble]

Rover 418SLDT

[Spiny Norman]

PT Cruiser with Merc tractor engine?

[somewhatfoolish]

You probably haven't bought one but the Bentley Orange Green Lavatory fits the description. As would the Suzuki Vitara and Landrover Freelander, but they're less funny to think about.

[Marina door handles]

50 minutes ago, somewhatfoolish said:

You probably haven't bought one but the Bentley Orange Green Lavatory fits the description. As would the Suzuki Vitara and Landrover Freelander, but they're less funny to think about.

One of those might be the answer......

[Carl1981]

I think freelander…

[Stroller133]

+1  for Freelander. Although it's a bit subjective whether it truly uses another manufacturers engine? The car was part of both the Rover group and BMW during its product life cycle. 

[MrBig]

Freelander II with the 3.2 straight 6 Volvo engine?

[EspenO]

Volvo XC90 with the Yamaha V8.

OK, it’s not, but how awesome would that have been?

[Marina door handles]

Yes sadly its a Freelander 1 with the BMW diesel. I take the point that its's not really a foreign engine when its from the parent company but were is the fun in that?

[Marina door handles]

It has arrived.......

Its gripped! its sorted! lets soft road! One wife livid..........

 

 

[Asimo]

5 hours ago, MrBig said:

Freelander II with the 3.2 straight 6 Volvo Ford engine?

**As also used by Volvo.

[Marina door handles]

Update, after its arrival last night I have rushed it straight into vehicular use... Its done a whole 40 miles and rather proved its use case.  At the moment there is a bit of flooding around the local roads (one almost permanently flooded section to one side of our house) which means when I am in the Honda I have to be a bit picky about my routes and end up detouring quite a bit. Previously I would just use the Forester when conditions got bad but its almost perpetually doing the wrong kind of off roading, (its still broken and I am still waiting for parts ordered before Xmas!). 

I figure having 2 daily's with a smidge of off road ability and crucially both have a 500mm wading depth (which is really bloody useful) was the way to go.

So what's good, bad and the ugly about the Freewheeler?

Well, the driving position is bob on, the main dash sits low and the instruments are in a tall binnacle in front of you giving an exaggerated feel of loftyness. Sure you are not sitting as high as in a full size Landrover but my brain thinks I am. Lets face it there is no point sitting in a quasi off roader and feeling like you are in a normal car, which I think is an issue in so many new SUVs and cross overs. 

I like the way it drives, the BMW diesel is a good match for the car.

Its surprisingly narrow (well compared to my old P38) so parking and squeezing through gaps are a lot less stress full

The heated seats still work nicely didn't really need them this morning but had to test them for science.

It still has its four wheel drive system in tact.

Everything seems to work as it should, except the radio (need a code, might just get a new head unit).

I particularly like having an actual back door rather than a tailgate (picture stolen from add)

The novelty hasn't worn off yet!

The bad bits,,,

The rear wheel arches might need some attention soon, little bit crusty but nothing I cannot sort.

The headlining is doing a classic British car thing and heading slowly south, its okay we have bobby pins for a slightly casual fix! 

If only it was a slightly wackier colour....

If only these came with low range (not that I would actually use that). 

I am pretty pleased with my purchase, not bad for less than £1300! 

 

 

[Garythesnail]

19 minutes ago, Marina door handles said:

I am pretty pleased with my purchase

I ran a 03 plate, 3 door, 2.5 V6 auto from 09/19 until 05/22, taken from 46k to 66k miles. Bought cheap with what turned out to be 14 months MOT (covid), wasn't faultless (but not properluly problematic either...... until it pished itself when the plastic collant pipes in the vee let go) and very nice to drive - it's why I've got an L320 now.

Best heater in any car I've ever had - may have been related to the reasons it pished itself.

Hope it'll be a good car for you.

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

Excelent winter transport, owned my 04 now for 18 months, done about five thousand miles  since with no issues.

Heated front seats are great as is the heated front window, local mpg around 35.

Bought with a full mot, only main expense will be  a  new set of tyres are imminent.

[Minimad5]

Looks a good purchase 👍 what's the Td4 like ?

Someone i know was asking me about these in Automatic flavour ... I can't recall who it was, but are they an 'ok' box ?

[The Old Bloke Next Door]

The auto box in mine is very smooth, currently at 187000 ish miles, two previous owners, full service history.

[hairnet]

freeloader

hmmm

just right for summer weather then

[Marina door handles]

Gave it a wash, used some pins to stick the sagging headlining back up, pumped the tyres and topped the fluids.

She shines up okay I think......

 

 

[Marina door handles]

I have finally taken the Freelander for a spot of off roading......

Yes the more traditional JLR product version of off roading, straight into the garage!

It has a couple of issues firstly the rear brakes occasionally stick on, mostly after the car has been through flood water... Second issue is a bearing noise droning under the car.

After doing doing a bit of research, I think I found the culprits for each issue. The general consensus with the sticking brakes is that its always the brake shoes, cheap after market ones have a habit of sticking to the drums, so I replaced the shoes. The brakes seem okay so fingers crossed I have fixed that issue....

All looks pretty normal...

On to the second issue, initially I thought it was a wheel bearing. I jacked each end of the car up and spun the wheels by hand but they all sounded okay? Hmm is it the prop? After doing a bit more digging and watching a furious driving video, I came to the conclusion it could well be one of the 2 prop center bearings...

Anyway out with the prop.... And mark it up so I can line it back up after I split it....

I span the bearings by hand once the prop was off and the front one did sound pretty rough. They both looked ancient so I replaced them both.

The old ones did not want to come off, they came apart in bits....

Putting the new ones on was a bit of a faff, especially the little protective collars. I actually managed to jam one of the new bearings against a collar before figuring out what I had done. Anyway after a bit of fight it all came back together.

Test drive now carried out- all now okay, noise gone so I can go and do some more on roading! 

 

 

[bezzabsa]

+99 points for not being "2 wheel drive for economy"  had the earlier L series dizzel and that wasnt too bad, but the extra bhp of the Td4 must help

[Marina door handles]

1 hour ago, bezzabsa said:

+99 points for not being "2 wheel drive for economy"  had the earlier L series dizzel and that wasnt too bad, but the extra bhp of the Td4 must help

When I was shopping around for this car I discounted 2wd models as that kind of defeats the point of owning one.   

[Marina door handles]

"Test drive now carried out- all now okay, noise gone so I can go and do some more on roading" 

Spoke too soon, I started hearing a lighter whirring noise on driving the Freelander, not the horrible grinding that it had developed previously but definitely a noticeable "bearing" sort of sound. I tried jacking up each end and spinning individual wheels but couldn't really hear anything, I don't think I was spinning them fast enough! How to test? what I wanted to do was get all four wheels off the ground, remove the wheels, fire up the Freelander and get all the hubs spinning under power and listen to each corner with my 99p stethoscope.

The first attempt to do this ended with me dropping the car off the jack (which was on the rear subframe which is an official jacking point) and putting a hole in the exhaust back box...... 🫣.   Second attempt saw the car safely up in the air. I traced the noise to the near side front wheel bearing.

All of my cars seem to be in need of wheel bearings? 

First part of the job, remove the hub nut.... These hub nuts are apparently done up to 295lbft or 400 nm which is quite a lot more than is usual in most normal cars. I have sort of covered this in the Grumpy thread but anyway the first attempt permanently bent my biggest breaker bar and it looked like it was about to fail so I stopped went on the internet and bought a whacking great 1inch drive 1 .1 meters long breaker. 

A couple of days later the breaker bar arrived it was an awesome thing, I immediately pressed it into action and within a few minutes discovered that it must have a manufacturing fault....

I did it a bit of digging and found that a lot of people struggle with these nuts, the best advice I could find was to split the nut at the point were the nut is staked into the drive shaft but try and split all the way down. Some wag described it as a ten minute job... Due to the shape of the hub you cannot get a nut splitter on to the nut so the best course of action is to carefully chisel away at it.

Eventually after what felt like days of chiselling and a little bit of drilling, the nut looked like this....

Employing my new new big breaker bar it eventually came free.

Definitely wont be reusing that nut.... 

After that everything came apart easily.  The steering track rod attaches to the strut rather than the knuckle and the lower ball joint is bolted to the wishbone so you don't need to split either to remove the knuckle.  The hub and bearing came apart fairly normally and the dust shield was mostly made of rust and pretty much fell off....

Pics for the bearing removal fetishists ...

Oh yes I am still loving my press, it makes mincemeat of these jobs....

Just waiting for the bearing and back box to turn up, then I will finish the job....