Thread: defender replacement: the benchmark (IMHO)

Rest assured if they cock up the new Deefer I'll be looking for a way to secure one of these instead.

I hope VM diesels have improved???

Looks good, but I would take a g-wagen Professional over that.

G-wagen has lockers, coil rear and a 3L engine...

However the Jeep does have rear discs.

the perentie.

The issue with the GW Pro is the price: over here they go for USD$100,000.

For that price I can buy two Puma Defenders.

Jeep J8 looks good, I just hope the control arms are stronger than stock.

Originally Posted by isuzurover

............However the Jeep does have rear discs.

......and rear leaf springs

Rear leaf springs are better for load carrying than coils.

Originally Posted by jakeslouw

Rear leaf springs are better for load carrying than coils.

It is not clear to me that this is the case. The only reason would be that the coil carries the load at one point on the chassis where the leaf spring carries it at two, but surely any advantage for one or the other depends on the chassis design. On the other hand, the coil has no load concentration on a moving joint as the leaf spring does at the eyes.

The other primary difference, that the coil separates the location, torque reaction, and damping functions from the support function seems to me to be independent of load.

You can argue that unloaded/loaded springing can easily be arranged with leaf springs by having a separate overload pack, but you can do the same sort of thing with coils as well, for example with concentric springs or tapered springs.

John

Sounds like the ideal tourer to me:

"We find that the suspension is flexible when crawling, and the high spring rates work great when running fast, but it feels really bad in medium driving speeds on the washboard roads. The semi-elliptic leaf spring setup is simply too hard when not fully loaded."

Just how do you fit a tonne of gear to settle the rear end when all you have a is a poxy little dog box behind the rear seats??? Maybe youll need to ute-efy one.
I wonder if the ne european VM still has four leaky head gaskets or if they have economised and now only have one leaky gasket???

The solution to LR destroying the new defender is to just keep an old one.

S