Thread: Question why do Defenders leak ?

The only reason LR keep selling...is because of a masochistic, patient, understanding but othewise insane group of owners... and the best marketing strategy(s) in the world.

Apart from treating their customer-base with respect, other manufacturers take pride in getting the little issues correct as well as the Big Ones.

The serious answer to the question "Why do Defenders leak?", is more or less as follows.

The basic design (1948) was not intended to be watertight, as it was a working vehicle, in a time that if you worked in the rain, you accepted getting wet. (Remember that at the time no Australian made car had a heater, for example, and it was illegal to drive with the driver's window shut, as you needed to make hand signals.) In 1948, any form of roof was optional, as were door tops - and door seals were not even optional.

Since the basic design has not changed, sealing has had to be more or less improvised to add to the basic design, rather than being designed in from the start. The design aspects that lead to sealing problems are:-

The body is bolted together from a large number of separate components. This enables the wide variety of different bodies, but every bolted join is a potential leak.

Being designed to need minimum tooling means that door openings etc have sharp corners. These are very difficult to seal.

The usual source of leaks onto your feet are - water coming through the bolt holes for the brackets at the base of the windscreen; faulty join between the clutch or brake pedal assembly and the footwell; Damaged or missing rubber plugs in redundant holes in the bulkhead; rust holes in the footwell. Vents are often blamed, but rarely the real culprit. Door seals a little more often the problem.

John

Originally Posted by Tombie

Sorry mate, but the guys bolting your Landies together have names like:

Rahul
Ajay
Aaryan
Sidharth
Sameer
Vikram
Nikhil
Anshul
Tushaar

Just think what they'd be called if they didn't build em in Solihull!

Originally Posted by Tombie

Sorry mate, but the guys bolting your Landies together have names like:

Rahul
Ajay
Aaryan
Sidharth
Sameer
Vikram
Nikhil
Anshul
Tushaar

Good one!


When Mrs NT5224 and I did the factory tour last year we were pleased to spot a good few women wielding their screwdrivers and hammers on the assembly line. I was particularly impressed by one lady who was charged with hoisting the engines manually into position tugging on a bare chain run through an overhead pulley system.

So perhaps we should include a few Sarvitha's in your list -Although pulley girl looked more like a Vera!

Cheers

Alan

Where are the defenders built nowadays?