Now I Know Why They Carry Highlift Jacks in Namibia

[Rovingwill]

Looking at some of the pictures on Caradvice site I notice this picture of the of the rear suspension, it appears the mounting point for (from I work out) the lateral arm has broke and they replaced the lateral arm with part of highlift jack. Not sure how it got that way, there no mention of problems in the various articles/videos, if its damage from hitting a rock or something else maybe it’s OK but if it’s just broke that’s so good. Also included picture of my D5 which as far as I know is much the same and I haven’t heard any problem with D5 or Range Rovers but maybe they don’t get as much of a hard time.

A few more observations

All the Namibia vehicles appear to have the X rear recovery points but there is no option for them on the normal models. Standard they have a screw in towing eye and not even sure if you get 2 of them, why are they not standard or at least an option?

Land Rover list a Warn Zeon Platinum winch, which has a wireless controller, for its winch kit but the Namibia vehicles have Zeon winches with normal controller. Is there a problem with the wireless controller?

[jon3950]

Well spotted. Those vehicles must be leading a hell of a life, being constantly driven over those roads by a bunch of journos.

A couple of things I noticed from the Carfection review:

Namibia looks stunning. I think I want to go there.

They haven't learnt their lesson with the jack. It still has that abomination from the Discovery.

Cheers,
Jon

[scarry]

The price of the winch fitted is around $10K for those that are interested in it as an option[bighmmm]

No me.For that money there are things higher up the list .

Same jack as D4,FFS,unbelievable.....[bigsad]

[carpdvl]

Bit of digging in the comments to find the explanation:

A bit of context for you on that photo: one of the journos on our loop had the unfortunate experience of hitting a big rock at high speed while doing a driving piece to camera. Steel front wheel buckled (got hammered back to useable) and after bouncing, the car came down on the rock with the rear control arm and snapped it.
In the picture you can see the repair job: the.guys used a grinder to cut a length from a hi-lift jack, clearanced the holes a little, and bolted it onto between wheel and chassis. This car continued on for the next few days without any problems. And now they have a world first mid-lift jack.

Hopefully the journo was driving a car with the brown interior specced to hide any accidents :toilet:

[loanrangie]

Who said you cant bush mechanic these new fangled ve-hicles [biggrin].

[jon3950]

Well, if anything, that’s a testament to it’s durability.

[Graeme]

The first picture shows the reservoir attached to a CVD! However it doesn't guarantee its is CVD, instead just an external reservoir.

Edit: Adaptive Dynamics standard on base model, so yes CVDs.

[Bigbjorn]

My opinion, when they fit a new hub then they should make new control arms out of high lift jacks. They look miles stronger than the pressed metal OEM fitting.[bigwhistle]

[Don 130]

I'm pretty sure in the Cnet article I posted, the journo said there were no breakdowns, the cars were just refuelled. I wonder if he knew or not?
Don.

[TB]

There were multiple 3-day trips with different groups of journos.

[JDNSW]

Does that count as a breakdown or an accident?

[PhilipA]

Just about Namibia.

In general the dirt roads are much better maintained than in Australia. I was amazed at how there was a lack of corrugations until I spied why. We went from kalagari combined National Park to Fish River Canyon then up the dirt road connecting Fish River and Walvis Bay/Swakopmund via the coast road next to the dunes, then up the Skeleton Coast then east to the Caprivi strip to Botswana and Zambia

There are roaming graders which traverse the country continuously towing a trailer which the grader driver lives out of with his second wife who is chosen by his first wife so that he will not muck around and get HIV.

I was told by our truck/bus driver that the main dirt roads are done every two weeks or so.

So the Defender has hardly been tested under typical Australian conditions of hundreds of Ks of unremitting corrugations.
Regards PhilipA

[Tombie]

I'm pretty sure in the Cnet article I posted, the journo said there were no breakdowns, the cars were just refuelled. I wonder if he knew or not?
Don.

That’s not a breakdown [emoji41]

I note they reported it wrong as the “arm snapped”. Looks like the mount on the housing fractured in the impact.

That would have taken some seriously silly driving!

[DiscoMick]

YouTube (https://youtu.be/rg9inpnrWkI)

[scarry]

YouTube (https://youtu.be/rg9inpnrWkI)

Thats a good review.

Lets hope its a lot more mechanically stronger and reliable than the last model.

Then JC and Dazza won't have anything to complain about[bighmmm][biggrin]

[zilch]

So the Defender has hardly been tested under typical Australian conditions of hundreds of Ks of unremitting corrugations.
Regards PhilipA

a good point, it has been claimed that the under pinning suspension has been beefed up on the new Defender say compared to the D3/D4/RRS. As someone who has
a MY10.5 L320 RRS, if the Defender can soak up the thousands of K's mine has done on corrugations, such as on the PDR in Cape York etc, and the control arm bushes
can last at least to 125K KM's before the bushes need changing has mine have done, I would hope that it would cope quite easily with the majority of corrugated roads
in OZ.. fingers crossed [smilebigeye]