Thread: Dirty FL2

Bought the Freelander last year. Finally had a chance to try it offroad. Followed friends in a Prado and Patrol up to the Denmans Range camping site, West of Mackay. It dragged the underside through the mud a couple of times and have a ding in one of the underside brackets following a rough creek crossing, But the car never felt like it could not make it.

Very impressed.

Picture taken at Denmans Range, twice as dirty by the time we got home.

DSC03237.jpg

Mine's now wearing a Green Oval tank guard courtesy a trip in the high country (Licola-Mansfield via Mt Howitt) where an unseen loose boulder rolling under the car in a long mud channel in a gully rendered the standard fuel tank joke for "protection" as being well beyond its use-by date. The guard does reduce rear clearance a bit (expected), and the outrigger attachment points are a bit too long and bend the outer edges downward even further (which will no doubt be "rectified" with the next decent hit), but the chances of any damage or puncturing of the fuel tank are dramatically reduced. It's not a full-length thing, though - the attachments are only at the front with rearward facing wings pressing flush against the length of the tank, so in the unlikely event of reversing into an obstacle and destroying the rear muffler first, the fuel tank is next in line and still vulnerable from that angle. Only minor observations, though - the fuel tank is now as safe as needs be for the sort of driving this vehicle is so good at - formed, if rough, tracks. Well worth the money compared with recovering the vehicle after holing the tank.

Coming off King Billy No 1 on that trip (pre mud-hole, note others' tyre scuff marks on foreground rocks - it's steeper than it looks - and where a Toyota Troopie driver was *most* surprised to see the FL2 up there, predicting I'd never get to Mansfield without "low", although I made it without so much as spinning a wheel... )