Thread: Dodgy parts - sign of the times or just a D1 thing???

Ben, are these parts Genuine LR, or AM?

Ben as said were these genuine or aftermarket.
A mate of mine had 3 Viscous fans in a row fail for a 100 series cruiser over a period of 2 months.

The clutch and pressure plate had no markings at all. I used Britpart replacements which looked much better quality (surprisingly).

Lash caps were genuine.
Cannot remember what make the first fan hub was.

This is my GUESS, and a big uninformed GUESS at that.

When a car is in production, it would seem the maker of that car have reason to stay on top of part quality from their suppliers. Probably even for a few years after end of production. Anything after 3 years, they really don't have an interest other than legal obligation to supply parts for the minimum required time frame. I would guess that if a supplier said to LR, we can make that part a little cheaper by changing x, y or z, they may be interested. OR LR themselves may approach part suppliers.

AM parts, from the get go, will be a wide range of quality.

As time goes by and the $$$ value of the vehicle reduces, it would seem less logical to invest dollars, by the parts manufactures, as us buyers are less likely to spend $$$ on more expensive parts.

On top of all that, you have the huge move to production in China. Yes things have been made there for centuries, but consider the D1 was in the late 90s and that its only been the last 10 years that every man and his dog has set up or out sourced production over there. IMO QC is very hit and miss and ethics do not exist as we see them, so many parts get small changes (materials, fit, finish, spec etc) that the part supplier wouldn't know about until in their hands or failing in cars.

Since a TDI defender shares a lot of parts with a tdi disco it would come down to the quality of the parts used as mentioned on the previous posts, some Britpart parts are ok - my ps pump is fine after 3 years touch wood.

I had a very similar experience with parts for my D1. Some parts did not even survive the initial torquing up, or first use.

The replacement Tdi valve lash caps issue is not a new one, I recall, 10 years ago a mate had a set done by a Land rover dealer whilst having the Timing Belt replaced, the new caps let him down 500 klms into his post retirement around Australia trip. Land Rover at the time claimed it was "just a bad un-hardened batch that slipped through", I guess that could be true, but there seems to be more "dodgy" stuff about these days and not all the cheap to buy stuff.
I guess information sharing of bad experiences is really the only way the consumer has of finding out "pre-purchase", unfortunately we may only start checking up after the event, then we can only regret the purchase, the money has been spent.

All the replacement parts I use on our 4 Landys are either genuine, or Bearmach,had to many Britpart parts fail on my friends vehicles to use them on mine.I have also purchased parts from Repco outlets and have asked for Genuine or Bearmach and got them

Note on 300TDI D1's and I think Defenders, if the belt tensioner is worn and throws the belt out of line (belt powder on alternator) then it may have a flow-on effect to the fan pully.