Thread: Conversion 3.2 TDCi Puma

Originally Posted by jakeslouw

x 2 on that! It will never happen, sadly. And I still will never understand why not.

The defender is a mans car.......

my serious guess on it is the shape of the transmissions and the floor works coupled with the potential of increased auto failure rates caused by over working the auto.

Defender gearboxes don't enjoy the extra cooling (or areodymanics) of some other marques because of the layout of the engine bay and under body.

Dave, I doubt it. I think the real reason is because the company is run by bean counters now, and not enthusiasts.......

and thats why....
put yourself in the bean counters boots.

the auto is more expensive in the first place... lets ignore that people want it...
doing the drop in from a tdi disco to a tdi deefer isnt that hard nor is it from the td5 side either. so its not that it cant be done, it can and with factory tooling it would be easy.
Changing the existing tooling would be expensive BUT people have wanted the auto in the deefer since the disco came out with it so on a projected cost base it would have been worth retooling the factory to produce the auto deefer so there must be another blocking point.

do you remember the cost analysis thing from fight club? [ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l5EY8oXamoM]Fight Club - The Formula - Kinetic Typography - YouTube[/ame]
lets look there. but lets substitute X as being the cost of warranty repair works....

in a deefer pretty much everything is stacked against the auto (assuming you do the auto install the cheapest way possible which seems likely) its a big box on wheels that has the areodynamic drag of a large building and weighs in at not light, and then most people stick a heap of junk in it.Statistically, auto drivers are a lot less sympathetic on their vehicles because well thats what the auto is ment to do (if everyone was willing to make the effort, learn appreciate and operate a vehicle in the most effecient way its probable that the auto would have never gotten a toe hold in the automotive industry) take away most or all of the need to worry about changing gears and from to low range and back into high. The TC and the oil is going to cop a hiding so its going to get hot.

The Engine bay is a gaping cavern with huge air outlets under the vehicle and due to its layout there are zero air dam covers or plates to move the air around things, Great for the engine but of no use to assisting in cooling the gearbox.

The gearbox is tucked up as well, theres a comping great cross member right in front of it, its got these huge chassis rails to the left and right of it, its bolted to another heat source that also acts as an airshield called the Tcase, about the only opening available for cooler air to get to it is from the front propshaft (and the other side has the exhaust running along side it so thats going to heat things up as well)


so 3 for 3 there are some of the killers of autos (and no, I wont go down the route of if its in a landy its going to leak, if an auto leaks out its oil its not going to work, thats a maintenance repair issues and statistically most landy owners at least try to look after the vehicle from that perspective) ineffective cooling, application of external heat and extra workload.

so back in the day when they had the chance to do it and could probably justify doing it on the face value of return on investment to tool up to do so, they most likely didnt because it would cost extra to make the automatic reliable in the defender and being penny pinchers if they didnt put the extra money the predicted failure rate probably blew the X factor out of proportion so they never did it to begin with....

15 years later (just to pick a timeframe) and the autos are better, the oil is better but now the sales are down so while the original blow out factors for the cost of X are now out of the window and it becomes viable to put the auto into the deefer because it will work reliably and the warranty cost is lower with the lowered sale rates its no longer viable to retool the factory to put the auto in in the first place.

A while later and the defender no longer shares its driveline with any other landrover product, the cost of engineering up an auto configuration can no longer be done on the cheap by borrowing a heap of stuff from an adjacent supply line its got to be done from scratch and for a low volume product like the defender no-one is going to waste money doing something thats hard for just a few extra sales.

so you cant have a factory auto because back in the day it wouldnt have been cost effective to do so based on the warranty rates and today because well its just too hard to do so for the tiny profit we might not even make.

if you want to chuck some dirt on top of that coffin......
The defender is dead as a consumer vehicle in its current form, I strongly doubt that you will ever be able to buy another defender in shed on wheels
configuration auto or not ever again.

Some good points on the current defender. If LR carries that lovely attitude over to the new Defender then they can simply shut up shop now: people want options, they want extra power and better gearboxes and gadgets.

Going backwards to an anemic (relative to the 3.2 Ford) 2.2 engine and staying with only one engine and one gearbox option is contrary to where all the other manufacturers have gone.

No wonder sales are pathetic.

Originally Posted by jakeslouw

they want extra power and better gearboxes and gadgets.

And theres the rub... all that is against what is the heart and soul of the marque.

Its supposed to be dead simple, it drives, it works it gets you home at the end of the day, if its not adding a productive capability to the vehicle then it doesn't belong on a defender. All the extra crap is bolt in bells and whistles, you want em you either go and buy someone elses interpretation of what you want OR, you go and get a defender and put what you want in it in it.

in essence if you buy $50K worth of shed class landy and you're going to get $45k worth of Rock solid dependable go from A-B and $5k worth of somewhere to sit. if you don't like the seats, unbolt them and change them, ditto the radio, the AC, the dash, body layout, It is (or was) the last vehicle available to the common public that was designed to be tinkered with, pulled apart, modified, put back together, have holes drilled in it, pop rivet filled and then drilled again and still look like thats how it was ment to be.

If someone as a vehicle purchaser is looking at a shed class and bitching about how it doesnt have all the nicey comfy features of a toyota nissan mitsy or any other vehicle I'll tell em the same thing I put up there,

Cause the shed class was built to last, its 90% about getting the proper essential "this bit needs to work to make it go" stuff done, as efficiently as possible and in a way that its easy to fix when it needs to be fixed and its designed to be fixed, The reason they dont put all the fancy stuff in there is because its an engineers car not a fashion designers car, fashion changes engineering principles do not. Getting the latest fashion accessory gizmo into a landy is simple you put it in there, you dont have to go and sell the vehicle you just buy the bit you want and put it in, 5 years from now when its no longer the cool thing you take it out and put something else in its place BUT and this is the important bit Its still the same landrover still doing what it was designed to do which is little bit of everything without making any particular point about bragging about how well it does one individual thing. It's the Macgyver of the automotive world, Its makes no great claim until you really really need it and then it just gets whats got to be done done and then goes back off to do whatever else needs doing.

The problem is that this market is small and shrinking by the day.

And I'm sorry, but LR has departed from their own mandate.

In the Series vehicles you could have diesel OR petrol.
petrol was 2.25 or 2.6 or even 3.5V8
Diesel would have been more options if the engineering was ready for it. LR tried. They failed, but they tried.

Now only diesel and only ONE size.

if LR wants to continue making money with the defender, they have to do what Jeep has done with the Wrangler: more than one engine, auto or manual, roof options. Leave the bling to the after-market bunch, but provide a CHOICE for goodness' sake.

Is it any wonder guys like Icon and BAS and so on make a huge profit providing Defenders the way the customer ACTUALLY want them?

I'm sorry, I can't accept "you can have any engine as long as it's a 2.2".

That type of thought went out with the Model T.

I'd rather they offer one product that works and does what it says on the can, unlike say jeep...

"Yes sir, would you like the one that catches fire or the one that tears up suspension bushes?"

Whats the difference?

"The first ones got an automatic gearbox the others the manual."

Ah mate let's agree that we'll never agree..........