Absolutely NO Rover content whatsoever

colnerov said:
Hi, Richard I suppose it depends what you call serious off roading. In the Middle East off roading
seems to consist of taking soft sanded rolling dunes at speed on wide tyres for flotation. In the
UK it is driving through wet sticky mud and/or sand. In the US it seems to be Rock climbing and
hard sanded desert floor, again at speed. In Aus and NZ it is, well, I am not sure what it is, I am
willing to be educated. So it seems to be different vehicle for different courses. No one vehicle
being better than another, just popular local preference and aftermarket kit availiability.

Colin
Indeed - and I was referring to our environment here. Most of it is soft sand, so light weight and decent power to weight ratio is what you need. We have some huge dunes which, when combined with soft sand, can be really challenging to climb due to lack of traction and the drag from the sand on the tyres. Momentum management is really the key. Wadi driving involves some rock work but as long as you have decent ground clearance, a desert vehicle is OK for a Wadi. What works here may not elsewhere, of course.
 
Richard Moss said:
I'll tell you one thing: if this was a RHD market, I would set up a business exporting Luminas to Oz and NZ and make a few $

Anything Chrysler/Jeep has a poor reputation in Oz, apart from the old stuff. Neons, Voyagers etc are worth scrap metal. About the only new Mopar's worth anything here are 300C's as they were the "it" car here a few years ago and the limited run of Dodge Vipers that were brought over here in small numbers.

Can't export Holdens back here, personal import only for a car so new. If you wanted to make coin in bringing a car over here, anything European is "exotic" here, M3's, M5's, 911's, Bentleys, Rollers, Audi's, they're all worth something here rather than just being another car in their native lands.
 
Yes it funny how values are so perception orientated. Here in NZ my GTO might make 2 to 3K on a quick sale but in OZ would easily be cheap at 20K. In NZ european cars other than German are worth close to nothing with late model Volvo S80's being the most undervalued and as for renault and citroen saab they dont even rate a capital letter in their name with 90% of there value being lost as soon as you drive them away from the dealer.

Graeme
 
[quoteIn NZ european cars other than German are worth close to nothing with late model Volvo S80's being the most undervalued and as for renault and citroen saab they dont even rate a capital letter in their name with 90% of there value being lost as soon as you drive them away from the dealer.
][/quote]

That's cos you'd have to mad to buy one. Astronomically expensive to repair and really unreliable when they get past 5 years old. Just buy a Nissan or Toyota and forget about it.
 
Richard Moss said:
This is going to replace my Chevrolet Lumina Coupe (Vauxhall/Holden Monaro) in the next few days. It's a 1996 Jeep Cherokee XJ 4L manual. I'm doing a straight swap for the Lumina - the garage that have the Jeep are going to fit a replacement engine (this one is smoky) and a new clutch as well as give it a full service. The Lumina is going to be the personal transport of the chap who runs the place, he practically begged me to sell it to him! He gets his "sporty" coupe and I get a relatively lightweight off-roader with better performance than my Grand Cherokee ZJ automatic.

I had a Jeep XJ a while back. It was a surprisingly good car. It performed superbly and was very good in the snow and ice. The only thing I couldn't get on with was the recumbent driving position. But it had all the goodies:
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I have to have an auto though,
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That's nice. Theyre wonderfully tacky, aren't they? Almost like some remnant of BL in the 1970s or a Wood and Pickett Mini.
 
I had a friend with one, it was great. 2 memories stand out, one being him dumping it into a wall at about 2mph because he'd locked the diffs and it wouldn't go round a corner :LOL: The other seeing 3mpg on the (very cool at 14) instantaneous fuel economy thing.
 
colnerov said:
Why is there an almost expired toilet roll on top of the gear selector? :? :wink:

:LOL: Yep, it was a big old gearlever. It also had a link from the steering lock to gearlever that prevented the driver from moving the lever until the steering lock was disengaged with the key. That fooled me a few times.
 
I'm well overdue an update on this so by way of a start, I've got a set of these wheelarch flares on their way to me now:

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Here we go with the arches:

This is what the original flares look like:


This is the kit of wider flares. Single-piece front flares, two-piece rears (part for the door part for the wing) and two funny looking bits that have yet to be identified! :


I used fibreglass matting and resin to beef up the areas where the bolts go through (sorry no "after" pic just yet):


There were no instructions or bolts but it's not rocket science. Whip off the original flares, offer up the new ones and get an idea where the slightly mis-shapen fibreglas needs to be trimmed. Then get brave with the angle grinder and attack the wing!


This is what came off:


After drilling a load of holes in the flares and the wing (all rust treated and painted), I used some small bore irrigation tube (split down the middle) to edge the lip that presses up against the wing. Then I bolted it into place with some nice M8 hex headed bolts. The area under the front end of the flare has been left untrimmed for now - once I've get everything in place I'll trim/fold/paint it to tidy it up.


Then it's time to tackle the other side. Here you can see the mounting holes. No going back now! You can also see here the lift springs and uprated shocks that I had fitted some time back (about 1.75" of lift). Needless to say, this side took a lot less time than the first!


You'll probably have noticed that the new flares cover the area of the side repeaters. i have fitted some LED indicator repeaters to the mirrors (you can see them in the last three shots) and will see if there is somewhere convenient to refit the side repeaters - probably above the crease line.

Now the rears are going to be a bit more tricky because there are some double skinned, areas that I really don't want to trim because it would weaken the shell (where the inner arches meet the rear wings) so I will have to fold, weld and paint those bits and spend more time trimming the flares.

I'm reasonably pleased with them although the rear end of the front left flare is a rather poor fit at the bottom of the wing and could do with building up - but that's a job for another time. Rears first!

Also, the wheels look a little lost now (as expected) so I may swap them for the ones on my red Grand Cherokee which have a wider offset or fit spacers. Hopefully I'll get one or both rear arches done this weekend.
 
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