Supacat wrote:

A useful mod, sort of thing JLR should have been doing from the get go ~ although why the whole floor panel shouldn't have been able to be removed is beyond me?

LandymanStefan wrote:

But then why would they put a hatch in a discovery 2 and not the defender?

The hatch is called a ‘marine port’ or ‘marine hatch’ it’s a 200mm version which is the inside diameter of the hole. I got this on off eBay for £16 inc post. If you pay a bit more you can get a black one. You can buy them from marine shops but when I was looking, by the time you added the post they were more expensive. I hope this helps.

LandymanStefan wrote:

But then why would they put a hatch in a discovery 2 and not the defender?

...

blackwolf wrote:

Supacat wrote:

A useful mod, sort of thing JLR should have been doing from the get go ~ although why the whole floor panel shouldn't have been able to be removed is beyond me?

I suppose in the strange world of modern Landrovers, when decisions are made purely on financial grounds rather than on the basis of good engineering, reliability, and maintainability, the numbers for a design change either to put an access panel or make the floor removable just don't stack up.

In the factory, the tank and plumbing is fitted to the chassis before the body, so no access issues. Once the vehicle is out of warranty, the customer is paying (up to £120 per hour) for the tank to be dropped or the body to be removed to access the tank. So the only cost to LR is the cost of warranty repairs which involve tank access, which I imagine are few and far between. I can't imagine that anyone has actually decided not to buy a Defender because of the poor access to the tank, so it has cost nothing in sales.

In the "good old days" the design team would have done it on the basis that it was "the right thing to do", whcih of course it is, but those days sadly are long gone.

I have to say that this is without doubt the neatest and most professional-looking access-hole modification I have yet seen, and a link to the marine fitting would be appreciated.

(I suspect also that I have over analysed this somewhat, I can only attribute this behaviour to the onset of cabin fever as a result of prolonged solitary confinement).