AndrewS wrote:

Chicken Drumstick wrote:

Doubtful. Live axles offer more stability and a traditional 90 is much smaller. Open diffs may restrict you. But latter models have TCS too. Plus it’s super easy to fit some ATB’s and very easy to gain a little extra travel.

I’ve certainly driven 90’s in places and see others conquer terrain I wouldn’t dream of taking a new Defender.

Im not going down the live axle Vs route. I know how good the air suspension is combined with electrics. Look at my galleries in this forum and the D3/4 sister site. I have run the old Defender alongside a D3/4 loads of times and 90% of the time the Air with Electrics wins. Yes I know a 90 is awesome in certain conditions but then a 130 is also awesome in certain conditions. Each car has its own pro's and con's. Back in the day I had access to the Boughrood 4x4 site in mid Wales. I would run training/fun events. I designed the courses and could build in obstacles to test the vehicle limits, the D3/4 were the hardest to stop 'making progress' in fact it got quite scary where they would go especially in the hands of a novice. Please note this was all for standard vehicles. Also note I am not slating the old Defender I'm just pointing out that Air and Electrics have a proven record.

Point in case there was a punch here in the trees where we had to drive into a deep hole get the punch stamp and then reverse out. For safety the vehicles were attached to a winch cable. The standard Defender had to be winched out the Disco drove out on its own.

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Having said that later on that day the Defender easily climbed a steep very muddy hill and the Disco failed and we had to winch it up. The Disco tyres weren't as aggressive and its a heavier vehicle. Again every vehicle has its Pro's and Con's

Keeping all 4 wheels spinning is traction, the standard traction aids in the new Defender are very good, as they have been since the D3 introduction. Although constantly using the brakes does massively increase wear and will result in the system deactivating in some conditions. The rear locker is essential for heavy or prolonged off road use where wheels are being lifted. But there is no front locker option on the new Defender, not sure there is even an after market one, if there is it is fairly new, but then wouldn't be integrated with the Terrain Response, so quite a heavy compromise.

Td5/Puma have TCS, it isn't as good and needs more wheel speed to work, the resolution isn't as good as on the other models, although the Puma seems superior to the the Td5.

But that's the crux really. Have no locking diff and disable the the TCS on the new Defender and it would be completely rubbish off road. It 100% relies on the traction aids to get anywhere.

A standard traditional Defender does almost as good without any traction aids at all and would go most places a newer one would, a Puma I really can't see it being stopped anywhere that a new one wouldn't, only maybe rock crawling if the new one had the rear diff, as no wheel spin needed at all.

But this is only because Land Rover where f'ing lazy with the old model, hell they where still using pre World War II Rover P4 diffs in 2016!! And they never offered locking diffs from the factory at all.

But seeing as there are no laws or gunmen preventing you fitting limited slip or locking diffs to a Defender, you can easily level the playing ground in this regard. It isn't even that expensive in the grand scheme of things.

This leaves you with vehicle size/weight, which the old one wins hands down. It is much more nimble and will be way less prone to body damage than the new one off road.

Taking a new Defender in places like this would likely result in tears. I wouldn't even take my p38 to places like this and that is smaller than the new 110.



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The last major attribute is keeping the wheels on the ground. The Independent suspension does an admirable job for a production vehicle. But it is still hugely limited and there is no real way to modify it. You'd need longer A arms for more travel, but that would make the vehicle wider (F150 Raptor/Bronco Raptor for instance). Or you need to move the suspension in board, but the engine and things are in the way. Pure off road independent suspensions have excessively long A arms, but would be no good as a road car.



You can lift a new Defender, but only by fooling the computer really, you aren't increasing the travel, just using up your existing suspension droop. This gives more clearance, which the 110 definitely needs (90 less so), but at the cost of suspension flex and ride. It does allow you to maybe squeeze slightly bigger tyres on too.

Lifting the new Defender just makes it stiffer and you loose the down travel.

See here the suspension impacting rocks...


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And despite the awesome TCS, you can see it really struggles here, it bobs up and down on the suspension and in the end needs some assistance, because it is dangling wheels in the air.

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Keep watching there is a traditional Defender following it, which has no issues at all.

And try watching from here if you want to see more limitations of the suspension, it really makes a meal of getting over the rocks, you can see it just doesn't want to climb them and keep wanting to lift the front wheel off the ground.

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I'm not taking anything away from the new Defender --- it is good, very good.

But there is a real world physical limitation to its suspension due to it being independent. Like the photos I posted earlier, there looks to be lots of travel when on the static ramps. But in practice it lifted wheels everywhere off road. Also driving it back to back with my p38 (which didn't lift a wheel), it was less comfortable on that terrain, because each time you lift a wheel, it comes crashing back down again.

The compromise is of course on the road it handles more like a car (estate car) and should ride better. And on rough terrain it should as a rule ride better, such as on gravel tracks, washboard road etc. (Although the new Ford Ranger Raptor shows you don't need full independent suspension to achieve this, as they ride awesome on such terrain too and use a live rear axle).


BUT... on the flip side....



Getting more flex out of a traditional Defender is easy, very very easy. It is also easy to go pretty extreme. The new Defender will never ever be able to compete. And regardless of traction aids, less wheels on the ground means less stable and less traction overall if both vehicles have the ability to spin all 4 wheels.

There is no way the new Defender could keep its wheels on the ground like this...



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So when you start to push the limits off road, live axles are still superior for technical off road terrain, which is why competition rock crawlers and rock bouncers are 99.9% all live axle machines.

It's not an opinion, it is a fact.