Big Lap Defender Wrap. Check our preview vid. Top touring tow car or city mall crawler?  

Shane, thank you and team for wonderful service in a challenging moment. Steve coming all that way to recover us and a special mention to Ravin. We mentioned it in our original vid, but on a wet, cold and windy long weekend for Ravin to come in to expedite the diagnostics to help turn us around is above and beyond. He made a brief appearance on the vid 🙏👍. I noticed you avoided the camera 😉😂. It’s far too complicated explain in our vids now - it’s past - but there were some matters beyond your control that got in the way of what you were tying to do to help us. No question in our minds that had the recovery and parts turnaround been done with our van first time up, I’m convinced the whole recovery to back on the road fully repaired would have been around 2 weeks. It was still only marginally longer in total time across the two attempts. That’s outstanding. And perhaps even more important, everybody was friendly as well. So Kudos. Wishing you all well. BTW the photo used in the video thumbnail is Cape Leveque. About a week after we left Geraldton and we were still fingers crossed on the Turbo. 23,000km later and not a peep on that front.

Thanks. This weekend!!

Hi Martin. It’s now live. Thanks the kind words. We love sharing, but it’s fair to say I’m a bit out of practice on the editing and I’m not really a fan of the car/ equipment review stuff. It wasn’t the aim of the youtube series, but it’s been of interest and a lot of people asked for it. So happy to try. And hopefully it tops up up some money to charity as well. All the best.

Car vids aren’t our fave, but there is a lot of interest about the Defender.

Thank you. It’s a great drive and great tow car. Has some limitations of course but took us to heaps of great places that the critics said you can’t take a Defender. So with some perspective we can do a pretty honest wrap up.

Now live

Congrats. Paula and I wish you many wonderful adventures and memories. Yes the Defender is very capable and great to drive. We’ve had a couple of issues we’ve shared so it will be good to wrap up and share how it’s gone for us overall.

Done. cheers

The costs will change so best to go to Tuff Any on costs. Warranty rules are clear. It doesn’t affect your general warranty. Clearly if something happens to or caused by the wheels and the changed brake calipers LR might ask the question. But it would have to an issue caused by that (not the mere fact you changed). The brake caliper used is actually a Land Rover part. The installer is qualified and the mod is certified. If it’s very specifically about the wheels or the brake installation warranty is covered by the third party provider. over and above that is consumer law. BUT that doesn’t mean manufacturers, including JLR don’t try it on sometimes.

Hi. Thanks for watching and the lovely comment. I’m a bit tied up for the next week or so but I’m happy to come back with a few comments. Keep it simple, sound is probably more important than the technicalities of the vision, keep in mind who your audience is and of course it is hard to monetise but in our case that was a secondary consideration as every cent goes to charity so we didn’t do some of thinker cross platform stuff and a few other extra bits you need to do to make it work financially if you need the money. I can offer some thoughts on the actual videography / editing when O get back to you. If forget, don’t hesitate to give me a hoy in a couple of weeks. Thanks again and thanks again. Glad it got a bit better as we went of course. cheers Dave

Not long now. Cheers

So many people are so brand tribal so I find these videos a bit difficult. We had some downs but so many ups so this is a chance to do a post lap wrap warts and all. But the car was a key part of a wonderful year so we will keep some perspective and try to keep away from the tribal stuff.

haha yeah totally agree on the tribal statement, it's like when we were kids and your dad had a Ford and it was crap because my dad had a Holden no real reason lol, looking forward to the review as I know it will be frank and honest @@nextleveloz

Hi. Thanks for watching. I don’t have any direct experience with the petrol variants and it appears that those who own them are generally pretty happy. We chose diesel for a few reasons. The engine in the D300 is quite good and has better torque for towing. Diesel tends to be a bit more economical and offers better range. While you can get extended range fuel tanks, depending on what you’re towing you might not have the payload/ weight capacity on the rear axle to take any more wweight in any case. We didn’t. Diesel tends to be more available when traveling remotely including remote stations and roadhouses. ULP is pretty available also but we did come across a few places that didn’t have ULP as readily available especially in the period we were on the Gibb when we got flooded in - while the main roadhouses had ULP generally a few of the remoter communities didn’t get ULP supplied in volume. So we don’t have any particular view on the performance of the petrol v diesel variants but that’s why we preferred diesel. Indeed , early when we weren’t sure about the Defender among the alternatives we had, we preferred the Patrol which pretty much did what we wanted it to do and one of the reservations we had was that it’s petrol. Hope that helps with your thoughts. Maybe join the New Defender Owners in Australia forum on FB and search/ ask dor the experiences of petrol owners who’ve done it are doing a Lap and see if they had any more specific observations based on experience.

@@nextleveloz thank you for your reply

The original battery got replaced under warranty when it went flat on LR overnight during a service/ repair related to the 2 WD issue were had recurring, so they accepted it was a failed battery issue. we haven’t had an issue since. You have to double lock and keep the keys away from the car and ideally only access through the rear door when in camp. But we were doing a lot of Kim’s pretty regularly so the battery was getting a good charge up. Back home it only gets occasional good runs so every now and them I put it on a smart charger. So it’s been fine.

I have another question.. will Landrover be watching ? I'm sure it will be balanced and interesting,

Hi Peter, hope you’re well. Yep. And I hate doing car review/ wrap up stuff. As you know the channel was a much more general share of our Big Lap adventures. But of course others want to know about how the set up went. Many of those who like watching off road car videos are also very brand tribal and have strong views. We had many, many ups but a couple of well shared downs so this one hopes to wrap it up and answer the questions a number of subscribers asked.

@@peterbullen3347 I don’t know. I know a couple of our other vids were watched. It was really important for balance to see how JLR went resolving a couple of matters when we got home so that was part of why we held up this vid so we could share that service response as well. There is no hiding a couple of the problems but we’ve covered that previously and apart from not airbrushing it out, this is about the overall assessment and how we feel about the car and how we set it up as a touring tow car. Others can watch and make up their own minds. The preview gives a good sense though that the car was an important part of a wonderful adventure. So it will be warts and all but it’s not a rant either because we had a great trip.

@@nextleveloz I have a Landrover as you may know, old one bit still so comfy and tows large van, not 3.3 t though. From where I sat for all those weeks, you guys had more ups than downs .