Hi guys well I had a real performance with my Defender last Friday when going away with the caravan for a long weekend, after about 20 miles I lost all fluid in the clutch master cylinder, my thoughts at the time was the concentric had failed which turned out to be the correct assumption, at stripdown at the garage this was only too evident, sadly the failure had contaminated the clutch plate with hydraulic oil so it was scrap even though its condition was good.

Since partly recovering from the looming potential financial cost for repairs when ready it had crossed my mind why could not have Land Rover have stuck with the external slave cylinder on the Puma which would have been a fraction of the cost to replace and I could have done it on the drive with a bit of help and a few swear words.

The vehicle has only covered 34k miles since new but has made me wonder if its possible to convert the current set up to the original design of the external slave?

Is this possible? I doubt it but has anybody else considered ever looking at this or done it??

Regards

Ole Dave

Most modern cars have gone to concentric ones these days. They give a lighter pedal effort and more control in theory, but they also mean cutting down on the number of parts at manufacture. There are also less potential points of failure, ie. no pivots to wear and throw the clutch out of adjustment or forks to break.

If converting to an external one is possible (which i doubt), then the question would be is it worth it? Assuming the one that failed is the original one, then it's lasted 10 years, there's no reason to suspect the new one wont last 10 years too.

On the whole they are reliable units,
I've only replaced a couple due to seizing up and failing, and they had done considerable mileage.
They should easily live as long as the clutch plate.

I wouldn't worry about it failing again, yours was just unlucky. 80" 80" 86" 88" 90"

All down to production cost, the fewer parts are used, the cheaper the cost as a rule.

It would not be sensible to re-engineer the Ford gearbox to use an external cylinder since a ridiculous amount of engineering would be involved. Also, consider the number of TDi Defenders which have a clutch failure where the arm pivot fails - they are if anything less reliable than the TDCi set-up.

ian series 1 wrote:

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They should easily live as long as the clutch plate.
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ian series 1 wrote:

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I wouldn't worry about it failing again, yours was just unlucky.
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Hi Guys and lovely to hear from you all again, take no notice of my rambling guys about conversion to external slave as in reality I know to convert the system would be possibly more unreliable than concentric, no doubt expensive to achieve and not worth the effort, I am just miffed at the timing of the failure as we were on the maiden trip out with our newer caravan looking forward to a few vodka's in the evening and a slap up breakfast each morning which would have been a treat from toast, and then seeing up the garage the very poor workmanship by a previous garage or other individuals at stripdown.

After spending some time up the garage as I worked there before retirement and looking at the progress it was evident that the previous owners had not taken as much care of my baby as I would or have used a cowboy garage, they must have had vehicle fitters working on it with qualifications in rounding up cattle, the tunnel plastic was just ripped off and the rubber surround around the gear stick area just torn off and not repaired or replaced or refixed, when the brake drum was removed the shoes became detached as they had been retained with copper wire and some old rusty washers, all the poor mechanical work seen just annoyed the hell out of me which has added to my miffed state and convinced me some vehicle fitters should not be trusted to work on kiddies pedal cars.

Regards

Ole Dave

blackwolf wrote:

ian series 1 wrote:

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They should easily live as long as the clutch plate.
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Sadly that's not saying much on the Puma!
.

Hi zsd-puma, well your correct in many ways about people and cutting costs, I worked in a good garage right from the day it opened and stayed there for many years and saw it flourish, I took retirement eventually as my knees packed up and my shoulder joints refused to lift heavy gearboxes and large 4x4 wheels any longer, so I know what your saying and have seen many many times people wanting to cut corners even though advised against it.

My motto was "do it right, do it once" a big problem lies in second hand car dealerships or companies similar to the one who I bought my Defender from as they do not want to spend money, the garage I used to work for used to carry out work for one dealership as they did not have the equipment or knowledge, I got into many an argument with the spive dealers over their refusal to see sense, they often wanted the minimum done before it went on to the customer. On many occasions I had heated exchanges with them over wanting to change pads in the cars going out to customers using grooved and worn out rusty discs, it made no sense and would only see the vehicle returned and the customer miffed off, but the dealership never learnt their lesson and continued to demand the absolute minimum, I have a feeling this might be the case with my Defender, they did have their own fitters and workshop and I did have a bun fight with them before taking delivery due to damaged seats and broken door cards, eventually after a protracted argument I won the day and they replaced them, but it was a tussle to get them to change them, so maybe they changed the clutch and not the concentric before I had it but I cannot be 100%, if I could I would name and shame them as it was a well known UK wide company.

Regards

Ole Dave

Hi Guys well eventually had my lovely girl back and the outcome was the failed concentric had contaminated the clutch fricton plate with hydraulic fluid, I am now smarting from the cost of the repairs which would make even a NASA accountant blush.

In addition, during the stripdown the main gear shift lever was also found to be cracked at the nylon swivel point, not wishing to leave this I instructed the garage in my ignorance to get a new one from the LR dealership! another financial fright followed when the price of £190 was advised plus a delivery timescale of around a week, being totally unacceptable as I need the old girl back I made the decision to put the old stick back on a short term basis.

After some digging around at home I discovered that the nylon swivel failure is a common fault on the Puma box which has turned my thoughts to not replacing it with a similar stick from LR but to look at another option, after much investigation I found the slickshift option.

I do see some on the forum some have gone that route but there is little feedback on the mod, has anybody gone this route or another, if so what was their thoughts on the mod? would be very intererested to hear before I make the move and purchase something to replace the original design LR stick.

Regards

Ole Dave

I think the ball wearing and splitting is probably down to lack of grease mainly, but i've been looking at the slick shift and it would be nice to get rid of some of that slop in the gear change.

Hi zsd-puma thank you for your reply, re: the nylon swivel point, it does appear to be a design fault in the design for the puma gear change, I would urge all if they get a sloppy gear stick the first thing to look at is the nylon swivel and its plastic cage which means removing the 4 screws and lifting out the stick, mine when I looked at it had split right down one side although it had plenty of grease, in addition to the nylon splitting it had also suffered quite some unusual wear pattern.

Regards

Ole Dave

the gearstick isn't even tight on the shaft.

It's like the pre puma Defenders that used the early Range Rover classic gearknob, which had a rubber bit that screws onto the stick, make them as sloppy as hell as the knob flexes about on the end of the stick