Despite being pleased with the ability of my Frontera I'm often left with one front wheel in the air losing drive, damn IFS! So I thought i'd look at some other trucks with live front axles, suzuki (no power), green oval (natural aversion), nissan patrol, landcruiser (too expensive) so I settled on looking for a cheap jeep.
This came up on ebay as spares or repairs with immobiliser problems. I didn't bother to go and look as i'd set my limit at £300 and if i didn't get it for that it was going to be too much, as luck would have it I got it for £300 and I'd already found out the local scrappers would have given me nearly that for it, so for sure it was worth a punt.
Once on my drive, tried to charge the battery but it was having non of it, so pulled the one of the fronty and it fired right up, seems the main problem was a totally dead battery. There was also another slight problem with the gearbox starter inhibitor, which is supposed to prevent starting when in anything other than neutral or drive, cleaned the contacts on that and now it's a reliable starter. Even better, considering it had been off the road for nearly 2 years, I put it through an MOT 2 days later and it passed with no advisories!
Total total result.
The tyres were good on it but a little small, so I just had my old AT's put on today, I've cleaned and sprayed one wheel just need to do the rest.
I'm still going to keep the fronty and see how the jeep does in comparision off road, wonder which will win?
live front axle VS IFS
4.0 197bhp vs 2.0 113bhp
automatic VS manual
they're quite different, here's some pics taken today, sorry thought to do it just before it got dark.
thought i'd put a picture of my fronty too so it doesn't seem like i've totally gone off the rails
the tyres you see in this pic are now the ones on the jeep, the frontera now has some full on 31 muds
bugger