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Second IW products - bought a trailer last year, lovely bit of engineering and practically depreciation proof.
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>>Second IW products - bought a trailer last year
Keep it well locked up and out of sight - they walk as I'm sure you know!
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In a lock garage ! Keeps it dry as well.
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My mothers side of the family hail from co Clare, almost exclusively the 4x4's seen are Toyota's, with good reason.
You won't go far wrong with a single cab Hilux, and you will be able to buy a substantial possibly raised hardtop for it quite cheaply, might find a ex plant hire motor already fitted out.
Landrovers may be excellent off roaders, but you'll need a good mechanic close by for regular fiddling to keep the thing running, the only good thing being plenty of cheap spares back up online.
On the subject of spares online, several good suppliers for the Japanese 4x4 and pick up market in England, what the situation is over the way i do not know.
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So that's it then NowWheels. Your love affair with Jimny was brief. I'll finish me Beer and nip out and tell 'im.
MD
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i suggest getting a landrover 110 (or the bigger 130) Tdi single cab pickup. you can get a frame and canvas cover for the back to keep things dry. it'll have 3 seats so you can take a couple of people with you and it will pull nearly anything anywhere.
have the quad and trailer for your really dirty muddy farm work so the landy shouldn't get too beaten about.
if you want to go somewhere nice with more than a couple of friends why not use a taxi. this comes with the benefit of you being able to have a drink without the fear of being over the limit. the taxi should be tidy and clean (2 jobs you won't have to do!).
good luck with the purchase.
alf
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NW,
Hope you keep in touch with us !
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Go for a Land Rover Defender - making sure, of course, that it's a version classified as a commercial in Ireland! The 110 obviously has al lot more carryng space than the 90 and that's what I'd go for (in fact I'm on the look out for one at the monent).
Land Rovers go on and on but they end up a bit like the everlasting hammer thats had 2 new heads and 3 new handles! The chassis can rust badly at the back and the front bulkhead panel rusts too. The rest of the bodywork is aluminium alloy, which also corrodes, but much more slowly.
When I had my Last land Rover I got to know its anatomy better than that of any other vehicle I've owned. But that's part and parcel of Land Rovering!!!!
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LRing is different experience - you either love them or hate them.
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LR. Love them. Too close to the wheel (Steering). Window winders sooo smoooth. Ventilation perfection! Comfortable my pink fluffy dice. Haven't a clue what the Army moans about!!
A bigger piece of well marketed carp it must be harder to imagine. Toyota or some mitsi anytime, but for my cheap go anywhere runabout, a Jimny.
Regards, yours tetchy, tired and belligerent....................M.
Edited by Dynamic Dave on 17/09/2009 at 02:04
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i've changed my mind.
keep the quad and the taxi BUT go for a hilux or a vw taro (the same just a different badge)
you'll only have 2 seats (a problem?) but it will be a better drive than the landy.
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Run away from a Land Rover. They need constant fettling and although the bits are cheap, labour to put them on won't be if you're not DIY. Hard work to drive too unless you have decent biceps. And you'll get wet inside! It's rare round here (rural Lincs) to see L-Rs in agricultural use (except a few ancient ones), unless it's a nice Defender used as a runaround by the local shoot. Most farmers use a Hilux single cab pickup or similar with an Ifor Williams cover. Tough as old boots and reliable as well. Lincs farmers are as tight with money as the proverbial duck's rear end so they must know something about what to drive!
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....Run away from a Land Rover...
I've used a series one or two Land Rover on a farm and another as a breakdown tender at a garage.
Both were admirable vehicles. The farm one did all we asked of it, including acting as a substitute tractor to turn some hay.
Likewise the garage one did sterling service, including towing a full size Lambourn horsebox off the motorway, although I don't think we'd have made it up any steep hills.
They were both petrol and that was the only downside, they slurped a lot of juice.
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I'm surprised no-one has suggested the Daihatsu Four-Trak.
It's a Japanese Landrover - but being Japanese it tends not to go wrong.
An awful lot of farmers drive these, so they seem to be pretty robust, and not too big.
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I'm surprised no-one has suggested the Daihatsu Four-Trak.
I had spotted them on HJ's CBC (at www.honestjohn.co.uk/carbycar/index.htm?md=86 ), and they sound really good on paper, apart from being old (last made in 2000). That wouldn't both me in most ways, but as HJ points out most of them will have been heavily used by farmers and taken a bit of a pounding.
So I thought that it might be a good idea to import one from Japan (where they call them the "Rugger"), but my broker says that they seem to be be very rare in Japan. :(
So the best bet will probably be a Hilux or L200 pickup, if I can find an oldish one that hasn't been trashed (might not be easy -- until recently, people in the UK didn't buy a pickup as a toy). The L200s seem to be cheaper, but I do like Toyotas, and the imp in me fancies the idea of driving a Toyota Taliban. It'll go nicely with my burqa ;)
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It'll go nicely with my burqa ;)
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Cheese Burqa?
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My cousin farms with similar vehicle needs to your smallholding idea. She has an unjustified hatred of all things Land Rover so they would never be seen on the place.
As well as tractors she has a chunky quad thing with a roomy trailer plus a Nissan twin cab pickup. She went to the twin cab a few years back after getting fed up with having so little room in the back of a standard cab for carrying "things".
She does have one problem with modern 4x4 pickups in that the load height is so far off the ground it makes lifting things up into them difficult.
I've run several 4x4s in the past when we had land and looked after loads more for other folks... would go straight for a late 1990s Discovery commercial for your needs. Large loadspace with low floor, still quite practical to keep clean and compared to bloated Japanese 4x4s quite "minimal" in terms of image. LR reliability and maintenance not a negative issue for me.
If you get a Hilux don't get a Surf import.... better to get a UK vehicle with a big top.
David
Edited by M.M on 18/09/2009 at 10:04
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How about an Isuzu Trooper, or Vauxhall Monterey (one in the same i believe)?
A friend of mines father owns a large farm near Attleborough and he has a fleet of ageing 4x4's including 2x Jeep Wranglers, a 90's vintage Landcruiser, and a couple of Troopers and he swears by the Troopers (unless he is out shooting then the Wrangler soft back wins the day :-))
Failing that, maybe one of Ssangyong's Mercedes powered offerings, maybe the Musso or Korando (later with a Daewoo badge?)................ you could probably pick up a newer version of one of these for not a lot of money.
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NW,
When you nip into town or go visiting in urban areas are you not worried some will think you're one of these horrible 4x4 owning beasts?
Just wondering.
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When you nip into town or go visiting in urban areas are you not worried some will think you're one of these horrible 4x4 owning beasts?
I'm not so much concerned about what other people think as for my own concern about the wastefulness of it, as well as the dangers to other road users of using an agricultural vehicle as car.
That's partly why I plan to have two vehicles -- a car to use as a car, and a 4X4 to use for the purposes for which it was designed. The other reason for separating the two is cost: it'll be a lot cheaper to have a crude old 4WD vehicle to do the heavy jobs which actually need that sort of vehicle than to try to run an all-purpose machine.
The Irish tax system is quite sensibly structured in this way, and heavily penalises the use of big 4X4s for passenger purposes. For example, a new 5-door Landcruiser LWB has a list price of ?72270, whereas the lower Vehicle Registration tax on the commercial version means that it lists at ?41125. The annual road tax on the commercial is ?288, but on the passenger version it's over ?1,300 -- and anyone using a commercially-taxed one for leisure purposes risks heavy penalties.
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I'm not so much concerned about what other people think as for my own concern about the wastefulness of it as well as the dangers to other road users of using an agricultural vehicle as car. That's partly why I plan to have two vehicles -- a car to use as a car and a 4X4 to use for the purposes for which it was designed.
does that not bring up the problem of build costs of two versus one?...by costs I mean costs to the environment
is it more environmentally sound to have one vehicle that does both jobs or two for each separate job
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I mean costs to the environment
more environmentally sound to have one vehicle that does both jobs or two for each separate job
Don't tease her now Wp. Keep your powder dry at this stage and tease her later when she's a Multiple Private Vehicle Owner 'not unlike Jeremy Clarkson actually,' you'll be able to say.
Tsk, honestly... no wonder they call you Wiggum...
:o}
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Tsk honestly... no wonder they call you Wiggum...
I was rather hoping that moniker would have slipped into obscurity. As for the rest of it, 'Guilty as charged'.
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Don't tease her now Wp. Keep your powder dry at this stage and tease her later when she's a Multiple Private Vehicle Owner
Tsk tsk. Do keep up at the back, Lud.
I'm already a Multiple Private Vehicle Owner -- have car and campervan.
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Are there any concessions in Ireland, as in UK, for historic or agricultural vehicles?
Here, a restored older Land-Rover or Unimog makes sense - no road tax, cheap insurance, no MOT even, if it's agricultural.
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Are there any concessions in Ireland as in UK for historic or agricultural vehicles? Here a restored older Land-Rover or Unimog makes sense - no road tax cheap insurance no MOT even if it's agricultural.
There do appear to be some exemptions for vintage machines, though I'm not sure what the thresholds are.
However, I'm not sure that there's enough of a saving in taxes to justify of the hassles of running a vintage machine. I'm not a mechanic, and I think a vintage LandRover would need a full-time mechanic!
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... I think a vintage LandRover would need a full-time mechanic!...
Where does this assumption come from?
Please, someone, give me that long list of faults, dogdy design features, and shoddy assembly work that made every Land Rover incapable of crossing the road, let alone a field.
Older Land Rovers -series l, ll, lll, 88s and 110s - were simple, robust vehicles that had a reputation for being able to go anywhere and keep going.
No doubt some early Freelanders and Discoverys were a bit ropey.
But neither of the two 'proper' Land Rovers I have personal experience of needed a full-time mechanic or anything approaching one.
I reckon a lot of people on here are knocking Land Rovers just because everyone else does.
Let's have some proper, genuine, stories about how rubbish they are - if there are any.
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NowWheels,
Before you buy, check the Irish Revenue rules on VRT carefully. Passenger vehicles and "car or Jeep derived vehicles" have differnet rules applied to them. Also, for insurance, Agricultural use attracts different premiums than either social and domestic or commercial use.
Farmers may be exempt from the rules on driving 'commercial' vehicles as family cars too. Again, check with the Revenue Comissioners.
Start with these sites:
www.revenue.ie/en/tax/vrt/purchasing-a-used-car-ab...l
www.ros.ie/VRTEnquiryServlet/showVRT
Motor tax rates: www.environ.ie/en/
Japanese full-size jeeps (especially Landcruisers) and pickups such as the Hilux and Mazda B2000 seem especially popular on Irish farms. There are umpteen after-market load covers available for all the popular 4x4s - no two jeeps seem to have the same one fitted!
I'd reckon Foresters, Vitaras or XC70s would be a bit light for the sort of muddy terrain and heavy towing you're thinking of.
Good luck with the smallholding!
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Thanks for all those suggestions, Grommit, and for the links.
I have been doing a lot of reading on all the tax rules relating to these things, and the most important thing I have found is that a single-cab pickup only attracts a VRT rate of only ?50.
That means that if I want to get one from outside of Ireland, there's no need to import it under the transfer of residence rules. So if I can buy one at any time, I don't need to sort out all the details at this stage, and can investigate the finer points with my at a leter date.
But this thread has been really useful in helping me make sense of the options.
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>>... I think a vintage LandRover would need a full-time mechanic!...
>Where does this assumption come from?
>Let's have some proper, genuine, stories about how rubbish they are - if there are any.
I'm a LR fan. No horror story but old ones do need keeping up with. Unless it's had a new chassis, it'll probably need welding every year. My Series 3 88" (1980) is generally quite good, and has a clean recent MoT, but I know where it needs some more welding ere long.
There are also lots of places to put EP90, and most of them leak. My big leak at the moment is the rear diff/propshaft oil seal, and there is a good spraying of gear oil all over the underside of the tub, ironically aluminium so doesn't need the extra rustproofing. This isn't disastrous but it does need attention (and refilling).
Although the electrics are basic, they do seem to work erratically. I currently have a short somewhere when I try to use the screen washer, which will need sorting before the next MoT.
Even though it has a roof, you still get wet when it rains. It seems you can't entirely keep the oil in, and the water out of, a Series Land Rover.
Everything else works - 4WD, low range - which is not always the case when you check out these oldies.
I have it insured for 2,000 miles a year - it does tip trips and general carting near home. Frankly I wouldn't want to drive it much more than 20 miles at a time - fine for local use, or carting stuff round fields but not good for regular road journeys unless short. Top speed is probably 60 ish but I give in to the noise at about 50. Its pretty scary at higher speeds anyway - there's no play in the steering but it does wander and the brakes need to be used with care (and planning!). It is very noisy, bumpy and agricultural on its cart springs, although they have been changed for parabolics which give a better ride. A coil sprung 90/110 or Defender will be (a lot) better in this respect.
Its a 2 1/4 petrol, and the original carbs can be troublesome when old and worn. It had a Weber conversion for that reason, and I have no idea what the fuel consumption is but 15mpg wouldn't surprise me.
Strangely enough its fun if you're not in a hurry - probably because it needs concentration to drive on the road (even though all the synchro works and it stays in gear). The steering isn't that heavy now it has more original wheels than when I got it - the wider track of the aftermarket wheels made it very heavy.
It costs £190 a year to tax even though it's 29 years old - the qualifying year for free VED was frozen at 1973.
To be honest it's an indulgence - if I needed turnkey reliability with just an annual service, and especially if I was going to do longer road journeys I'd look for a Hilux.
Is that fair?
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Good post Manatee. Good attitude to cars there.
Actually NW, although I said old Land Rovers were brutish to drive, and they are, a well-sorted, not too rusty old one would be all right for those sort of purposes and they aren't unreliable if you don't bash them about. But you will need a trusty garage man to do things when it needs them.
The essential thing is to get a well-sorted one. There are some of those, and there are lots of pretty horrible ones. As Manatee says, coil-sprung recent ones are much more comfortable and I think most if not all of them have power steering. If you can afford a decent one of those - well sorted! - you'll be laughing.
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Agreed, a very fair appraisal from MT.
I know some people who run LR's, previously Disco's 1 and 2 and lately RR's.
Might have saved them a fortune if the gearboxes had been fitted with wing nuts, much quicker..;)
Seriously though their cars have needed gearbox repairs/replacements, steering boxes, rads, injection pumps, drive couplings, engine repairs etc etc, you name it, it packed up, why they still buy and run the things i can't fathom but they love 'em.
The series LR's were very simple beasts, i had great fun in my S2 ex WD full canvas 109 tropic spec no heater...brrr...
Even these were by no means trouble free, mine would regularly snap rear half shafts and bleeding the brakes had me removing the drums and clamping all slave cylinders shut by G clamps, i'd still be bleeding it now some 25 years later if i hadn't.
It would do 75 by the way, steering it was err interesting at that speed.
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If anything, too fair IMO.
I would rather have a Land Rover than a Renault.
>>clamping all slave cylinders shut by G clamps
Now there's an old trick! I'm glad there's no need to do that with modern cars.
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strangely the last land rover i drove was a series 2 about 30 years ago
i had had my dinner unfortunately and went for a drive on a friends field
ive never been in one since and never intend to
but a good tool if you like welding and oil leaks and poor mpg and water leaks and no comfort and poor visibility in the rain and......................
im out.........
i quite like little rhinos
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Right, now that I've picked myself up off the floor after reading your thread title I hope to offer a slightly off the wall suggestion!
As you're aware, running two vehicles will, without a doubt attach extra hidden costs, when I had an MG and the Mondeo it cost me a fortune even when I left one off the road, when they were on simultaneously the insurance and tax bills are a killer.
So, with that in mind, how about one of the AWD vehicles such as the Volvo Cross Country? It is basically an S60 estate with elevated ground clearance, a D5 engine (which is certainly quite efficient in the S60, possibly a bit less so on the AWD model) and of course it's a 4X4 so if fitted with decent tyres (you do not want ordinary road tyres for obvious reasons!) it should be quite a competent car both on the road and off.
This would allow you to drive around in a spacious comfortable car with oodles of towing and load lugging capacity but without the big tax and insurance problems. The only drawback is that there are only 10 for sale in the UK and I only found one diesel, but it looks smart and a decent set of rubber mats in the front and a load liner would sort out the mud problem.
If the Volvo idea doesn't float your boat, why not an Audi Quattro, perhaps an A4 Avant, or even a Skoda Octavia AWD? All nice normal cars with normal running costs which could also be quite practical if fitted with off road tyres.
Actually on second thoughts, get an X5, then I'd really know that it's safe for me to descend to hell as it'd be all frozen over lol.
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Oh and also, I may have missed this, but, what would be wrong with a Qashqai 4X4 diesel as a good all rounder? Surely that would tick every box as the emissions can't be that high on them due to their relatively small size?
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Oh and also I may have missed this but what would be wrong with a Qashqai 4X4 diesel as a good all rounder? Surely that would tick every box as the emissions can't be that high on them due to their relatively small size?
Low ratio gearbox? Sump guard? High enough ground clearance for regular use on a farm? Interior designed for carrying agricultural clobber? I doubt it ticks those boxes.
And the cheapest 4X4 Qashqai I see on Autotrader is listed at £13,500. That's way more money than I'd want to put into a vehicle going to get that sort of use.
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Blue, I'm afraid that those ideas don't really work.
The AWD versions of the Octavia and Audi are as you say, normal cars, which makes them rather ill-suited to regular use on farmland. The Volvo may be a bit better offroad, but it's not designed for agricultural use -- no low-ratio box etc, and a luxury interior rather than something designed for rough use. They may "look smart" as you say (if you like that sort of thing, which I don't), but wouldn't continue to look very smart after they'd been bashed about on the farm. And have you seen the write-up on the Volvo XC70 in HJ's car-by-car breakdown?
The tax situation for one of those vehicles isn't particularly good (see www.irishlinks.co.uk/car-tax-ireland.htm ). The Almera costs ?582 to tax and a commercial vehicle ?288, but the Volvo D5's 2.4litre engine is taxed at ?935.
I haven't yet got a handle on insurance costs for a farmer's pickup -- it looks manageable, but I'm not sure -- and that may in the end point me away from running two vehicles. But if so, the single-vehicle solution would probably be a Suzuki Jimny rather than a suburban businessman's gadget-filled fashion accessory.
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...It would do 75 by the way, steering it was err interesting at that speed....
I think our farm Land Rover would do about the same, although it was more comfortable at about 40/50mph.
It was rarely on the road, though, more usually chugging across a field or two for one reason or another.
Occasional trip to the local hunt kennels to dispose of a dead sheep - I imagine you'd get arrested for doing that these days.
Don't think I ever used four wheel drive, if it was that muddy, I'd use a tractor.
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Back to my Jimny then NW! All joking aside I love 'Bumble' We are all surprised at 'it's' abilities.
Martin D.
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Back to my Jimny then NW! All joking aside I love 'Bumble' We are all surprised at 'it's' abilities.
Yes, it's back on the list. It's obviously a use-with-care vehicle, but OTOH there's nothing else of a similar size which has genuine off-road abilities, with a low-ratio gearbox and decent ground clearance.
One of the clinchers in all this is going to be insurance costs, which will take a lot more research. If running two vehicles is going to be cripplingly expensive, then there might be something to be said for having a small-engined Jimny as the only vehicle rather than a big pickup. Or maybe I'll just use a quad bike on the land, and stick with the Almera for towing lighter trailers than I could haul with a 4X4. But this thread has helped me get a much better idea of all the options when I sit down and talk to insurers. Many thanks to everyone for heir suggestions, even those which I thought were a bit wide of the mark. It's all helped :)
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Good Morning NW,
I took the dogs out yesterday morning to 'Dog' some Pheasants back to their pen and had to cover a lot of ground a bit sharpish so I decided to stick my neck out and really put the Jimny through it's paces. I tend to just 'do it' and suffer the consequences later and an attack at a 30 degree hill proved a doddle and crossing damp grass banks at a slightly lesser angle 'Bumble' just kept a straight line and didn't falter. I was amazed. All this on Bridgestone road tyres as well. Given a set of proper off road tyres I think it would give any 4x4 a serious problem. Being automatic is a huge advantage as far as I am concerned, except on a serious descent where engine braking could be better. 2 wheel drive and 4x4 high and low range too. A lot of wheels for a grand!
Cheers for now........Martin.
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