Hi Glen. I doubt I could cope with being stuck in a defender cab for that sort of mileage and as you say the driver's door would need to be removed as i don't want a broken arm by the time we had got halfway round each time!! Sadly been at the wrong end of 130's with chassis problems ( i'm technical engineer having spent most my career working for or on land rovers!)... we currently run 2 door range rovers kept as basic as possible mechanically (3.5ltr twin su's on lt95 box) but in the past have run/built everything from 3.9/4.6 auto 90's to twin supercharged 6ltr armored rangies for the MOD.
another big bug bare with a 130 is the vehicles own weight as these are plated at 3.5 ton the max payload is just 400kg more than syncro... add in the extra expense of the higher running costs (we would have to use the same running gear as the range rovers to save on extra spares) of the V8's any advantage is minimal.... our last test vehicle returned just 8mpg on average!!
Peasant.. thanks for the link to Bremach, looks very much like a iveco based attempt to build a mog!..
Think what I will have to go through and cost up say 5 or 6 vehicle builds like below and think about both short and long term viability... eg the tatra does 3mpg but then its got a 100ton gross train weight so the quantity of equipment/spares is not an issue as opposed to fuel. The syncro being the exact opposite is good on fuel and comfy but has a minimal payload so we would need several vehicles to do the same job.
VW syncro doka (probably with a ej22 or svx subaru engine)....
Vw LT45 doka....
Land rover v8 130...
Man 8.135-8.190....
mercedes 2729 6x6...
tatra 813....
cost wise the MAN is by far the dearest (£9k), then the merc(£8.5k), land rover(£4.5k), lt45(£4k), tatra(£3.8k), syncro(£3K)..all based on average s/h prices of vehicles needing both modification and rebuild to some extent.
As most have said the extra cost of sourcing a syncro 16 over a 14 is not required, any strengthening we could do ourselves. were not that keen to go diesel at the minute as this would be the only diesel vehicle in fleet so chances are any build would have to be petrol to save space and bulk carry a single fuel type... the 2x2 buggies run the subaru ej engines (wrx turbo) so this would be the most likely option again to spares comparity although we are looking at using a 3.3ltr normally aspirated svx subaru engine also.... another plus I se with the syncro doka is the layout we could easily place twin fuel tanks in the area under the load bed and then a big water tank under the rear seats (the stock seats would all be replaced with rally bucket seats).. this gets everything all low down and helps with handling and off road traction no end.
