Had some fun this weekend with the FL2 until I got a little overconfident with the car's capabilities.....

The freebie handled deeply rutted gravel tracks like a breeze, I was very impressed with the 245/70R17 Cooper S/T tires they simply eat the gravel and don't spin at all on steep inclines.

Then I reached a section with severely eroded muddy tracks filled with water and thought I might give the hardest looking one a go... My friend in a Holden Jackaroo didn't have the guts to try so I went for it.

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

Heh, I think I am happy just imagining what fun I might have going off road. Too many stories on here make me wince in pain

Thanks for sharing your pictures  1st time FL2 owner. 2007 SE i6 in Tambora Flame.

Good pics but 7 hours? Should have been 20 minutes Did you have the Jackeroo as close to your car as possible and the strap bundled loose in the middle? Then Jackeroo takes off and causes the strap to really stretch and catapult you out. Don't use the towball on the Jackeroo or it can break off and fly through your window. Quite a few people have been killed by doing that. I snatched a Defender out of a bog like that not long back. I was doing about 15kph by the time the strap got tight, then it stretched to nearly twice its length and recoiled and the defender shot out of the bog. You have to have good anchor points on both cars as there is a lot of kinetic energy in the strap. Also it has to be a snatch strap, not a tow rope or winch strap as neither of them stretch.

Like I said it was the first time we did a recovery so we took it easy and tried not to take any chances

The car was sitting on its belly and none of the wheels had any traction whatsoever, probably because the last vehicles that went through had much larger ground clearance. To top it all off the Jackaroo couldn't gain much traction on the slippery gravel and had no room for a decent tug because the snatch strap wasn't very long.

In the end we had to channel the water out of the pit so I could get some rocks underneath the wheels to get traction and also dig out as much mud as possible from underneath the front of the car and the fuel tank

a word of warning if water gets into the footwells it ruins the sat nav dvd under the seat,, £2800 to repair, yes £2800, my employee is just in the middle of getting his replaced after the car drown in a flood. for once he was driving his own vehicle instead of one of mine when disaster occured At work
At home

"I can't always believe facts I read on the web" - Charles Dickens

winner by default of the tractor vs caravan race

After refueling the car today it no longer wants to turn on??

I might have messed something up in the mud or high pressure washing the engine bay

You washed the engine bay with high pressure? I thought this was a definite NO-NO for gasoline engines....

Got some news on my car from the mechanic, looks like the starter motor was filled with mud....

He said it was a common problem, especially with Toyota Landcruisers

They tried cleaning it but it was no good, so gonna have to install a new one. He couldn't source one anywhere in Australia so its going to have to come from the UK and will cost over $1000 fitted

That's a real shame about the starter motor. At $1000 I would have tried to get someone to rewind the motor or something. Wow!
Otherwise, congrats on giving things a go. That's the whole idea, though 7 hours to get it out would have tested your enthusiasm I'm sure. I totally agree, they need a lift kit to raise them just enough to be similar to other off-road 4WD's. I have only been stopped twice in my off-roading with the FL2. Both times I was stuck on the bottom. The first time was in soft sand, despite deflated tyres and as much momentum as I could get at the time. The latest just last week when I tried to get up a rocky track to a lookout behind Rainbow Beach but the ruts from lots of running rainwater and other 4WD's with higher ground clearance meant I bottomed out completely. I couldn't go left or right at all due to trees that were very scarred from other vehicles (most likely descending without hill descent!) I might add. The track was steep enough that I easily moved off backwards but it is a bit disappointing as the FL2 would have handled the rest of the track with ease. I had thought about going up that track for about 5 years.

For hardcore recovery with no winch I ALWAYS use a kinetic rope.. They are designed to stretch like a bungee and give an extra tug without the harsh snapping of a solid snatch line. Easy to use, you basically floor it and use the recovery vehicles weight and momentum to give you the extra force needed to move a bellied car.

They are not expensive, around about 30 quid, and provided you have the space for a pull car, work really, really well.

The one thing I won't do any more when 4wdriving is deliberately drive into a mud puddle. I've been there and done that and you can end up with stinky muddy water all through the carpets. Getting out to help recover is a treat too. There's plenty of fun to be had without that.

I have to agree with mikehzz on that one, think I will stick to the dry stuff from now on

Not worth it considering all the things that can go wrong. Land rover Australia claim they have never sold a starter motor for a freelander 2 and they don't stock them. Apparently they don't even stock them in the UK they have them on back order from Bosch. Luckily we found one from a wrecker yard in the eastern states, it should be arriving tomorrow

The car was written off with 15,000 km's so basically new, but still a hefty 600 bucks for the starter motor