Well the Freeloader made it from Lincolnshire to South Wales to look at one Mayflower (which was pretty crap) then onto Surrey to look at another much better one which I bought, then I towed it home. Didn’t set the trip meter but it was quite a lot of miles and a tank and a half of diesel.
First time towing anything bigger than my little wooden trailer with it and it handled it quite well. The Bateson trailer I borrowed from work is a tilter and is fairly lardy - around 800kg unladen. Meaning the LR was not far off its towing limit with the car on. Putting the Mayflower on the back didn’t seem to make a lot of difference to the Freeloader. I had to work it quite hard to get moving especially on hills but once going it cruised along happily at 50/60mph all the way home.
On this long run the temp gauge moved to the middle for the first time, it’s never before gone more than a quarter.
On the way back we ran into the weekend road closure at the M25/A3 junction and got diverted into London. Managed to escape by going around the Tolworth roundabout and rejoining the A3 which by some miracle has avoided any ULEZ scameras. This bit isn’t in the zone but has the zone all around. A lucky escape as Ghengis doesn’t like smoky old diesels.
On the motorways it’s really good. On the terrible Lincolnshire roads it does feel a little vague and we managed to trace it to play in the steering rack. It’s done 140k so it’s surprising it’s worn but it doesn’t look too bad a job access wise and there’s a company advertising on ebay that they’ll recondition your one for £250 with a 24hr turnaround. So I’ll probably go for that-should be really good to drive with that fixed.
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Plus the fact the way these are made which is just fucking stupid.
