Hi all,
Just got a used defender and have noticed a few things after my first service. Looking for input to see if any of you have experienced or underwent the following:

Side, rear under window trim pieces not flush with trim on door/sticking out a little at the end.
Im referring to the body color trim pieces under the rear side windows where holes are drilled to fit the lunchbox and side ladder. They don’t seem to be flush with the same trim on the rear doors - is this how everyone else’s are? The ladder side appears to be slightly more flush.

Discoloration of backlighting on passenger door-side seat memory buttons.
Look to have almost an orange hue on a few of the buttons at night (namely the “M”), bad bulb or discoloration of the plastic transparent part of the button itself? Maybe a replacement is in order.

Winch - Has anyone had a lucky 8 winch kit fitted at the dealer?
I’m wondering if they will even do this and for how much, given I supply all parts. I know my local dealer has installed several but I couldn’t get any info on pricing. Ideally I’d love to get the OEM one but this seems unobtainable at the moment as I’m not spending $6k on eBay for the kit itself. I’m also questioning if this is even really necessary - I’ve been off road many times and never needed a winch, but recently have switched to going more solo. Can anyone offer some insight on the cost benefit here? Further, would this conflict with something like PowerfulUk’s front undershield with the recovery hook exposed as I’ve read a few times?

Rear tow hitch as recovery vs installing dedicated loops?
Would the rear tow hitch on my 110 be able to be safely used as a recovery point since I don’t have the rear hooks installed? Cant believe the vehicle doesn’t come stock with those. Would installing these recovery hooks be possible in a public/shared garage with a basic tool kit?

thanks for your time and any insight is appreciated.

 

Couple replies. And congrats on your new-to-you Defender, I must say I freaking love mine and even when there are issues... there is nothing for sale today at *any* price point that I would prefer to have (short of a 911 -very different use case though)

Side window trims. Mine are perfect. Yours should be. I suspect whoever had them on and off didn't align them right, but to a degree they are self aligning due to the clips. I'd watch powerful UK videos about installing ladder or whatever, and remove yours, replace clips if needed and reinstall. They should fit great.

Backlighting. Mine are not orange. Replace. These are all LED's so there should not be any "bulb melt" like on older cars where it would get to hot in a bulb housing.

Lucky8 winch. It's a good piece of kit. Lots of documentation on here and elsewhere about it. I would bet a dealer would not do it (maybe some like the one in Denver would...) and instead would want to do the genuine LR kit. A good LR indy can do it. There's a place in Portland called West Coast Overland that I think has done a few of them.. but anyway a good LR specific indy is your best bet.

Yes, install the dedicated loops. Hitch isn't as good (although on my off-roader D2 I use the hitch w/ a soft shackle and works just fine... so maybe I'm just saying this to be difficult lol). Install video is also online at powerful uk.. it's a bitch though because the bumper does have to come off, which is ... well it's quite dumb. FWIW agree they should come stock.

 

As for the winch:

I solo far more often than I'm with anybody. I've had winches on my off-roaders consistentely for the last 8 years; I was milder in my aspirations prior to that and never had a winch on my XJ Cherokees or Grand Cherokee.

I find that the more accomplished I became at off-roading my Wrangler the less often I winched. When I was new and had a non-Rubicon Wrangler (no lockers, 2.72:1 transfer case) I would wind up having to pull myself up rock waterfalls my Rubicon friends could crawl up. After I added lockers and stout axles and 4:1 t-case, my needs were far less. I think I self-rescued maybe twice my last 4 years with the Wrangler, and that was on some super-gnarly trails outside of Moab.

But... I still put a LK8 winch on the front of my Defender, because I still solo a lot. And some of the places I go it would be a 30-mile walk to a place I'm likely to get help.I'm always prepared for that when I go into such places (same pack, gear and boots as when I go backpacking), but I wouldn't relish having to walk out like that. I've had to pay $450 to a tow truck to come unstick me from snow in an airport-rental Wrangler in SE Utah after a backpacking trip (after walking 11 miles to get to a weak cell signal, after sleeping in 22* temps in the Jeep the night before), and while none of it was life-threatening, I just feel like having a winch on the front is so much funner than getting stuck in the backyard of nowhere.

That said, if your use-case is milder, if you're always with someone or in phone range, it's probably okay to leave it off. Most owners of L663 Defenders obviously don't have a winch.

Lastly... they look bad as chit!

 

Thanks for the info, appreciate the response! I’m really enjoying the vehicle as a whole, it’s an awesome machine.

Re: the button lights, it almost looks like discoloration on the transparent “M” part of the button, I can see it to a much lesser extent on the drivers side. Maybe the result of some cleaner used? It’s not on all of them.

The side plastic trim panels are mostly flush, I’m namely referring to the bottom portion. The top with the rubber lining seems flush with the window/rear doors however the bottom half seems to want to stick/jet out a bit. Any ideas there? My side box and ladder look to be factory installed as it’s a 2020, judging by the holes (although maybe that’s a cause of it). I did notice when it rained the other day there was some water coming out when I squeezed the lower portion inward towards the car…

Im going to call my dealer and ask on the winch, it’s something I want but again may not be entirely worth it if the dealer is going to charge $3k in labor. Im also considering fitting the front undershield with exposed hook, but not sure that’s a mod I could do in a shared parking garage.

to that tune, I think I may just use a hitch shackle for now. Seems like an easier option. I was more concerned about the hitch not being able to handle a recovery

 

thanks for the info on the winch! Did you get the dealer to install it? If so, what were your costs and were you able to mount the lucky 8 one with the exposed recovery-eye undershield? I’ve read they aren’t yet compatible with one another.

I’ve never needed one, often off road in somewhat remote areas but would like to start pushing the envelope a little more. And, being in the south, there’s lots of mud. That said, I have all the off road packages and duratrecs on the thing, so if I get stuck it’s my fault, hah.

 

I used The Shop in Norcross GA. I'm in Atlanta. They're a long-time LR specialist and LK8 distributor, but this was the first L663 winch they did. It came out perfect. I supplied the winch plate and the Zeon 12S. Cost was $1680 for installation labor. Took parts of 3 days.

 

Funny story. We have a cabin in western NC. After Hurricane Whatever in August of 2021 I took the LR up a mud trail through the woods that my neighbor had scraped with his Bobcat excavator a few years earlier up to a part of the creek where he wanted to build a dam to have a catch-pool for his intake-feed for a pond down at a lower elevation. So I went up to check out the dam after the storm; could have walked easily, but the Defender was only a month old, right? I checked it out, all was well, but there had been a ton of water come over and around the dam, such that on either side of the trail was a squishy mud patch that looked like pure soup. There was no way to turn around so I started backing out. After 30 feet I hit a soft spot in the road and it veered me over into the mud, only the right rear tire. I pulled forward and tried again. The track I had made the first time won again and pushed me over that way. "Aha," I said, reverting to an old stupid off-roader's maxim, "I just need to carry some momentum through that mud and she'll run straight and true." So I pulled forward, lined her up and goosed the loud pedal.

The truck still followed the path into the mud, only did so with much more flair, noise, and velocity this time. I managed to get both right side tires mired up to the half-way mark on the wheels. But hey, the lefts are still on solid ground so I'm good.

It was high centered and stuck in quicksand. I mean there was no driving that thing out of there.

So I ran back and grabbed the ATV winch (4000#) on a hitch tray I keep in the barn. Hooked it to the hitch. Nothing doing. Wouldn't budge. So I swallowed my pride and called neighbor Jim and asked him to bring his 4WD Kubota tractor, which he did. Hooked it to my tow rope and pulled. All 4 wheels slowly spun but the tractor went nowhere. Damn!

Jim goes back and gets his Bobcat excavator. I tie the 12,000# tow-rope to each of the towhooks on the back bumper, with a good bit of slack so that you can lift up on the rope and make a triangle that comes to about head height. Jim lifts the bucket behind the roof of my truck and I hook the rope to the bow-shackle on the bottom of the bucket. I get in the truck and he starts to lift it out of the much. POW! The tow rope has shattered!

Jim pulls a chain out from under his seat and we repeat with the chain. Jim lifts the rear of the Defender out of the much, I give it a little slow backwards gas as he backs the Bobcat up and we are able to walk it out of there. My right front Classic Mudflap and plastic trim panel remain to this day in the mud; I could never find them with a shovel and 30 minutes of probing.

That was some serious mud.

 

Awesome story. Doesn’t sound like you were getting out of there on your own devices, with or without a winch!

Seems like being stuck in deep muck + reversing hard is a death wish for the flaps. Hope mine can live a long and healthy life before meeting an inevitable demise.

 

Both of my fronts are gone, and the trim panels replaced with un-drilled ones. The rears have fared fine so far.

 

Recovery loop install is very easy.

https://landroverforums.com/forum/20...lation-111063/

It's insane they are not standard on all trims. An absolute must have. Best $200 you can spend. An hour or two install. I'm slow.