Iltis Achilles heel?!

[Baxter]

Hello.
This last weekend we went on a disasterous off road event, travelleing from the West Coast of the Uk to the East Coast.
This "coast to coast" route was made popular by a writer called "wainright" who did lots off hill walking and rambling and making terrific notes and maps about his walks. he lived in the British lake district but often travelled further afield, and he did a cost to coast walk and wrote a book about it.
A few years ago some T3 owners did a charity coast to coast event, starting in the lake distric and finishing near Robin Hoods bay, near Whitby on the east coast. Some bright spark linked up lots of our "Green lanes" (off road tracks, farm tracks and ancient high ways which we are quite within our rights to use) and made it into a 2 day event.
This year they decided to do it again so I went to join them for the second day.

1 syncro CV joint problems but was repaired.
1 syncro had more CV joint issues, he dropped out.
1 syncro owner fell the prevoius day and broke his wrist, and dropped out.
1 Iltis hit what was really quite a small bump but punctured his sump!!
1 syncro was fitted with a EJ22, 2.2l Subaru engine, which fell out, he also dropped out!

My question is, are Iltis known for having problems with smashed sumps?
I did have the engine protection in place but it bent very easily, the bent engine protection hit the sump and cracked it.
I did manage to drive it home with tissue paper stuffed between the ribs to stem the flow.
Does anyone sell some extra reinforcment for this area?
Is there any problems with "packing" the engine mountings to raise the engine out of the way incase this happens again?
I am really quite surprised how easily this happened!

[www.iltisteile.com]

remember: your iltis is not a tank!

the way you drive it, is supposably out of boundary
off road you hit the front protection quite often, it slides over obstacles

but if you hit it hard, it will bend
if you hit it much too hard, it will hit the oilpan

[Stinkmarder]

[quote Baxter]1 Iltis hit what was really quite a small bump but punctured his sump!![/quote]

Never heard of a punctured sump before. You should drive more carefully.
IMHO the Iltis Achilles heel is the prop shaft! Since the Iltis does not have skid rails like the T3 syncro you can easily damage it when you overlook a bump on rocky ground...

Regards
Johannes

[Baxter]

I really didn't think I hit it hard at all, I wasn't even in 4WD!! the track really was not chalenging! this is why I'm asking as it does not sound right and now I am questioning if my sump was too close to the protection plate.
I am going to investigate if i can raise the engine slightly and get it away from the protection plate.



This is us, The white T3 is bolting his Subaru 2.5l engine back in after he broke his engine mounting cradle, when we stopped to repair it this is when I noticed the oil leak.

At the moment I do not trust the Iltis off road, if such a simple, small knock put's it out of action then I will have to think about it's future.
If i am going to use it here on rocky roads then I will have to think about a aluminium rock protection plate or similar as the steel item bent too easily.

[aixiltis]

If you want to improve this, in my opinion the better way ( instead of lifting the engine ) would be, to copy the steel undershield in approx. 8 - 10 mm thick alloy. Many years ago, I built a skid-plate in that way for my Renault 5 Rallye car, this worked fine for years. It was light weight but stiff enough to bend only slightly when hitting rocks or other obstacles. Years later I reworked this for my son's Mini and it got a second challenging lifetime and finally was sold with the car.
I was already thinking about this for my Iltis too, as the original undershield does not look really robust and I have already some visible dents in it from the last winter too, when I "uncovered" some obstacles below 80 cm of snow, but I have still no touch condition to the engine.