Land Rover Wolf

Land Rover Wolf
Land Rover Wolf 110 in British military service
Place of origin	United Kingdom
Specifications
Weight	2000kg+
Length	4.55 m
Width	1.79 m
Height	2.03 m
Crew	2+6 passengers GS (General Service) Version 2+0 passengers FFR (Fitted For Radio) Version.
Main armament	12.7mm heavy machine gun
Secondary armament	7.62mm general purpose machine gun
Engine	Land Rover 300 Tdi engine 111 hp (83 kW)
Power/weight	69 hp/tonne
Suspension	Wheel 4×4
Operational range	510 km
Speed	160 km/h

The Land Rover Wolf is a light military vehicle based on the Land Rover Defender.

The MoD designates the Wolf 90 as Truck Utility Light (TUL) HS and the Wolf 110 as Truck Utility Medium (TUM) HS. Where HS stands for High Specification. Land Rover calls it eXtra Duty (XD).

From the debate in British parliament of 18 January 1996:

"The Land Rover vehicle, known commercially as Defender XD, has been subjected to extensive and rigorous trialling in order to ensure that it can meet the high standards of reliability which are essential for operational military vehicles. Therefore, I am pleased to have been able to announce earlier today that, subject to the satisfactory completion of contractual negotiations, I propose to place an order with Land-Rover for about 8,000 vehicles. That order is worth about £170 million. It will bring substantial industrial and employment benefits to Land-Rover, and enhance the vehicle's already excellent prospects in export markets."

The Wolf was tested, rejected, upgraded and tested again before the MoD was satisfied. It is far stronger and more reliable than the Land Rover Defender on which it was based.

When the Wolf was designed the engine in the civilian Defenders was the Td5. Land Rover preferred the 300Tdi for the Wolf because the electronics in the Td5 were more complex to manage in the field.

The 300Tdi on a Wolf uses a slightly different design of timing cover compared to the civilian version.

The testing was extremely rigorous and Salisbury axles kept breaking, the axle was redesigned using stronger internals, hubs and outer casing, making one of the strongest land rover axles ever made.

The fibreglass roof was far simpler to manufacture over the raised height of the roofbars than the Defender aluminium roof. The production was outsourced.

Everywhere else where Land Rover tried to mount the spare wheel caused the mountings to break free and it was too heavy for the bonnet. There are 3 versions of mounting, soft top, hard top and quick release.

The chassis is considerably different in design to the standard Defender chassis even though it looks similar. The side walls are standard, most of the rest is bespoke. The additional rear load bed mounting was to take increased weights as the standard chassis kept punching big dents in the rear floor.