Just seen an ad for a Discovery V8, 3-door, 1990, 5-speed, 110K.
I\'ve read they can be a bag of nails & nothing but problems. If it\'s got this far, it can\'t be that bad. It also has a gas conversion. Any coments, experiences (good or bad!)would be welcome. I\'ve also read HJ\'s breakdown. All for £3000. Too much, too little?
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If it\'s got this far, it can\'t be that bad
Well maybe it wasn\'t that bad at one point - but don\'t forget that lots of little problems well under £3k, with none indivdually enough to write the car off can still add up to a lot and make for very expensive motoring.
If you want reliable large family transport, go spend £6k on a Previa or Galaxy and fund the difference in price from the fuel and parts savings. (Okay, maybe not the fuel but 12-15 mpg from LPG is still only equivalent to 25-30 from petrol).
If you actually need a 4×4 then this is within haggling distance of being reasonable, but with any big car or 4×4 of this age, the purchase price is really just the deposit.
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Graham,
Roughly where in the UK is this and what colour?
M.M
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Roughly in Suffolk. (Advertised in the local paper)
It\'s an ex-government vehicle
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A second time within minutes I am agreeing with DHM
Ah DiScoverys - when they are good they are very very good and they are bad they are awful. The former keep quiet and the later moan.
At that age and mileage, unless it has been in the hands of a true enthusiast, then its reaching a stage where a lot of money is going to be spent keeping it right. Go to to www.lro.com and see the niggling faults even on relatively newer vehicles.
I have one and love it.
DVD
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Judging from the people I know with them, they seem notoriously unreliable. They are after all not real LandRovers any more.
Off-road means at the garage being fixed.
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It just struck me a something different. But I do live in the depths of Suffolk & our village is prone to being cut of by local flooding. 4 times last year. Besides I can\'t go to 6K AND ride a ZZR600
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Graham,
OK not the one in Somerset I might have given you some interesting info on...exactly the same spec though down to the LPG.
Sorry Cliff but why would this not be a real Land Rover? Because it is quite comfy to sit in? Oversized chassis, all the running gear virtually as 1960 just updated to coils. A very well regarded V8. What more do you want to see.
Anyway we\'ve been here before but here goes....
I do not run one but look after several from 1990-1997, both V8 and TDI models.
Once they are in the hands of a LR enthusiast/specialist that knows them, and any major issues are dealt with early in their life, then I find them quite reliable as long as the fairly intensive maintenance schedule is adhered to.
I\'ve chuntered on about it on another thread but the biggest single potential cause of unreliability is owners not getting them properly maintained in the first place.
A huge advantage with them over other 4WDs is that they have a somewhat ageless/classless image and a massive information/club/spares support. Everything is available for them at quite reasonable prices.
They are comfortable to to ride in at sensible speeds, but they do lean a bit on winding roads.
I understand they are not the vehicle of choice for the Taliban but have never understood what that has to do with private use in the UK.
There is loads to tell about buying them but two things are most important.
Never buy one older than say 1996 without taking a phillips screwdriver and insisting on removing the trim strip that holds down the rear of the loadspace carpet. Esae the carpet up and you will see the whole loadspace floor forms a sort of shallow tray. Any water ingress here can cause this floor to rot out along all its seams. A replacement panel is available and the welding is quite easy...only hassle is removing all the carpet and trim that might catch fire.
Second point is to allow £500 for immediate service/repairs post purchase. Most 1990 vehicles will be sold needing work, a full service is quite expensive then add to that perhaps a battery, couple of tyres and some brake pads...it soon goes.
Once you have spent as much of the £500 as is required then a mileage of around 12K/year and two services a year should keep it on the road at sensible costs....and you\'ll have fun.
I do have to say that I do not really like the V8/LPG combination and would go for a TDi evey time....they do fetch more though. It is still possible to use a lot of LPG if you are tempted to plant the size 10s to hear that V8 burble.
Any specifics just ask.
M.M
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Sorry Cliff but why would this not be a real Land Rover? Because it is quite comfy to sit in? Oversized chassis, all the running gear virtually as 1960 just updated to coils. A very well regarded V8. What more do you want to see?.
Yes, I agree, V8 LandRovers are wonderful vehicles, ?in the hands of an enthusiast?, as I was once. But that is the point, are they really reliable treated as an ordinary car by an ordinary motorist?
Friends who have them regularly have to explain their lack of a car because the ?Discovery is being fixed?. Most ordinary cars these days are not always being fixed ? they work reliably day after day ? a bit like old LandRovers used to.
In the country I see dozens of battered old Series ls and lls still in use, looking as if they are never maintained at all. All I am saying to Graham is, Discoverys are not made like that, they need specialist care.
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Cliff,
Ah I see what you were saying now. Yes I think there is some truth that a Discovery in "car type" use may need more maintenance/repairs than the average Series model.
But I regularly work on both types and can assure you that the basic quality of the two is not so far apart.
The reason the old Series vehicles are still around is more due to a combination of owner enthusiasm, parts availability, simplicity...and importantly a low average yearly mileage.
I would not claim the the Series vehicles we have are still about because they've never needed a repair in their lives....more that both have been repaired when things have fallen off. Look at the average Series chassis now and you'll see it might be 40% replacement metal, the steel bulkhead will have heavily patched footwells. It is quite usual to find both the engine, gearbox and sometimes axles are replacements. All the wearing parts will have been replaced time and time again.
There are a lot of man hours, and more than a few parts, over the decades to achieve that casual everlasting look!
M.M
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We own a \'97 TDI manual, paid £11,000 retail 2 yrs ago with 28k miles and FLRSH. Had been Mummy\'s school run car and had obviously never done a hard day\'s work in its life until that point.
That changed immediately and it has done >20k miles towing a twin horsebox plus another 25k miles of normal driving since we bought it. It has been maintained meticulously by an independent LR trained specialist with whom we have a good relationship.
In this time it has been almost completely reliable, and has never \'broken down\'. In addition to scheduled servicing we have replaced pads, discs, tyres, cambelt etc as necessary. It is still on the original clutch, gearbox, turbo & diffs. No electrical gremlins to report, either.
The only non-routine thing to have \'gone\' is a front cv joint.
We looked at and test drove many cars before finding ours, so we were careful as well as lucky. Good Discos genuinely do exist, but are few and far between.
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I have a good opinion of them as my Dad has owned three in his time.
The first was a 1992 J plate TDi manual owned from new, apart from servcing and a small oil drip the car was fine and was sold at 70k ish after three years.
His second was a 1995 M plate TD ES manual bought second hand, and just cost the usual consumables and servicing. He covered over 50,000 miles in it.
He is now on his thrid, bought brand new, Y plate TD5 automatic now at about 40-50k with no problems, he loves the vehicle.
All three were properly off roaded on a regular basis and were not pampered apart from the servicing. All three had tow bars and all at some point have been used to pull 17ton trucks and forklifts in their time (my father runs a haulage firm.
Accordingly I like them and will definitely consider one for myself sometime in the future. Just make sure you check the condition and service history carefully.
Paul.
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Mmm Owned a Y plate ex-demo one. Fair amount of mileage put on it
mixed driving including weekend off road (yes really) use. Bought it as a compromise, SWMBO wnated a car for work, I needed a 4WD for weekend hobbies. Town car it was bad, poor lock, several re-takes at the local mini roundabouts at times ! Parking a nightmare. Weekend it was peerless, never let us down, apart from a transmisison leak at around 8k - cured for free !. It was getting scruffed up so we flogged it, bought SWMBO a MINI
gets around the mini roundabouts in one and parks on a sixpence. Bought a Defender which was already scruffed up so don\'t feel guilty about taking it into the woods. Buy another, if the need arose yes.
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This is all interesting.
I have noticed that LR are now doing them from £18k, about the same that we were thinking of spending on a Freelander a few years ago!
H
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Have a look on the Autotrader site (link on left) to see that prices start well below £3000 for these cars.
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Graham, remember to find out exactly which 'government' department owned the vehicle.
I'd put money on it being an ex-police example.
PP
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Speaking as a Landrover owner (go on then- enthusiast!!) and driving a s3 1974 Land-Rover, I must agree with MM and the other comments about older landrovers. Older Landrover products do require a certain level of preventative maintainance, shall we say... but do generally take the stick and do the job. Mine gets used on my friends' farm, offroad by myself (at offroad courses) and has taken some abuse over the years. Water up to the wing tops, etc. Most parts for them these days are very cheap although the Series one parts are getting scarce and expensive. As long as the chassis is OK most other things are easy to do, however taking out the gearbox means removing the floor panels and seatbox which can be a pain. Even if the chassis is a bit rotten they can be replaced or repaired, which is easy due to the "box section" nature of the frame. I'd describe it like this, if you drive an older landrover and maintain it yourself and enjoy doing so-you will enjoy it and will probably go on with it for years. They can be very addictive! If you need to take it to the garage, it could be a little expensive.
THE DISCOVERY: Watch out for rust, clunky gearbox. Some of the TDi engines suffered from premature timing belt wear but a recall fixed that IIRC, and generally seems a good unit albeit a little agricultral. The V8 engine is nice and tourquey but watch out for excessively tappy top end, caused by the oil not being changed enough, resulting in sludge build up and starving the hydraulic tappets etc. My friends', albeit a little rusty (very early model) seems to go on and on and has 100,000 on the clock with no smoke etc. All this referring to the "old" model. I don't know much about the later ones.
Having a V8 on gas of course means you can enjoy all the pleasures of Vee-eight-ism, with the running costs of stinky pootee diesels! ;)
James.
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Its a long time since I worked on these, but here's a few comments:
1.V8 engine is basically very good - cam/lifters can wear as mentioned above, but pattern parts are very cheap and it is a straightforward job to replace ('in situ').
2. Assuming it has Lucas LH-Jectronic injection system (I think it will at this age) then watch out for electrical gremlins!!!
3. I think there was a problem with the splines being knocked off the g/box input shaft on vehicles used off-road.
4. With LPG, the ignition system must be in top condition otherwise you'll get backfiring into the inlet manifold which will blow the airbox apart and possibly wreck the AFM. Look to see if the system is fitted with a 'blowback valve'. RPi in Norfolk sell a modified distributor unit (altered advance curve) to give more power when running on LPG. Also check out LPG tanks (could be under sills) to see if damaged or dented etc.
5. Look where aluminium meets steel on the body. There is supposed to be a sealer between, but sometimes it got 'missed' on the line and the result can be severe electrolytic corrosion.
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Correct Aprilia, I think its on the LT77 transmission, that the shaft that goes in the transfer box gear gets more and more play over time until you get a box full of neutrals, IIRC they introduced a oil thrower ring to lubricate the parts.
Electrolytic action...My landrover has galvanised steel body cappings. There is no corrosion and it was made in 1974. I've seen around 10-yr old landrovers (no longer galv) with serious rust!
Early Discos are getting popular amongst some of the off-road fraternity, also early range rovers (especially when bobtailed), as they can be picked up for the same price as a leaf sprung series 2.25 pet/diesel.
James (still bouncing on ye olde hard springs)
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