Discovering a Land Rover

I am now the proud owner of a 2003 Land Rover Discovery II SE. 4.6l V8, 70,000 miles. I paid $6000 for it. One little scuff on the passenger front bumper and everything works.

Nice. Keep us informed about the day to day experience of living with those.

And go somewhere muddy and dirty it. A clean Disco is for poseurs.

A clean Disco is for towing boats

I like the looks of those things, but the thought of having to buy parts scares the crap out of me.

Cool!

Very very interested in day to day ownership as well. Love the color (colour)!

That's the best color for those things.

I'm partial to this color, because RACECAR YELLOW!!

But seriously, this is my gf's dad's new toy. He's had to fix the 3 amigos which i think cost around 200, and it did amazingly well in the mojave desert on stock tires. Though my 2wd ranger did well too, he didn't have to get towed through the dunes part of the mojave road

That is pretty! I miss my Disco.

im beginning to admire the balls it takes to own something like this. let us know how it goes.

belteshazzar wrote: im beginning to admire the balls it takes to own something like this. let us know how it goes.

They are persnickety, but they have gobs of personality/charisma, a great online community, and are generally going to break in a way that lets you "get around to" the repair.

I have been reading up on the discos.. and two major problems that seem to crop up are the air control valve and head gaskets.

The first is a half hour repair

The second seems to be cooling related. I tend to think it is overheating or the wrong coolant was used, causing these problems. I also thing as this is basically a Buick engine, that somebody has to make better headgaskets and head bolts for this engine.

The "three amigos" seems to have an easy maintance.. put it in low and let the hill climb decend you down a parking garage ramp every so often.. this keeps everything lubed up and working.

Something else I read that seems to be common is sticking/tapping lifters. Sounds like a sludge issue from people not changing the oil often enough.

So far I see nothing that really scares me. I have owned and dailied, Saabs, BMWs, Volvos, Fiats, Porsches, and VWs.. along with a host of other cars. While the parts are more expensive than something similar than from Ford or GM, everything seems inline with my usual purchase price for parts

Some things I am not going to wait for them to go. I will do headgaskets later this year when my Father finally moves up from Florida. better to do them before they go then to get stuck somewhere

The Buick motor amuses me. A superlightweight aluminum V8 in a 5000lb truck. Nobody seems to chase the swaps on this side of the pond anymore, but I would still love a Rover/Buick V8 in a lightweight challenge car.

I have a set of those same 18" wheels with good Pirelli snow tires on them that I would sell cheap to a local GRMer, if you are interested...

For any parts you need, Will Tillery (rover guy) is the person to get them from, new or used.

mad_machine wrote: The second seems to be cooling related. I tend to think it is overheating or the wrong coolant was used, causing these problems. I also thing as this is basically a Buick engine, that somebody has to make better headgaskets and head bolts for this engine.

IIRC there are two problems with the head gaskets - first, the thermostat fails closed. Oops.

The other one - which we had on my wife's RR 4.6 - is that the head gaskets start leaking externally, which apparently is a common problem between 90k-120k (hers has 120k on it). For the latter the head gaskets seem to be a bit of a service item.

Looks like you got a nice Disco there in a lovely color.

MrJoshua wrote: The Buick motor amuses me. A superlightweight aluminum V8 in a 5000lb truck. Nobody seems to chase the swaps on this side of the pond anymore, but I would still love a Rover/Buick V8 in a lightweight challenge car.

By European standards, that's a pretty big engine. Heck the first generation Disco was sold with the 3.5L version.

Funnily enough a large number of Discoveries in the UK were and are sold with the 4-pot Turbodiesel. Those are a bit slow, but they're really good on fuel compared to the V8. For some reason, the V8s are really popular for LPG conversions .

BoxheadTim wrote: The other one - which we had on my wife's RR 4.6 - is that the head gaskets start leaking externally, which apparently is a common problem between 90k-120k (hers has 120k on it). For the latter the head gaskets seem to be a bit of a service item. Looks like you got a nice Disco there in a lovely color.

that's fine. I was intending on doing the head gaskets as a precaution soon anyway

For anybody else reading this and wondering why the berkeley multiple people were randomly mentioning the "three amigos."

Good deal! Hope you are happy with it. Looks great!

I've always liked the Land Rovers, and can't wait to read about your experience with this one. Best of luck with your new purchase!

ransom wrote: For anybody else reading this and wondering why the berkeley multiple people were randomly mentioning the "three amigos."

How did you get inside my head???

ebonyandivory wrote:

ransom wrote: For anybody else reading this and wondering why the berkeley multiple people were randomly mentioning the "three amigos."

How did you get inside my head???

Perfect, I was about to ask that myself. Please keep the thread going to de-bunk 'OMG Land Rover, will 'splode in wallert shredding pieces every time you look at it' mentality

Speaking of these things. I saw one in flat black with black trim and wheels and it looked great.

Lovely truck. Please keep us up to date on the truck.

I really want an original Range Rover.

This is definatly going against everything I have done automotive wise. Aside from the Volvo, all of my cars have either been hatchbacks or sports cars. I have always driven 4 cylinders, and I prefer handling and braking over acceleration

Braking in this thing is phenominal.. especially for a vehicle with this much mass. Handling seems better than the F150 I test drove, probably a little worse than the Volvo. And accleration, well, it's similar to my old Ti. Seemingly about 8 to 9 seconds to sixty. It's got a lot of weight to lug around, so I was not expecting a sports car.

The colour is perfect. I fell in love with Burgandy when I had my Calypso Red Ti.. sadly the last three cars I have owned were all black, so it will be nice to go back to this hue. Same with the interior. It seems that Beige is in for Landrovers (and swedish cars) but this one has the black leather with wood trim. It is generally a nice place to sit.

The only thing I dread is filling it up. 20mpg (on a good day) combined with premium is going to make trips to the pump painful.

ransom wrote: For anybody else reading this and wondering why the berkeley multiple people were randomly mentioning the "three amigos."

Thanks for that...I was clueless...