96 Disco Q&A

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Eastwood

New Member
Posts
4
Hi guys just joined the site here I'm looking into getting my first discovery the one in question is a 96 3 door 2.5tdi with 120,000miles.
I went to look at it tonight after looking at guides for buying on here and have a few questions so i hope I'm posting in the right place!

Few additions including an 8 inch lift with Bilstein shocks/springs, 33inch m/t tyres, polybushed all round, snorkel, roof rack, winch(not fitted), new exhaust, and a handful of other additions.

Main thing i was looking for was rust, the outer sills had both been welded for the last mot which looked a good job (apparently costing £600), chassis legs and all the rest looked pretty damn solid as did the rest of the underside. One spot was under the bonnet/top of the drivers side arch needs some attention / has a smallish hole but I'm assuming this can be welded for <£100, it passed the mot recently with this anyway.

Being my first Landrover i wasn't sure what to expect however goes into gear fine and the diff locks, low & high range all seem to be working well. The steering seemed vague at best?Almost like you're steering a boat but I'm guessing that's because I'm not used to a big 4x4 never mind a raised one with huge off road tyres?

My main concern is there is no paperwork. The guy bought it from a close relative about a year ago who did all the work to it, but he never bothered to get any of the paperwork from him bar the taxbook so god knows where it has ended up.

The turbo, timing belt, pads have are all new according to him also although I'm only going by word. Also the rocker gasket could do with being changed as there is a very small leak although I'm not majorly concerned at that.

Am i mad thinking of purchasing a disco with no service history or is it a safe enough bet as long as it's not rusting to pieces? I'm mostly worried about resale as it's not that cheap it will cost me around the £3k mark that's why I'm checking up what the general consensus is on it.

Sorry for the essay i just thought i should give as much detail as i can.
Thanks for anyone that had a read at that any advice would be great.
 
£3k are you bonkers even with mods it shouldnt be more that around £1500, also check the boot floor as they rot like mad there too, as for the steering they can wander a bit with bigger tyres on but could also be the the steering arm drop link i think its called, it looks like a track rod end on the end of the long bar under the front you cant miss it, where are you as someone may have a look for you too!
 
I'd give a miss personally because when u do decide to sell it people will want service history etc. Plus if you get a standard disco you can do it up yourself :)
 
Another thing i meant to add which is pretty important, on the taxbook it says something at the bottom about being a cat c / damage repaired.

Alarm bells went off in my head, he claimed that when getting the entire suspension gets changed to this extent you need an engineers report which requires you to send off the taxbook to get marked down that it's had this modified so it goes through the mot.

I couldn't tell if it was utter bull*$% but i had a feeling it was, someone care to enlighten me?
 
Well lying about that is more than enough reason to dodge it then. Thanks for the help guys dodged a bullet here by the looks of things.
 
yeah your doing the right thing in giving it a miss. It says the same thing on my log book about cat c. thing is mine was standard when it got written off back in 2007. thats a new one in what he said lol. Maybe ring him back ask him about it again, then ask him how the muffler bearings are, an the indicator fluid is. dogded a bullet there pal
 
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