Accidental clueless owner

Hello there, wanted to say hello and explain my situation. So I've acquired a defender 90, 1989 taken as a part exchange on a van. To be honest I'm completely clueless when it come to establishing if it's a good one, a bad one or somewhere in the middle, just to say I'd thought I would try something different. To be honest I'm really enjoying it and plan to keep it. It's fair to say I'm on a steep learning curve as I'm clueless so I don't really know maintainance schedules, things to check or prepping for the annual MOT. All I know is the chap I got it from gave me a strange looking pin thing to put somewhere to pass the emissions for the MOT. As you can probably semise I haven't got a baldy clue. So advice is what I need to address the first steps of a defender 90 ownership. I'm considering taking it to someone familiar with landrovers for a check over and advice but would need a recommendation (Merseyside area). I guess what I'm looking for is advice from forum members to my best approach in getting a base line understanding of condition and ongoing maintainance or post lockdown attend a meet and hope some friendly sole could look it over. Hope this makes sense.

Hello and Welcome,

Sounds like you are in for a steep learning curve, I hope you have got a good one.
Go post your info in the Defender section.

For reference I suspect the dodgy looking pin is the "boost pin". Easy enough to change, but it should not be needed unless you have agot a serious black smoke issue.

Cheers

Oh and I hope you checked all the numbers etc for the V5 against the vehicle. One of the most stolen / cloned vehicles apparently.

Cheers

neilly said:

Hello and Welcome,

Sounds like you are in for a steep learning curve, I hope you have got a good one.
Go post your info in the Defender section.

For reference I suspect the dodgy looking pin is the "boost pin". Easy enough to change, but it should not be needed unless you have agot a serious black smoke issue.

Cheers

Click to expand...

Yep serious black smoke when I put my foot down hard at low revs

Hello and welcome

Handbag said:

Yep serious black smoke when I put my foot down hard at low revs

Click to expand...

Go post in the Defender section, but the previous owner has been playing with the fuel pump, Probably not a difficult thing to fix. Just needs a bit of looking at.

Cheers

I would suggest acquiring a workshop manual for your vehicle. When you work through things on the forum you can use it for reference help build up your understanding, itl all seem double Dutch at first.
Welcome to LandyZone

Hi and welcome!

Some great advice already. There’s lots more in the 90/110 forum too.

Make sure you invest in some decent security measures too, landies are popular with thieves.

Welcome to the forum