Advice on New Disco

Hello All,

Seen as this is my first post I had better introduce myself. My name is Andy and I live in Ashtead, Surrey. I have been looking to do a bit of off roading for a while and have settled on getting a disco, more specifically a tdi version so its kinda economical. I want to use the car daily but also to do some off-roading weekends.

I have been out and seen a few but there is one that I am interested in and wanted to get some opinions.

I have looked at a 1990 200tdi 3 door. It seems fairly tidy but there is rust on the front edge of the drivers door and more importantly the boot floor. Looking underneath the car there is rust holes under the boot floor between the spare wheel holder and the rear cross member (for use of a better term). Although the boot floor was dry taking it up revealed a lot of damp. The rusty area is about 10cm square at the moment. The other issue with the vehicle is the 2nd gear syncro. You cannot change down to second at speed higher than about 15mph or you just get the noise of teeth grinding. Apart from that the disco seems sound. The engine has done 201K but pulls nicely and there is no excessive turbo whine. The turbo kicks in nicely and pulls from 1000rpm easy. The interior is nice but showing signs of being 17yrs old. The current owner is asking £850 for the vehicle and I was wondering if that was reasonable.

Thanks, Andy

Hi Andy and welcome,
I'm new myself to Landyzone but already am finding it fun and informative.
The only advice i can offer you is regarding the boot floor , Disco's are prone to rusty boot floors due to the ingress of water in through the alpine window seals and also the water lays in the roof guttering which then rusts and seeps through into the inside. The trouble is you usually dont see the leaks on the inside because its all hidden by the plastic panels .
I have just had a brand new boot floor welded in together with 2 cross straps that the floor is attached to. The boot floor cost £69 + vat , the 2 cross straps were £80 and a bodywork mate done the job for £250 which was very reasonable he normally charges around £650 . Obviously the seats , carpets , rear seat belts and plastic trims all have to be removed before any work can start.
It goes without saying the boot floor can be patched but if you intend keeping it you will probably be patching it constantly.
One tip is to brush joint sealer into the roof gutters , and stick the nozzle of sealant gun under the alpine window seals and seal all the way round.
Since doing this to mine it is now bone dry , worlds apart from the day i lifted the boot floor carpet to find it damp and extremely rusty ( Ahhhhhh ) !
As for Disco's generally i adore them , parts are very readily availabe and inexpensive and when you see what they are capable of off road you are blown away.

How rude of me i didn't introduce myself i hit the " post reply " button too soon. ha ha !!
I'm Gary and hope this has been of some help
Cheers mate and take care

Thanks Gary,

Sounds like then if the dicso is only £850 i would be looking at almost that just to get the boot floor sorted, and from what I could tell it felt worse than that picture you took. Difficult to tell from just prodding around though.

The other issue is the gearbox. I have been doing some searching and most people seem to live with crunchy syncros but eventually you can have the box reconned. Does anyon know what sort of price that would be??

Cheers, Andy

Hi amgarrett
the cost of my gearbox repair was over £650 with a new clutch fitted, second gear was acting as you stated earlier in your post, then total failure,had to have 1st and 2nd gear sliders and springs replaced that was 6 years ago and had a clutch fitted last January cost £350 all in did 88k on previous clutch.
So your £850 bargain might bite you in the ass.
hope that helps, sure someone will give similar advice all the best chap