Merry Christmas everyone!
I am residing in Australia and looking to buy a Landy over here as there is great off roading to be had. I have seen a 1996, 4 cy 2.5lt Land Rover Discovery TDi,
Has anyone had any experience with this and is there any advice they can give me before I look to buy.
Thanks for your help guys!
Hi HB, first of all Merry Christmas to you as well.
Right, the vehicle you are referring to is usually called (over in UK at least) Discovery I, TDi 300. These are brilliant machines and if well looked after will do hundreds of thousands of reliable miles.
Over in wet UK the main issues with the vehicle are rust related, this may not be the case in Australia, with your different climate.
I've had a number of these go through my hands and they are straightforward to work on, the bits are really cheap, so you can afford to keep them in tip-top condition.
Our first one did 200,000mls before we moved her on still running great, still giving fantastic mpg.
The second one was a '98 TDi 300 auto. Apart from daily running (where she would deliver 33mpg (on average over 20,000mls!) I took her to the Sahara desert - and got back in one piece !!! Apart from general servicing she had not one problem in the time I owned her - she was a gem.
Currently my wife runs a '98 TDi 300 manual 3 door which she loves. Delivers great mpg, and brilliant in the rough stuff.
Issues I encountered whilst owning Discos:
1. The clutch fork on manual box cars is prone to failing. What happens is that it is made from poor quality folded metal, and the pivot point eventuall wears through and leaves the clutch pedal on the floor. This is a easy and cheap fix - parts cost £12 for an HD clutch fork (so it should never happen again) plus £5 for slipper pads and bits and bobs.
2. Rust rust rust. Check for rust in the front inner wings, the sills outer and inner, the rear wheel arches and the boot floor.
3. Servicing, they really do benefit from regular servicing, irrespective of what the service history says I always go through the car from front to back changing all fluids, all filters, the cambelt and the auxiliary belt. Also the fuel sedimenter needs cleaning on a regular basis.
4. Modfications: - 2 modifications that are cheap and easy to do are:
a. De-EGR - there is an EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) valve fixed to the exhaust manifold. It is a piece of poor engineering and on this side of the globe we ditch it imediately. The engine wil run cleaner and give better throttle response especially at low revs. Cost in UK is about £20 for the blanking plate plus a new top hose.
b. De-Cat - on the europeans spec models they have a cat in the exhaust downpipe. Over the years this tends to get a bit blocked up so we rreplace it with a Defnder non-cat version costing about £20. The result is significantly better throttle reponse and beter mpg.
5. The door locks - sometimes these appear to function incorrectly and it is due to a small cheap spring that fails. It is a cheap but fiddly job to replace.
6. The fan for the in-car heater system. These can fail or partially fail due to faulty slider switches and faulty resister packs. Both cheap to fix.
Hope that gives you some food for thought, they are great vehicles, they just need looking after carefully.
Good luck
Dave
