auto or manual disco what's best off road

Hi guys, about to buy a disco diesel £5000 max and want to know best way to avoid loss of drive, experienced this at work twice when mainshaft stripped in transfer box leaving the vehicles with nil drive. It's a quick fix to weld it up but makes for an impossible overhaul at a later date so not really practical.

Never broke these myself, and never even drove them before they broke, but is there any way to diagnose this fault before it goes bang and leaves you in a puddle

Is there any other faults in these gearboxes that can give loss of drive such as this and what gearbox is best for off road, auto or manual. Been looking in the posts and can find overheating and so on, but nothing other than a comment that auto's are best.

Dave from the cudds

It happens to the manuals and the automatics.

Disco II autos are very slow on pulloff unless remapped. Easy enough. Don't tow big stuff like horseboxes with the auto unless you are feeling rich because the gearboxes fail quite quickly if stressed.

Thank's for that advice jim, won't be towing but may be well loaded with logs from time to time, and I hope the rest of the time in the mud and hills somewhere distant.

I imagine that the manual is easier to source and overhall than a auto so I guess I should look for a manual. I was told that a good way to determine this fault is if it gives a loud clunk on take off then it's on the way out, I would hate to imagine that it ambushes you in never never land.

I have had gearbox issues on other vehicles in the past and the worst was a loss of a bunch of gears but could still crawl home in first gear, and this was my fault because it was howling for weeks before it. As they say an archaetect of my own disaster.

I'll keep searching the posts for any other tips, but in the meentime moochos grasyarse, or something like that.