Buying high mileage Freelander 2?

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wattfield

wattfield

AKA Dirk Diggler
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Location
Ayrshire-by-the-puddle
After years of Defender & Series ownership I'm actually thinking about buying a Freelander 2. My budget is about £6000. Everything I've seen for that price have over 100,000 miles on the clock, so is this a bad idea? What problems can I expect over that mileage?
 
As with all cars, service history and use are important factors to check. It's far better to buy a car that has racked up a majority of its miles on the motorway as opposed to round town mileage. Main dealer servicing is also a good indication that it's been looked after regardless of cost.
I've been hearing about various failures as the FL2 ages. There have been some engine problems, gearbox issues and rear diff failures too. The diff is likely to be an ongoing 30 to 50K miles bearing replacement job.
Like all cars, some are worse than others for some reason. But on the whole, the FL2 isn't to bad.
 
Thor1950 said:
Buyer beware...........Problems everything, unless things have been replaced. Go diesel.make sure it is 4 wheel drive and not converted to 2 wheel drive for better MPG
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That's the Freelander 1 with the 2wd conversion mate, the freelander 2 (LR2 i believe in your neck of the woods) runs the haldex system and a completely different animal with different issues.

wattfield said:
After years of Defender & Series ownership I'm actually thinking about buying a Freelander 2. My budget is about £6000. Everything I've seen for that price have over 100,000 miles on the clock, so is this a bad idea? What problems can I expect over that mileage?
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I asked same question a while back,
https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/fl2-mileage-how-high-is-too-high.277508/

General consensus was buy a late model FL1 and have some change to fix ssues it might have, as the FL2 has a fair bit of depreciating to do still and higher mileage will ruin any resale value further down the line.

Faults wise as its PSA/Ford derived not much to worry about, similar engine in my mondeo (140bhp) and that's just rolled over to 114k miles without issue.and as above rear diff can be troublesome.
Over 100k chassis bushes can start to delaminate and fail so that's something to look at when viewing.
 
LUKBENPHI said:
Looks ok bu a bit too much when you can get em cheaper with sluightly less miles

http://www.autotrader.co.uk/search/used/cars/land_rover/freelander_2/postcode/le100xf/radius/1500/page/1/maximum-mileage/up_to_100000_miles/onesearchad/used,nearlynew,new/searchcontext/default/sort/locasc/price-to/6500

Might pay financially to take a trip over the border
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Cheers, I've seen those, but I live here, 250 miles Norf! I'm still looking, it'll probably be a few weeks before I get the finances sorted anyway
 
wattfield said:
Cheers, I've seen those, but I live here, 250 miles Norf! I'm still looking, it'll probably be a few weeks before I get the finances sorted anyway
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No worries

My Mrs live in bakewell and apparently a lot of the local land rover types get there's from lancashire way as they cheaper and they not on usually websites like autotrader/ebay so might be worth a butchers round that way if you do have to take a trip over border.
 
I've just looked at two Freelanders, one for £5800 with 133,000 miles on the clock, and one for £6900 with 103,000 miles. Both have a fair bit of surface rust underneath. I'm still going to shop around a bit, but do you think 133,000 miles is risky? Do they all have a fair bit of rust, or have I just seen bad ones so far?
 
100 is a funny multiplier for cars. A car with 95,000 miles is OK, but 105,000 miles is knackered. Over here everything is in KMs and it is 100,000 kms where people think they are going to go wrong, then at 200,000 kms they are a huge risk - but no much difference when they are 300,000 kms - so that's 60,000, 120,000 and 180,000 miles.

Its also funny how, while cars have been getting progressively better engineered over the years and last a lot longer, these '100' milestones haven't changed much in people's minds.

Having said that, £6K or £7K is a lot of moolar for a 100K car. You don't say what spec/year they are - but that's Kiwi prices for a '100K' car - doesn't matter if its miles or KMs - its 100K.

Your comments about rust is also quite amusing. I was chatting to a fellow L Series owner last week in another country which does not put salt on the roads and we were both agast at the pictures on here of the underside of UK cars. Ours both look basically like they did when they left Solihull after being built - whereas the UK cars are all caked in rust. When we work on our cars, the bolts and screws all come off quite easily, whereas on UK cars there is invariably a struggle to combat rust.

So my suggestion to you is to source a Japanese F2. They are RHD and generally cheap, well cared for and rust free. Most of the cars here were not sold new in NZ, they came in at 5 or 6 years old from Japan. You do though need evening classes in Japanese to understand the handbooks and work the radios and GPS systems!
 
from experience if a car is gonna go pop it will have done so already so by 133 k anything major will have been sorted and tbh £5800 doesn't sound too bad

You often see people get rid of cars close to the 100k mark just incase something goes, or it costs them loads in service items because they dont understand that certain parts of cars wear out quicker than others such as brakes/cambelts you see it loads of times in reviews online where people slag the cars off as unreliable when all they list is service items that needed changing

Where as in actually fact they haven't had the car looked at regularly so all the service items need changing at once so its cost them a fortune so they resent the car and I've resented several cars over the years that have cost me loads ( although I did not leave bad reviews because it was my fault)

These days with modern reliability getting better, 200k is becoming the new no go area instead of 100k and tbh if i needed cheap transport i'd think nothing of buying something from the vw group with the old 1.9 engine with interstellar mileage as long as its been serviced
 
LUKBENPHI said:
from experience if a car is gonna go pop it will have done so already so by 133 k anything major will have been sorted and tbh £5800 doesn't sound too bad

You often see people get rid of cars close to the 100k mark just incase something goes, or it costs them loads in service items because they dont understand that certain parts of cars wear out quicker than others such as brakes/cambelts you see it loads of times in reviews online where people slag the cars off as unreliable when all they list is service items that needed changing

Where as in actually fact they haven't had the car looked at regularly so all the service items need changing at once so its cost them a fortune so they resent the car and I've resented several cars over the years that have cost me loads ( although I did not leave bad reviews because it was my fault)

These days with modern reliability getting better, 200k is becoming the new no go area instead of 100k and tbh if i needed cheap transport i'd think nothing of buying something from the vw group with the old 1.9 engine with interstellar mileage as long as its been serviced
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Modern cars have much higher gear ratios than the original 100,000 miles end of life cars.
So essential all the rotating bits now rotate less numbers of times for the same distance. So 100,000 miles in a 4 speed car with 13" wheels is very different to that of a modern 6 speeder with 18 or 19" wheels.
So these milestone distances are now pretty irrelevant. It's correct and timely maintenance that's important these days.

Those 1.9 VW diesels do run forever don't they. I changed the camshaft (common fault) on a friends 150BHP 1.9 PD over 5 years ago when it had covered 90K miles. Now that same engine is just due another timing belt so is just shy of 160K miles and still going strong. Testament to the durability of those engines.
 
Nodge68 said:
Modern cars have much higher gear ratios than the original 100,000 miles end of life cars.
So essential all the rotating bits now rotate less numbers of times for the same distance. So 100,000 miles in a 4 speed car with 13" wheels is very different to that of a modern 6 speeder with 18 or 19" wheels.
So these milestone distances are now pretty irrelevant. It's correct and timely maintenance that's important these days.

Those 1.9 VW diesels do run forever don't they. I changed the camshaft (common fault) on a friends 150BHP 1.9 PD over 5 years ago when it had covered 90K miles. Now that same engine is just due another timing belt so is just shy of 160K miles and still going strong. Testament to the durability of those engines.
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Yeah my neighbour had his changed in the 150 too apparently the 150 is more prone to it than the 130, but the 130 sufferers more with the injector loom faults ( which my 130 golf suffered from) than the 150 so its swings and roundabouts

My mate has got a transporter with a n/a 1.9 which is currently on 265k , its slow as fook but has never had an issue since he's had it sides service items


regarding there has been a shift in gearing ( no pun intended) over the last 15 years especially in 5 speed boxes, petrol mk1/mk2 mondeo would see 70mph at 2900 rpm, jump in the mk 3/mk 4 and 70 does not appear till 3200 which is crap for economy

6 speed gearboxes are a complete gimmick if you ask me and I hate them with a passion it drops the revs in my current diesel mondeo 150 rpm, much rather have a nice 5 speed any day of the week

I did actually drive a 130 golf gt tdi which had been converted to a 5 speed for that exact reason and it was so much better to drive and much nipper on the motorway when you stuck your tow down
 
The ones I've seen so far had too much rust underneath for my liking, one in particular would have given serious problems for repairs because most of the fasteners look near impossible to remove. I'm still looking, but (whisper it) I'm going to have a look at a Subaru Legacy diesel at the weekend.
I'm keeping the Defender, obviously! :)
 
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