He emailed me this evening....
In a nutshell he's as shocked as me at it failing, he wouldn't have taken it in if he thought it would fail. He had got the lights working but the holders are dodgy, loose terminals so played up on the test but he wiggled the bulbs till they worked. The tester was really rough on the chassis - "used a hammer on the chassis when not allowed to" (?) - the holes are small and on the rear behind the spring mounts, it is heavily waxoyled not undersealed and I saw that (it was slippery and moved under pressure unlike underseal), it's never had emissions fail issues (MoT confirms this) so just needs carbs checked.
He has ben really busy and has two kids with no mother at home with them now so it's been difficult to manage it all.
He ended that if I'm are still interested I could take it away for a few days trial (and full check over) but he's not thinking of selling anywhere near as low as 4k, he would rather keep her.
The rear x-member seemed solid when I banged it and has apparently been replaced in the past, and the rest of the chassis seemed ok so the corrosion issues are around the spring mounts on top of chassis rails which is quite common on a 30 year old.
If this is fixed and the emissions and wring properly sorted, what would be a reasonable offer? We had agreed on 9 pre MoT when I thought it was a 'dream vehicle' but even if all fixed up, the chassis will need more work over time and I kind of lost trust; I doubt he'll take less than 8 considering that he got a big bill pending.
Maybe I should take his offer and take it away for a couple of days and get the local indy LR garage to give me their opinion?
Or maybe I should just forget it; I have a sweet and solid 2.5P which keeps up with the traffic and manages most of the hills on the south downs, the problem is having had V8s before, they are just so much nicer to drive and I miss the feeling, and sound, of that effortless pulling power!