Geoff the 2002 Freelander

Despite owning him for two and a half years, I never got around to posting on here. Don't mention the bobtail I've had since 2017 and haven't posted that either...

After juggling cars in 2021 and having an MX-5 as a daily, I wanted a cheap winter car and the masochist in me decided a Land Rover product was a good idea. This 3 door was in Leicester so I put on my brave pants and picked it up for £1200. It might be cheap and fairly unloved, but it was actually a pretty clean hippo.

2002 Td4 auto, with surprisingly fully functional windows and electrics but only 2WD. There had to be a reason it was so cheap.



A bit dinged up in the back, but I've addressed that now.


I've never been a huge fan of Land Rover's move to black interiors for the Discovery 2 and Freelander, but it's what was available. The jungle trek seats really lift the interior. At this point they still needed clean.


A previous owner added a badge that it may not have earned, but I chose to leave in place.


Named because of the plate and here's a reference back to the old Top Gear home-made electric car



First thing I did after getting it was get that roof off, probably hadn't been done before. Good for airing out the slightly smelly interior.


The hardback is in great condition, the inside was a bit grubby but cleaned up well. I never understood why there is nowhere to put this thing though once you remove it.


TBC...

After a couple of weeks, it was time to get some jobs done. As you can see in the first interior picture, there are no floor mats. Somehow the carpets haven't got too messed up and I wanted it to stay that way, so I got some used rubber mats.

I was originally going to get a new set of floor mats from JLR but I saw a used set selling cheap on eBay so got those, around a third of the price of new. Yes they're worn but they look right in an old Freelander that's got rough edges. First thing was to give them a wash as the previous owner hadn't bothered to do so.



They're proper Freelander mats so fit perfectly as you would expect. They do look a bit faded though so I wanted to give them some help. I got some Auto Glym tyre dressing and gave one a bath, then rubbed off the excess. Definitely an improvement, the picture doesn't really do it justice.



Much better. Being a 'dog car' despite not owning a dog, I really didn't want to track too much rubbish inside the clean interior.

Next job was to tidy up Geoff's rear end - ooh err. Roof bars were fitted at some point but had gone the way of the dodo somewhere along the line, so I replaced the mounts with some nice blanks I found on eBay.


And then the door card came off to tidy that up. I wanted to give some vinyl spray paint a go to remove the scuffs, Halfords do their own so I grabbed some to try.

Before painting but after degreasing, lots of scuffs and cuts in the plastic. I tried a heat gun as it can restore plastics but it didn't do much.


After two coats, looking much better. As you can see by the overspray this is thin stuff and it doesn't go on like a thick paint, however it does cover well. All the scuffs are gone, the scratches hidden and a satin shine brought back.


I liked this so much I refitted the tailgate door card and then removed the two back trim pieces in boot. No before picture but imagine these looking like the door card before painting and that's it. Much nicer. Cat bowl for scale.


I was really impressed with the finish, it does a great job at hiding the scratches. This was two years ago and it's held up well. Some of the cargo hooks were broken, so I got replacements. The little pocket covers are gone unfortunately.



A replacement rear trim piece was also fitted to replace the broken one.

One more for today. The whole interior cleaned up pretty well, just the seats needed attention. I have a Bissell carpet cleaner, so that sucked the farts right out of these seats and got them looking nice again. I really like this pattern, they're a bit worn but this has done 123K miles so it's to be expected.


Still nice enough to treat them to a nice set of seat covers. My goodness these things are a tight fit.


Looking pretty good, I reckon.


That's enough for tonight.

Time for a few more bits of Geoff's history.

I took him for the first green lane run, with the hard back off. Not sure if I was brave or stupid to go without the roof as it wasn't exactly a sunny summer day. I think old hippos look fantastic without the roof.



Shown in these photos is a CTEK socket that I fitted to the battery to allow it to be plugged into a solar battery maintainer. I've had so many issues with batteries in the past I had to fit one. My bobtail has a dedicated solar panel on the roof.




Also the springs on the back door decided they'd had enough, so new ones were fitted.


Finally when the roof bars had been removed, the previous owner hadn't fitted blanking covers and had just stuck tape over the holes. Not a big deal because I could get some of those.

Now the biggie, the automatic gearbox. I had noticed that when it got warm it would slip between third and fourth. Turns out it's apparently due to a weak part inside that can crack and let fluid through. It's described on this page from the Jatco manual:



My gearbox clearly had the earlier part, so I bought a spare gearbox locally (sold cheap as spares) and stripped it to get to the later part.


I stripped the later drum to check all of the parts and to confirm that this was the later piston design. thankfully, it was.


This is the actual piston, in very good condition and with the obvious larger chamfer.


It was also confirmed on here that the clutch plates are perfectly fine to re-use at 1.56mm thick.


This is the point where I confess that this was two years ago and I still haven't swapped the part yet. It requires level ground and the ability to raise the vehicle up and at the same time drop the engine and gearbox down. I just don't have the space or the facilities to do this. I generally only drive the vehicle short distances in the summer as I have an MX-5 for longer drives and as it only slips when hot, winter drives up to an hour are generally fine. The part is right there in a box, along with bottles of ATF.