Help! First time buyer, overwhelmed by buying guides!

I reckon that Defenders hold their value so well simply because, deep down, everyone wants one. I used to ride sports bikes till I found that getting into leathers was more of a challenge than getting my knee down. All of my male friends loved them, but not the girls so much. When I got my Defender, all my male mates now want to go greenlaning, and all of their missus want to come too!! It turns out that they are more of a fanny magnet than any Porsche!!

i get more looks in my defender than ive had in any of my cars, n when kids say " dad look at that landrover!! why cant we have 1". recentley had my 300tdi engine tweeked and cleaned my intercooler. people stand and stare when they hear the sweet sound of my tdi whistling down the road, especially the driver of the l200 on sunday that tried his luck and i left him in a cloud of black smoke no comparisons!!!

Hey Fishsponge, I was having the same debate for the last two/three months. I've been looking around at the options available and while I could've gotten myself a nice discovery I just didnt think that would fill the landy shaped hole in my life. That combined with the differences in the cost of parts and complexity of work involved in fitting them eventually made my mind up for me and I picked up the keys to my new defender yesterday (lol - well its a '96 300tdi so not exactly new!).

Since my first landy (a series 3 I owned ten years ago) I have driven a selection of vw golfs and my latest was a mk4 GTi with all the refinements (air con, elec windows, cd changer etc) and even though my defender has none of these things I drove it over 300 miles home yesterday and still got out of it at the other end, stiff and a little tired admittedly but with the biggest grin I've had on my face for years! For me anyway thats what makes the defender so special and why so many people want one.

so... i went and bought this one... LANDROVER DISCOVERY 300 TDI ES offroad/on road on eBay (end time 01-Sep-10 21:00:04 BST)

and i love it!

Nothing major needs doing and the stuff that does need doing isn't expensive and can wait up to a year if need be. The engine sounds great and everything works. Here's to hoping it'll prove to be reliable for me!

fishsponge said:

so... i went and bought this one... LANDROVER DISCOVERY 300 TDI ES offroad/on road on eBay (end time 01-Sep-10 21:00:04 BST)

and i love it!

Nothing major needs doing and the stuff that does need doing isn't expensive and can wait up to a year if need be. The engine sounds great and everything works. Here's to hoping it'll prove to be reliable for me!

Click to expand...

Looks a good one bud,you need to ring around loads of ins places, some won't touch it with the extras some don't even take the mods into account, i insred with the farmers union (no i'm not a farmer) i rang dozens and they were the cheapest for me, one thing i did find was that no one would ins it it it wasn't on a drive or garage at night, can't really see what diff it makes if its on the road or on my drive which is so small that i'm blocking the pavement
Have a look at the greenlaning section and get your name down for a trip or two, i hope to see you on one of em. Happy motoring

Nearly forgot, bought mine last year,£950, a real bargain had loads of fun in it, bit more dented now tho...........

cheers, shaun! it's already insured actually... what with all the modification, it was a bit of a challenge, but it's all sorted now

I'll go take a look at the greenlaning section now - bit short of time generally in life, but hopefully i'll have enough for some fun!

right - greenlaning forum bookmarked! also posted asking if there's anywhere in Huntingdon I could spend 10-20 minutes at without risking damaging my daily-use vehicle! Any suggestions welcome! Keep it simple too, please - no deep stuff, no sideways stuff - i'm a complete novice at this stage, simply wanting to drive my new Landy on some grass instead of tarmac for the first time!

Oh, and ideally i'd go for 10-20 minutes tonight! Bit pushed for time for the next month, otherwise.