New here - aspirant freelander owner needs advice please

Hello

I have been seriously considering a freelander for some time now and in the last few days have been researching what sort of vehicle I could get for my money. (max £4000ish)

The only real fixed thing is that it has to be 5 door (small children) and that I would prefer a diesel.

HOWEVER today I saw a freelander in a garage and took it for a spin and was very impressed, but I would be very grateful if anyone could advise me if it's a good buy or not.

Land Rover freelander ES - 51 reg

Ticket price £3400

Petrol 1.8 ltr - I've not heard good things and this is putting me off. It has done 69000 miles. It had the head gasket and timing belt done at 40 000. Should I still be concerned?

New brake pads and disks most recently at 64 000.

Nearly a FSH all from a land rover dealership.

Lots of paper work to show what it's had done and when, including the head gasket

Nice metallic blue colour, leather seats generally clean and tidy throughout.

Ideally I would like to know

Are petrol ones trouble? Should hold out for a diesel one (I'm not in any rush)

OR

Should I work a bit on bringing the price down. The garge has offered me half the value as a trade in for my car.

Cheers in advance.

TD5..........freelander is about as useful as tits on fish.

petrol freelander - run

I run both a TD4 diesel and an old petrol version, petrols can be troublesome as reading the posts on here will confirm. They are not all bad though and it sounds like the one you are considering has had the problem area sorted but for your budget you will be able to buy a diesel and a TD4 at that, for this you will get around 10mpg extra over the petrol and its quite a bit quicker as well.

Probably the deciding factor is, if you are only doing low miles and you are handy with the spanners and can fix a car yourself the petrol is worth considering, if the price is right.

dont touch a petrol, unless yu have deep pockets or want a divorce..

yu took it for a drive - did it have a VCU?

diesel diesel diesel !!!!

forget the petrols

thanks for the comments

whats a VCU?

rob_brown said:

thanks for the comments

whats a VCU?

Click to expand...

Maybe read some threads on here before parting with 3-4k as the time cost to you will be very little and the savings in anguish significant!! Its all on here if you can be bothered to look...

Land Rover Freelander - Land Rover Zone

tanks - have now done my research!

Try to find a TD4 with less than 70k miles, then allow a further £200 to buy a recon VCU, or about £350 new ( no real difference) and get it fitted. They should be replaced every 70k miles, but few do... If it's not been replaced at 70k, then assume it is on the way out and make sure the IRD and diff are ok. And fit a new VCU anyway. If you buy from a dealer, than at least you have some sort of warranty.

I spent 3 weeks before buying one reading EVERY thread on the Freebie section here and on other Landy websites. I then knew what to look for, and was confident enough to buy the first one I liked the look of on ebay without even seeing it.. It turned out as I expected and I am happily working through the jobs- most of the usual Freelander failings, but then I will have a very good one which would cost me about £3k total, with everything done, instead of buying a £3k heap that would still need the work doing anyway..

Freelanders are great but they DO have problems, and unless you know one end of a spanner from the other, or have bottomless pockets for a trusted garage, then buy an X-Trail. Seriously..

space monkey - thanks for your reply, very useful. I've already learnt a lot just looking through to topics on here. particually about VCU etc.

Cool, that's the best way- go in with your eyes/wallet open, and spanners ready..

I'd hold out for a Freelander 1 TD4, from 2002 onwards they've got BMW engines, I've got a 1.8 Kalihari 53 plate and it's cost me around £1200 in maintenance and replaced parts in just over two years. My next buy WILL be a BMW engined model.