purchasing a 3ootdi

so, i'm making the jump on going ahead in a 300tdi defender 110 purchase.
Now i need to find out which one; so with everyone's help, what should i look for when buying one of these?
is there any way to check turbo without stripping it down?
it blows black at first startup, but good after that?
school me on these engines, so that i may know what to look for in regards to failure, problems, etc.
Cheers,
steve

Can't really offer much help in terms of what to look for when buying, (engine wise), besides the usual, but if I was buying another one then there are certain things that I would do asap more as preventive maintinance really. All of which are pretty easy to do even for the more inexperianced home mechanic.

I would reccomend using original main dealer Land Rover parts, as general service items are only a few pence more than patten parts. Beware though, some dealers are sound and staffed by LR enthusiasts. Others are staffed by stuck up bellends.

Buy yourself a Haynes manual.

Change oil & filter.

Change fuel filter and clean out the sediment trap, (located by fuel tank at drivers side on a Disco).

Change air filter and vac out any dust from the airbox, (maybe this is the cause of the black smoke?).

Change all the coolent pipes. Chances are that many of them will be starting to crack. Change the intercooler pipes also.

Whilst doing this, remove the rad and intercooler to flush them both out and check for damage. This is a lot cheaper than having to replace a head gasket and get your head skimmed. Don't forget to plug up the oil cooler pipes when doing this, or it will make a mess of your driveway.

Change all the gearbox / diffs / transfer box oils.

Check for leaks or damage to the sump or diffs.

Grease the UJ's on the props. I didn't untill I suffered prop shaft failure. Even though this happened at about 20mph it still made a hell of a mess. I shudder to think what would have happened at 70mph.

Remove the inlet manifold and give it a dam good clean out, replacing the gasket with a new one. Odds are that the manifold will be gunned up, restricting flow, (and therefore performance and economy), by about 20%.


Engine / running gear wise, that should cover it. All pretty cheap to do and easy to do yourself.

I got mine with just over 120'000 miles on the clock. It's now done nearly 185'000 miles. If I had done the preventive maintinance as described above then I would have saved myself a fair few quid in the long run. It doesn't use any oil or loose any coolent, but I do check both weekly.

I suspect that the main thing to look out for is rust, but you could write a whole bloody book about that!

Oh, and get rid of the EGR and blank it up. Either fabricate a blanking plate yourself, (really easy to do), or buy one off eBay for £5.

Might be worth checking the condition of the exhaust as well.

Lubricate your door hinges regulary, especially the boot. They are big heavy doors and in my opinion the hinges are a little weak for the size / weight of the things. Regular lubrication and not leaving the doors open for hours on end will stop them sagging.

Whilst on the subject of door, remove your spare wheel and check the condition on the spare wheel carrier. It's a real gunk trap. There wasn't much left of mine.

Half the problem with Land Rovers is that when most folk wash them they only ever wash the unimportant stuff like doors, wings, bonnet, roof, whilst ignoring all the rust traps. It's easy for a vehicle to look nice at first glance, but as soon as you start poking around all the nooks and crannys, the rust becomes more apparent.

I'll spend three times as long cleaning the underside of mine and behind the spare wheel as I will cleaning the bodywork. The bodywork don't rust. Everything else does.

thanks for the reply; all of those sound like great pointers; how about bushings? are there any i should be really specific about?
also, is there any way to tell if the new timing belt system has been installed?
checking for head gasket issues?
and finally turbo issues?
cheers

Suspension bushes; There aren't any that Disco's eat so long as they are on near enough standered size wheel and tyres as far as I
am aware. Not sure about the Defender.

HGF? In my experiance the 300TDi will eat head gaskets if the coolent system isn't in good nick. All I can suggest is that you do the usual check, (mayo in oil, dirty coolent, fluid loss, hot running, etc).

Turbos? Again I'd just say do the usual checks. I suspect that mine has done more miles than the speedo suggests, due to the 18 month gap in history. But besides that the history is pretty comprehensive, so I assume that at 14 years old and 184'000 miles it's still on it's original turbocharger.

Only thing I can think of is check for any oil burn in the smoke, and remove the air feed in pipe to see if there is any play on the bearing for the vanes.

Timing belt? TBH, you ain't going to be able to tell, so no matter what the service history says, get it changed asap anyway, then you know for sure that it has been done.