Which Land Rover?

Hi Guys,

I need your expert advise on which Land Rover would be best to drive to South Africa. The trip I am planning will take 3 to 4 months and the car will need to accomodate 2 of us, all of our stuff and would need to be sold when we got back. These are the cars I have narrowed it down to, with an estimated cost:

Land Rover 110 hightop 200/300tdi 6k
Land Rovet series III 109 3k
Land Rover Discovery 200/300tdi 1.5k

From the above, the Disco seems the most appealing given the initial cost, although personaly I would love to do it in a Series Land Rover.

So which Land Rover is best?

The 110 as you will have a better payload, simplicity, better percentage resale value,than the other two . series vehicle less comfortable, slower etc. JMHO

Much more space in the 110 as tacr2man said, wouldn't bother with the disco. Bearing in mind that serious repairs are sometimes necassary the 110 would be far easier to work on than the disco in my view.

Thanks for the replies, I was told that underneath the Disco its the same as a 110 i.e, same engine, gearbox, suspension etc, if thats the case wouldn't the repairs be the same?

Yes they are, but accessing areas around the top of the gearbox, bellhousing, fuel tank etc can all be done from removing seat panels, flooe etc in a defender, whereas the disco is more like a car with plenty of carpet and dash, plastic etc. You can remove bodywork for access on defenders whereas again the disco isn't as easy.

110 has different rear axle, larger turning circle, higher geared transfer box (in high box, so more revs required when on tarmac), less room for front seat occupants (elbow room + leg stretch), better heating/ventilation on a Disco. More miles to the gallon out of a Disco. Lower initial purchase price. Bit biased towards the Disco myself.

im with stig. there is as much room in the disco as in the 110. the disco is more comfortable. the disco is no more difficult to work on than the 110.

A 110 is volumetrically more efficient in standard form for loading than the discovery, It also has a greater carrying capacity load wise. For the driver and front seat passenger a 110 is as comfortable as a disco JMHO and I own and drive both. The 110 usually has less electical complications. i.e. leccy windows etc. When you get back a 110 with a bit of character (dents) will be a more saleable item than a similar discovery . But these are all mainly opinions from which you will need to evaluate what you see as factual from your own bias one way or the other.

i own neither, my opinion in not biased towards either. i have owned and driven both a long way and i wouldnt do it again in a 110. cant really see leccy windows being the downfall of his trip. bearing in mind the cost of a 200tdi 110 compared with the cost of a 200tdi disco, i dont really think the residual value comes into it.

So from the replies a Disco or a 110 is the way to go. Steve at Brownchurch (very helpful) reckons 6k would be enough for the 110 or I'd need around 1.5-2k for a Disco?

Idealy I would like to take a 110 but could I get a reliable one for less then 6k?

You ought to be able to find one like this
LANDROVER 110 DEFENDER TDI on eBay, also, Land Rover Range Rover, Cars, Cars, Parts Vehicles (end time 09-Apr-08 14:41:39 BST)
Then go thru it very carefully spend what you need to get it up to a known quantity using the rest of your budgeted amount.
You should be able to get a reliable vehicle for 6k using a variation of this approach . You need to get someone you know who Really knows Land rovers to check over before you buy , as you can buy a lot of expence very easily.

We did a London - Capetown in a Classic Range Rover - very comfortable and because it shares the chassis/suspension with the Discovery I imagine the vehicles are very similar. Bear in mind we did it on the very cheap (it cost us £328). We gave it a thorough service before setting off and it never broke down on us on the way there. We met guys with £10K + defenders that had worse relibility/breakdowns than us.
Lessons we learned:
1. Good chunky quality tyres a must (our friends had 17 punctures- we had 2)
2. Engine would get too hot in 50 deg heat so we had to stop often - a bigger rad/kenlow fans may have solved this.
3. Make sure your vehicle is rust free - we discovered a crack in our chassis and had to get it welded at the next town (£40)
4. Don't be tempted to take tons of gear -you will overload the suspension, increase fuel consumption and get stuck more often. We ended up selling stuff that we never used.
5. If you are not driving the vehicle back it will end up costing you £2000+ to ship it. We abandoned our vehicle (after selling off all the goodies) after driving it back up to Zambia. Our friends shipped their Hilux back and sold it for £1100. Get my point?

Hi Richard, so you did it in a Rang Rover Classic, I hadn't even thought of that. Which engine did you go for? Did you take a roof tent?

We didn't really choose an engine - it came with a crappy 2.5 Ford transit in it. Anything else would have probably been better as the top cruising speed was about 55mph. On the plus side we were getting close to 35mpg. Roof tent was a homemade job made from a salvage range rover roof and some pvc soffit board. As it rained so little the "roof tent" usually just hung a mosi net so it was a very cool place to sleep. Notice the "window" (perspex where sunroof meant to be) We also used "seconds" tent £35 from Argos as you can see in front of car. This car is still in Zambia now with a dead engine. It was amazing the amount of respect we got because we were driving a "Range Rover". People didn't realise it was a bit of a heap or so old. I will try to post photo.
Richard

Chassis "crack" that cost £40 to get repaired in Tanzania. We drove 140miles with this crack before finding a place to weld it.

And the two of us in the Kenyan bush.

This is what it looked like when we bought it - 1983 model very few electrics to go wrong one of the first 4 door models. We stuck a roof rack on it, changed the wheels and tyres, gave the engine a good service and changed a few loose wheels bearings and seals. Oh and bolted the spare to the bonnet - made a mess of the bonnet mountings later on Sudanese corrigations but "fixed" with some tie downs. They actually manufactured 2 door Rangies in Kenya some years ago so getting spare is no prob. And that was it!!
Notice how much higher it was sitting compared to in Africa fully loaded.

Sage advise, I have started to look into the price of shipping, apparently you can ship to SA for £900 but shipping back to the UK is more expensive at £1,300. I am now thinking of shipping there and driving back.

Route wise, I guess the west side is probably the safest at this particular moment, I only have 3 months and I am starting to worry that that won't be long enough, from the people who have done it, which route did you take and how long did it take you?

Be aware of the "extra" charges for shipping - port charges, etc as these can be quite hefty. Especially, if they pull a fast oe on you ( fiend of mine shipped his land rover to Durban and asked them to let him know when it arrived so he could avoid storage fees, they told him it had arrived 2 weeks after it had docked and he had to pay extra!)

Kitting out you vehicle can be consideerably cheaper in SA than the UK so you may want to do it there.

I took the east route down through Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, Kenya, etc - 8 months. I think it doesn't really matter which route you plan to do in advance you will always encouter some kind of drama - we went through election time in Ethiopia to gunfire and street killings etc.

3 months is very little time to do this in. It's nothing like driving in Europe - cruising top speed is 50-60mph on tarmac roads and as low as 15mph on some "killer" roads. It came take up to 4 hrs on some border crossings just to get through. If you fancy driving 8 to 10 hrs per day you probably would make it bak in 3 months (providing you had mo major technical/visa etc issues.)