would you purchase a discovery?

[BDM]

yeah, what would I know

Sorry leafsprung, didn't intend it to sound like you're not knowledgable on the subject. Only that I have not heard of Discovery's having a problem burning like their Defender brothers.

My whole point was that when properly maintained, they can be reliable. Mine among many others are proof. Yes, it requires a little more maintenance. I'll have to address my oil leaks and ps leaks but to me it's worth a weekend of labor for all this truck offers.

[CMorris]

I'm not sure Chester is even paying attention to this thread any longer but thought I might chime in here. I work for a Land Rover dealership and have owned a Disco II, D90, a few Series trucks, and my current "driver" is an LR3. Not sure of what your budget is Chester, but currently there are waves of LR3's coming in off lease (most are 2006MY). In my opinion they are a bargain (can be sold certified in the upper teens to low 20's), have warranty, can be certified by LR dealers. Our shop performs mostly normal maint. on these trucks (pretty much problem free). I like the LR3 much better than the Disco, ride, power and comfort wise. The only drawback as stated previously in this thread is 14mpg on good day.

[daveb]

Do what I did and get a reliable Toy FJ Cruiser for a daily driver
Cheers!

ummm, until the body starts cracking...

http://yotatech.com/f135/fender-body-crack-bulge-fj-cruiser-123655/

lol...you're better off with a disco...

[thixon]

Alright, I can't take it anymore. I have to comment.

BDM,

This all boils down to someones definition of "reliable" and a persons tolerance for performing maintenance. I've driven plenty of brit cars as daily drivers over the years (mostly when I was young-er). I was willing to fix them when they broke, and did'nt mind doing preventative maintenance to avoid breakdowns. However, my willingness to do that did'nt make those cars "reliable" when compared to the japanese and german cars that my buddies drove. Compare a high mileage discovery to something like a suburu outback (mercedesrover suggested that one), and I think you'll find there is no comparison. Be honest, you drive the disco because its different, and you like it. Great. More power to you. All of us here share that in common. My DD is an audi allroad. There are things on that car that could go splat at any moment. I think the thing is cool, and different, and there are few on the road. I'm willing to assume the risk of having to pay for the parts to fix it. I don't, however, dilude myself into thinking its as reliable as a suburu outback. The fact is, it isn't (and niether is your disco).

[leafsprung]

Only that I have not heard of Discovery's having a problem burning like their Defender brothers.

Perhaps you havent heard, but they also frequently burn to the ground. The local wrecking yard had two burnt discos (one disco1 one disco 2) for months. No one bought anything off of them so they finally scrapped them.

[Terrys]

Perhaps you havent heard, but they also frequently burn to the ground. The local wrecking yard had two burnt discos (one disco1 one disco 2) for months. No one bought anything off of them so they finally scrapped them.

Sadisco is the largest insurance salvage auctioneer in the country, though they only have yards in 15 states in the SE. They have three in Florida alone. A friend of mine is a buyer and is the one who found my NAS 110 back in 2001. I just called him to ask how many burned Disco's he's seen, and he said none, so he called the Sadisco yard in West Palm, who told them they have had a total of 7 burned Discos going back to 1994.(That's in all yards in the 15 states) I guess they must only burn to the ground in the NW

[Mercedesrover]

My brother runs the Burlington VT. yard for Auto Insurance Auctions. They have 160 yards across the country.

Right this minute they have 255 totaled Land Rover Discovery in inventory. Out of 255 trucks 13 of them are fires.

Yeah, they burn.

[CliftonRover]

I would expect that they burn because many of the people that bought them did not have a clue about service. If you maintain the oil and tranny cooler lines you should be fine. I have never heard of the fuel lines causing any trouble.

I also just bought one though a 96 with 188k, the truck is mint. I just did a head gasket because of a faulty manufacturing process with the previous head gasket replacement. I can see the truck being a great daily driver or trail truck.

[BDM]

Alright, I can't take it anymore. I have to comment.

BDM,

This all boils down to someones definition of "reliable" and a persons tolerance for performing maintenance. I've driven plenty of brit cars as daily drivers over the years (mostly when I was young-er). I was willing to fix them when they broke, and did'nt mind doing preventative maintenance to avoid breakdowns. However, my willingness to do that did'nt make those cars "reliable" when compared to the japanese and german cars that my buddies drove. Compare a high mileage discovery to something like a suburu outback (mercedesrover suggested that one), and I think you'll find there is no comparison. Be honest, you drive the disco because its different, and you like it. Great. More power to you. All of us here share that in common. My DD is an audi allroad. There are things on that car that could go splat at any moment. I think the thing is cool, and different, and there are few on the road. I'm willing to assume the risk of having to pay for the parts to fix it. I don't, however, dilude myself into thinking its as reliable as a suburu outback. The fact is, it isn't (and niether is your disco).

By all means, I couldn't agree more. A subi is more reliable historically and does not warrant a fight otherwise. If we're comparing a Disco to any other SUV, for the price, the value is arguable, as we have seen here. I really enjoy the comfort, having AWD, and lots of room. Yeah, it does win me style points but it also is very functional.

I'm sure some do burn to the ground. Again, all I'm saying is that there are good ones out there. You could have this same arguement about Audi's.

[jp-]

Subaru sucks. The only one I had was a mechanical nightmare. On this model there was a shaft that went inside the end of the crankshaft into the transmission to drive the trans oil pump. The teeth on the shaft stripped out and the trans had no oil pressure so, no go. I had to pull the freaking motor to replace the shaft. Dumb, dumb design. And that was only one of a dozen other major problems.

And by the way, not all fires are "real" fires. There are people who have been lighting up their cars to get out of loans. Not sure if that's a big problem with these vehicles or not.

[Eric W S]

I would expect that they burn because many of the people that bought them did not have a clue about service. If you maintain the oil and tranny cooler lines you should be fine. I have never heard of the fuel lines causing any trouble.

You can't blame service for poor engineering.

Regular maintenance also isn't the fix. The OEM lines aren't exactly the greatest and the lines can erupt at random it seems.

Change your lines (and follow ECR's example) or carry an ample supple of marshmellows with you...

[Mercedesrover]

Subaru sucks.

Saying you had a bad Subaru is the same as saying you had a good Disco!

[jp-]

Just saying my one (and only) Subaru experience was not a pleasant one.

[thixon]

JP,

My dad is on the way to beat up your dad. He is stopping by Ralph Nadars on the way.

http://www.roversnorth.com/forums/sh...?t=5531&page=7
(just in case you forgot what I'm writing about!)

[Donnie]

I wrote this as advice for someone else in another forum a few years ago, but I think you might find it useful.

For the record, I did own one, and have been driving a borrowed one for the past two months. In that past two months I've been locked out, locked in, had a tire blow, the hood won't pop, the electric seat only goes in one direction.... I can go on. And both my truck and the one I'm driving had regular maint.

***************************************


If you had read the checkin, you'd realize your ****box does not have a factory locker when you read your manual.

Next, using your post, someone would need ****ing esp to figure out what your shifting question is, as you left out 90% of the detail.

Finally, let me give you some realistic advice about the oil pissing money pit you just bought. Although this is a hackneyed statement:

the day you bought that thing and the day you sell it will be your two favorite days.

Here's what's going to happen:

Since you bought it at a million miles, **** is going to break left and right. Even if some dbag who owned it before had some **** like 'one owner, dealer serviced' in the ad when he posted it for sale, it's still going to break. Even if the only off road it saw was when the ******* who owned it before you was when his wife backed it out of the garage and hit a rhododendron, it's going to break.

The idler for the serpentine belt is going to seize when the bearing heats up with no grease in it. If you're lucky, this will happen when you're driving into your driveway. I say lucky as when it goes, you no longer have power steering (probably doesn't work anyway, but I'll get to that later), and you also no longer have a working alternator. Oh, btw, the alternator is going to start squealing at some point, so you're going to have to replace that. Might as well get that while you're replacing the idler. OH! And grab a new belt while you're at it. Ok, back to the steering. The power steering pump is going to leak from every seal, pipe, cap, bolt, etc. Don't bother trying to fix it, just keep fluid with you and top it off when you get gas. You'll be doing that all the time since the pig gets like 12 mpg. Oh! and you're supposed to put hi octane in it, so be prepared to bend over once or twice a week when you fill it up. When you're ordering the parts above, might as well order the oil cooler pipes that pass by the radiator on the drivers side as they are going to rust through and piss oil everywhere on your way to work. Oh, another thing to add to the list. Replace all the wheel bearings unless you want them to suddenly fail on the highway and weld themselves to the spindle, while yanking the steering wheel out of your hand. It will be so sudden that you may think that you jerked the steering wheel while waking up after passing out while driving. It's great that you got the disco with two sunroofs since one or both is going to fail. Save up for some steel wheels because the alloy wheels on it are going to be useless after a few trips off road. Oh, more stuff to order - diff protectors since the paper ones that came with this beautiful truck are likely to piss like a scared little girl when the first stick pokes at them. Steering protection for the pencil thin tie rods. Oh! Almost forgot, the rattling you hear is the cats that have **** the bed. Order those. Oh! Might as well order some exhaust manifolds and gaskets since those are either cracked or about to crack. Do you have a dog? Do yourself a favor and order new hinges for the rear door. If not, it's going to break when you're on your way to get coffee at 5:30 in the morning while fido is in the way back. You'll hear a little squeak from the canine and look in your rear view mirror. For a second, you're brain is going to process what it's seeing. Yes, it's seeing your dog sitting in the back while the door is wide open, hanging on one hinge. BTW, the heavy duty hinges from Atlantic British are $150 bucks. I almost wrote 'probably worth it', but 150 bucks for ****ing hinges! Are you kidding me! Since you're into the tune up and other crap up above for a couple k, might as well get the checkbook out for a few more things. Get a snorkle. It's like 400 of the best dollars you'll ever spend. (I'm kidding about that one, almost no one NEEDS a snorkle). Order the 100 dollar lift kit from ebay. You can put that on when you're fixing the hole in the diff because you decided to buy that snorkle instead of diff covers. Oh! back to your question. That hard shift is one of about 10 things. Get the checkbook out again and order a front driveshaft, that's probably gone, even if it's not the source of the hard shifting. Forgive me for forgetting what this piece is called, but there is some stupid flex disk somewhere in the rear driveshaft near the ujoints - that' s probably gone. Oh! Order u joints and put those on when you're under there putting the ebay 100 dollar lift in. Oh, one more thing for the checkbook while it's jacked up - order 4 new rotors and pads. Maybe you can make it a weekend and do the uj's, lift, wheel bearings, rotors, and pads. And steel wheels. OOh! You can spend an hour or so playing 'find the rust'. It's on the rear wheelwell inside the door, a lot hidden in the front fenders - not the fender part, the inner fenders. Doors probably have some rust too. Just get some por 15 in the color of your choice and spread it on. Don't forget to peel up the carpet as all that sound deadening material rover put on there to make you think the truck is 'quiet' actually trapped ever molecule of moisture that ever went in the truck since the day it came off the build line.

Just wanted you to know what you're in for. FWIW, I LOVED my disco, and unfortunately sold it to someone local so my kids have to tell me 'daddy, we saw your truck, someone else was driving it'.

ROTFLMAO----------I can only think of one thing that has been missed.....If this unit sits in the sun for any amount of time you can expect the rubber that holds the windows in shrink, other than that....???? Oh, did anyone discuss burning up the foreward clutches on a hi reving emission test?