Land Rover Discovery

[Ogre]

Thinking about 'maybe' buying one of these to tow our Elddis 620 twin axle, and would appreciate any advice.

Advice needed on the best engines, years etc etc. Experience of towing with one, and fuel consumption. Must be a 5 door model.

Probably (costwise) looking at around 1994/1998 models.

 

[Jazman]

I sold our less than year old Disco 3 earlier in the year. It did not work out as well as we thought and had to may reliability issues.

Unless you are a dedicated LR and DIY enthusiast or have a well trained LR mechanic as your best buddy I would be looking for something else.

 

[will2]

Hello Keith

I tow with a 300tdi disco and have never had any problems at all with the car.

It pulls well and is very steady depending on how the caravan is loaded.

Will

 

[Ogre]

OK Thanks for this advice.

Mechanicallly I'm not too concerned, as I'm pretty competent around vehicles, despite not being formally trained. I have always serviced all my own vehicles, rebuilt engines, wiring, and brakes, steering etc etc etc etc and have enough tools to strip the Eiffel Tower. I never let garages near my cars, their 'pet monkeys' usually cause more problems than the cars go in with. Never failed an MOT either.

What is more interesting to me is reliability, cost, towing characteristics, and above all, noise levels. Having had an old Series 3 Land Rover Safari years ago, the only way we could drown out engine and gearbox noise was to turn up the radio quite substantially.

 

[GrahamSouthBrum]

Hi Keith,

It apears with Land Rovers you either love them or hate them.

I bought my 1st 4x4 2 1/2 years ago, I aproached a mate of mine who is an AA patrol & asked his advice on which 4x4 to buy. He got his AA laptop out & got onto the reliability pages, at the top of the list for breakdowns was L.R. Discovery & freelander, in HIS opinion I would probably spend more time under it than in it.

The best 4x4s were Japanese & Korean.

Graham W.

 

[Ogre]

OK. That bears out a lot of what I've learned from other sources. I think we'll give the Land Rover a miss.

 

[martin.]

Keith,

We bought a 98 disco TDI a few months ago, 90.000 on the clock, changed the suspension so it wasn't so soft and we love it.

Graham is right though, you either love them or hate them, it's a big lumpy wallowy prehistoric monster, great fun to drive, 30-35 mpg when towing, bags of room and good on the fields.

 

[emmerson2]

Keith,you could be sorry if you do "give it a miss". Thousands of us LR owners can't all be wrong. At that age, any 4x4 worthy of the name could be trouble. I'd go for a late model (1998) V8 3.9 auto, convert it to LPG, and sit back and enjoy it.I'm on my fifth v8 Range Rover over the last twelve years or so, and had no major problems with any of them, all classics, bought at around 80-100,000miles, and kept for around 60,000, so all were fairly high mileage when I parted with them, and all bar one are still around.Aside from everything else, there is no other driving experience like a LR V8.

 

[emmerson2]

Just to add to my previous post, I forgot to say that whilst on holiday in Coniston, I drove my RR up to Levers Water. There is no road up there, it's just a rocky shale footpath, but with no vehicle restrictions.(other than driver's bottle!) We did check that before we went. The old car effortlessly climbed the 1800ft plus trail, turned round at the lake, and trundled back down again.No drama, no worries. Why did we do it? Just to see if we could. The following day we towed our 1600kg caravan at 60mph down the M6, in the same car. The point of all this ramble is simply to point out what superb cars Land Rovers are, in spite of their,generally undeserved, poor reputation.

 

[mcghee]

Emmerson, while I share your enthusiasm for the classic RangeRover, comparing the RR with the Discovery is like comparing night to day.

The performance both on and off road of the two is radically different in my experience.

The RangeRover was a superb car and not much went wrong with them, in my experience the Discovery was the other side of the coin.

My main gripe with the Discovery was the radical instability at anything over 50mph.

There are others who don't share my view though.

 

[emmerson2]

hi mcghee. I agree that a Disco doesn't compare with a RR, but the point of my rambles was to extol the virtues of Land Rovers in general, and the V8 in particular.After all, the Disco is simply a down-market RR! (ducks behind RR and waits for the flak from Disco owners!)

 

[MalcolmL]

While I agree that the stability and cornering capability of early Discos was appalling, I have to say that my year 2000 TD5 went round corners remarkably well considering its bulk. It did have the ACE suspension which I found to be very good. My one caveat would be this - if you hit standing water at the side of the road, the steering reacted badly and you had to be really quick to regain control. I owned a whole series of Volkswagens from the late 70's to the mid-90's and they all took standing water in their stride, as does my current Mercedes ML

 

[martin.]

hi mcghee. I agree that a Disco doesn't compare with a RR, but the point of my rambles was to extol the virtues of Land Rovers in general, and the V8 in particular.After all, the Disco is simply a down-market RR! (ducks behind RR and waits for the flak from Disco owners!)

And here I come in my disco over your RR looking for you, hehehe.

No flak given.

 

[Carole_374312871]

Hi Keith

If you get a Discovery you will be getting 'the' disease rather than simply a vehicle, so beware! It's a well known fact that Disco owners are obsessed with them.

Saying that we sold our K reg Disco a couple of months ago and replaced it with a Skoda Octavia Estate as out main towcar, sensible, does the job, just the thing.

What we didn't realise was how much it would be missed. It was a 200tdi and had seen better days, in that as most of them it succumbed to rusting nearly away... But it towed like a dream, felt vey safe being above the traffic and we never wondered 'will be get off this muddy field?, it just always did.

The good news is that we have just got a 300tdi, bit newer model to use just for towing really given that they are not the most economical. Looks great, drives great and we know it will do the job. We are planning a European trip, [as it sounds the rest of the UK are!] and knowing that you have the towing power is a comforting thought. Ours is a 1996 model, the other one did about 30mpg going down to 24-25ish towing.

Go for it, you won't be sorry.

 

[Jazman]

Our local welder come Mr Fixit make more than a good living from bodging Range Rovers who's owners are in denial and put down rust and break downs to every day routine maintenance.

Range rover back doors rust to bits and there is even an aftermarket kit fron the USA I belive as they are such c***.

Wonderfull cars but a myriad of parts and people to fix problems.

Been there, bought the hype shirt and got out quick, risk the Oval Badge brigades advice if you have a fat wallet only!

Pay a visit to the local dealers and listen to the complaints and check out the waiting list at your local LR specialist.

The queue is long as the product is ---- ?

Answers on a post card to Solihull please.

 

[Glenn_5132962]

My mate is on his 3rd RR and he's had new engines in two of them due to cracked blocks. The early 3.5 was ok but the 3.9 & now his 4.6 have been rubbish. The block cracking is well known & specialists like RPI make a good living out of supplying new engines.

He's currently trying to figure out how to replace all the brake pipes on his 1996 car cos they've rusted & one is leaking. No easy task however as they are sandwiched between body & chassis & are impossible to reach. This car has cost him many thousands in repairs but he still puts up with it.

 

[Garfield]

Landrovers are truly an enigma!! They come bottom of the list of every reliability survey going, my friends Disco didnt do that many miles in the 7 years he had it but it ate two head gaskets, two gearboxes and god knows what else, despite this he bought a Freelander for his wife and eventually replaced the Disco with a Defender, only Landrover could get away with this, supplying customers with cr*p and they come back for more!!!

The sad thing is.... Imagine how well this british icon would do if they were as reliable as Hondas

 

[GrahamSouthBrum]

My son phoned me up yesterday & told me that when he came to check the water level in the radiator of his MGF, the leavel had gone down, I told him to check his dipstick & suprise suprise, water in the oil (head gasket). This is the same 1.8 petrol engine found in the Freelander. Say no more.

G.

 

[Glenn_5132962]

The guy who sits next to me at work suffered the same fate in his 2002 MGTF only last week. His bill was