Discovering a Land Rover

yes, I read up on that. Seems the thing to do to keep them from appearing is to exercise the system. While around here is -flat-, I can use the parking garage at work to do some hill descents.

It looks good.

You have to love depreciation. That was a close to 40,000 dollar vehicle.. that I got for a little over a 6th of it's original value

Great interior on the Disco, love them.

I do know one thing...I have a friend who is an Audi tech and also was a Mercedes tech for a short while. I asked him if he wanted some side work from a friend of mine whose son had an older Range Rover, and he and his Benz buddies all chuckled and said "thanks but no thanks". If an Audi & MB tech doesn't want to work on it, they must be nightmares!!!

mad_machine wrote: The only thing I dread is filling it up. 20mpg (on a good day) combined with premium is going to make trips to the pump painful.

That was allot better than I was thinking it would be.

20? Ha. I don't think I ever saw better than 16. Usually more like 13-15 over the course of 57k miles

Considering I can usually get better than EPA average on all my vehicles.. I think I can get close. My commute is over 50mph roads with only a few stoplights.. so way below where aero becomes a concern and where the engine can just loaf along at low RPMs

well, I got my Rover home tonight. The dealer gave me quite a surprise package too. A stack of reciepts totalling almost 7000 dollars for recent engine work that had been done. Leafing through it, it was a not a catastrophic problem, just that the previous owner gave his mechanic carte blanche to fix all the leaks and potential trouble spots.

So car the only issues I have found.. the switch for the passenger seat took a nasty hit and was bashed into the centre console.. and one of the sunshields over the rear sunroof has a broken clip so it cannot be closed.

Overall, this is one solid truck

Look closely at the front driveshaft. If it has play at the t-box or you're getting a vibration at hwy speeds you may need to replace it. Land Rover doesn't service the joints. They tend to fail at hi speeds at the double joint. The remaining section flails wildly under the truck until you stop. It often clubs the trans to death, literally busting through the case!

thanks for sharing! I will check that out this weekend. All the tricks and tips I can get will help

I've always wondered about these. Around here, they all seem to belong to people who have never, ever even thought about going through a mud puddle in them, much less going off-road.

They're also dirt cheap: http://raleigh.craigslist.org/cto/3851021577.html

I got mine for $6000.. but honestly, it needs very very little to get it to 100%

And now I am on Craigslist looking at these things.

Some of them have entertainment systems in them! That beats an XJ in terms of keeping the kids busy on the way to the beach.

mad_machine wrote: You have to love depreciation. That was a close to 40,000 dollar vehicle.. that I got for a little over a 6th of it's original value

If I'm not terribly mistaken, a 2k3 was like 55

That thing is pretty, gotta give it that. LR knows how to style them for sure.

I heart British cars and bikes but oh Lawd I won't trust a LR as a DD. Go ahead and shoot me if you must, but uh uh. No. Nope. Seen far too many big $ electrical stuff go bad and if you get the later BMW V8 version add the typical German overengineered leaks. I'll stick with my pedestrian everyman riceburner, thankyaverramuch.

personally, I will never know why Rover never imported the Defender too. It would have been a great competitor to the Jeep.

In reply to mad_machine:

They did for a very short period of time. I have seen them around. The price point between the Defender and Wrangler was a very wide margin.

well.. the Volvo went away yesterday, leaving $1000 to put new tyres on the rover. Been driving it exclusivly for the past three days. So far, no problems.

At 200 miles since the last fill up, I still havd 2/3s of a tank left. Let's see how that translates when I go to refill it when I get to empty

So far it is growing on me. As far as trucks go, it feels very neutral through the turns and I try to use momentium as much as possible to keep from having to mash the throttle to catch up with traffic again. The only things I have found so far that upset it are grooved roads that start the tyres to tramline, and roads that undulate Those get the rear end bouncing a bit

Do you have the ACE system?

no, just the starndard coil springs and regular sway bars