Owing to an unfortunate incident when my 300tdi Disco 1 was being welded at a local garage, I am having to look for a replacement. It was 12yo when I got it 8 years ago, so I'm looking at something of that age (12) now.
Can anyone comment on whether td5's or Range Rover td6's are as unreliable as everyone is telling me, and should I keep searching for a solid Disco 1? There seem to be very few diesel autos left.
Any suggestions for anything else with occasional decent comfort that will tow a 3.5ton boat?
D2s are basically the same as D1s. The TD5 is a good engine (with caveats) but the late TD5s pretty well had all the problems sorted. They are generally better on fuel than 300tdi's.
I look after a friend's 10-previous owner, 2000 TD5 with 194k on the clock. It was bought as a buttons priced replacement for a 300tdi and I spent a while fettling it and going over all the standard problem areas. It has done 2.5 years and 22k and, this weekend, dumped itself at the side of the road for the first time - looks like a split rad. This isn't so much a recommendation as a bloody miracle.
Build quality is crap - that's British car manufacturing all over - but parts are cheap.
Standard problems:
Air springs - actually very reliable. Failed level senders cause them to over inflate and burst.
Oil pump bolt - they forgot to threadlock years' worth of TD5 oil drive sprockets. Fixed on later cars.
HG failure - "lets use plastic head locating dowels, nothing can go wrong." Probably all sorted or scrapped by now.
World's worst ally. Instead of going to a proper company, LR went to Jones the Scrap and bought any old crap and had it badly moulded into many, many different engine parts. Result, threads rip out of housings, water bosses corrode, etc etc.
Chassis rust, say no more. But mostly the sections from rear axle backwards.
Manual gearboxes (I know you want an auto!) - they used the same R380 gearbox but somehow managed to make it less reliable than on the older cars. Cretins, every single employee that ever was!
Re D3s. I know two brothers, each with a D3 TDV6 and doing much the same work and routes, bought about 6 months apart. Whatever the older car suffers with (at regular intervals), the newer car suffers 6 months later. They curse that, although this isn't worse than previous Discos they've had, getting them sorted at the local garage is far more expensive.
He is, but he is one of the ones saying don't get a td5. His son has a good solid 300tdi, but there are very few good autos (needed because of ageing knees) locally.
And 20 years is a long time, so I was thinking of throwing some cash in to buy youth.
First TD5 I had in Y reg Disco II was fine, so was the entire car basically just service and fuel. 92,000 miles 60,000 by me, but it didn't like hitting small bushy tree at 40 mph sideways. B-(
Second Disco II 04 plate was not such a good car, sound enough but the car was not a "service and fuel" one. About every 15 months something would go wrong with it. It had new injector seals new injector new fuel pump, 3 if not four air springs, several front hubs, worse 2 ECUs they just don't go wrong or fail except in this car. Had it from 2008 (33,000 miles) to 2015 (139,000 miles) when it had to go as it was becoming too much of a money pit. The suspension needed a complete over haul, I suspect the near side hub was about to go along with the ball joint swivels.
12 years ago is about when they stopped making the Disco II let alone the Disco I... The 04 DII I had was one of the last to made, maybe that's why it was never very good?
The Disco III has avery poor reputation, mechanically, electronicly and firmware...
Donno about the Disco IV.
How ever the garage recovered my DII on a 6 wheel flat bed Ivor Williams trailer pulled by a Range Rover Sport auto. You didn't know it was pulling anything, not sure what engine it had though.
Thanks, Scott, that's really useful. I have had a long td5 problem list verbally reeled off to me too fast to remember, although I remember water pumps and electronics being highlighted. There is a local 2004 Range Rover at what seems like a good price, but I'm not sure that the split tailgate would be any use with the way I pile all the tools and old rope etc into the back. My Disco had a huge quantity of my tools in the back, and I still have to sort what is recoverable. The Aldi remainder-bin battery drills melted. All 3.
A son knows of a good, cheap 2004 Jeep Cherokee down in and, I think, banned from London, but he had a petrol one before and I don't remember positive reliability, and I don't think it will tow what I want. The usage pattern is: it has to sit in the path without moving for weeks on end, then start instantly, drive 100 miles, do a long tow, then juggle trailer into really awkward space. Then another month or 2 sitting idle. It also has to be ready to fill in for the car when that's off the road, as we have a nightly task with an almost disabled lady. We used to tow fishing boats about fields, but we have sailed to a posh marina now.
With the 300tdi, I think in 8 years we only had welding, one battery and one alternator belt. About every 2 years, I topped up the oil, and that was it.
My TD5 defender never let me down in any serious way. Fuel pumps seem to be the usual cause of 'bugger it wont start'
The two freelander TD4s I have had have also been OK apart from fuel pumps but seem to have had more 'little things go wrong than the Defender. Of course they have more 'little things' TO go wrong.
I have had three Isuzu Troopers. No longer made but parts still available. Available quite cheap now.
The early ones had leaf springs, the later ones had independent suspension (and are better for it). Excellent vehicle all round and good off road performance (better than Land Rover.) Good towers. Try and avoid ones previously owned by farmers.
There are not many 4x4s rated to tow 3.5tons and i don't have to tell you not to mess with towing weights and rates if you are going to tow further than across a yard. The big Toyotas will do it. Mitsubishi Pajeros only 2.8 tons.
The cheap alternative to an overpriced landrover is a LWB transit or equivalent medium van. Plus you can sleep in it if you don't mind roughing it a bit (which you don't if you have a boat).
As always there will be range of reliabilty. But the owner of the LR specialist garage I use loves DIII's as he sees them so much. Hates the Freelander II as he only ever sees them for servicing, which for the diesel is every 16,000 miles.
Depends on the garage (LR dealer or just a car sales place) and the age/condition. My last DII was also straight out the door from the dealers (14 years old 139,000 miles...). If it was less than 5(?) years old and low mileage, or higher milage but younger, with FSH, etc a LR dealer might make it a "Land Rover Approved" one but otherwise straight out the door.
I used to tow horse trailers with Daihatsu Fourtraks, not especially comfortable but very reliable. Not sure if they have autos. Rated to 3.5 tons.
Isusu Troopers and Mitsubishi Shoguns are high spec, comfortable, have nice auto boxes (but Tim is quite right to check tow rating, I've never needed to tow 3.5). Toyotas appear to be indistructable, but not so common. Quite a lot of the big Jap ones are petrol rather than diesel, but I have seen LNG conversions on them.
Very popular with the farmers round these parts, but getting long in the tooth, and rot-prone.
I was talking to a neighbour with an S-reg SWB LandCruiser the other day. Not only are they ludicrously expensive used, keeping value better than anything this side of a G-wagen, but they're also rot-prone.
LPG, more like. Straightforward, but you need to put the tanks somewhere
- and if you want any kind of sensible range, it's going to be a big one.
I think I'd be looking at some of the big 4x4 pickups, with a truckman top on, if you can cope with the load bay being a bit less secure. Mind you, another neighbour's just lost his second Navara to a very similar self-immolation to the last one...
I suspect that 2wd will be the big killer for a van, even though it'd definitely be the cheapest way to tow 3.5t. Trying to drag that kind of weight over anything but a good surface with 2wd will be... challenging.
Just for the record and to show that I'm still here taking this in, our boat (and the others we used to tow) are craned in or, in the old days, the previous trailer was towed by a tractor into the channel and the tide did the rest.
When we did a long trip by road a son hired a very large Transit, but the Disco was used to move the boats around fields, but now in a marina we usually just tow around a bit on the flat.
4WD, low ratio and (for me) the auto gears are still needed when we tow the empty, but still heavy, trailer to park in other son's garden. The approach to the parking place is tight and narrow and the ground rough and undulating. With this in mind, the shorter wheelbase of the Disco would be better than, say, a Rangie.
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