Sounds great !!

I'll be buying an old sub £2000 Landie when I return from Africa in the new year !! :D

Hi Ted, ive had lots of landies, my last 90 i had for 10yrs only fault was clutch fork had worn through as said above, though not bad after 152,000 miles £15 fix and 4hrs on my drive to do however I snapped the chassis at 160K but i had used(abused) it seriously for 10yrs.

best buy was a 94' 200 tdi disco with 8months mot for £400 9 previous owners, I had to replace the rear floor - easy job parts cost £50 & my son is a metal sticker by trade.
I drove it 5K around morroco then another year as a my main car doing 200miles+ a week and it always returned low 30's mpg.
the center diff in the gearbox went pop @149K, I was offered another gearbox for £80 but sold the car on Ebay for £270 so can't complain.

A disco makes a great overlander more space than a 90 & alot more comfortable also very good offroad and boy are they cheap.

regards all
Gren

Ive onwned series 1, 2, 3's Defenders + Discoveries in the last 25 + years, theres plenty to like and not like.

If they have not been serviced properly and looked after then your are bound to get problems.

Likewise, I sometimes pull (whats left of) my hair out, at some of the poorly designed and shoddily built components LR use and the way they are 'cobbled' together in Solihull.

The series vehicles are great fun and if you dont have to do long distances in them, then good ones can be had, my first Rover was a 1954 S1 86 inch, which is one of my favorites,great fun and if you find one with a later 2.25petrol engine in good order, very practical.

Ive bought 1 Rover from new - my 95 Defender 90 - 15 years, 175,000 + miles, its been all over Europe in Trials competitions, UK Warn Challenge series, in water up to nearly its roof, towed my old 2.5 ton + Bedford J series Abulance around to classic car shows all over Southern England, ( Now sold and used on the TV show 'The Royal') towed 5 ton trailers around on a farm, been across the Sahara twice,

so far Ive changed:

1 alternator (under warranty)
1 fuel tank (dented and leaked)
3 timing belts (scheduled)
2 sets of injectors (scheduled)
1 set of bushes (scheduled)
1 new Rad (clogged with mud and corroded)
4 new wheel bearings (preventative maintenance b4 sahara trip)
1 new exhaust system

On the last trip to Ghana, 27,000 km round trip, the only thing that went wrong was the metal end of one windscreen wiper fell off in Mali - it was 43 degress C in the shade though.

Its started first time, every time for 15 years and never let me down once.

Can they be frustrating and cause alot of skin to be removed from your knuckles ? - Yes

Would I like the design and build quality to be better ?- Yes

Would I drive anything else ? - No

Cheers

Grif

I owned a series 11 landrover once. called it the stranded rover and was never happier than the day I got rid of it for a good old holden HQ ute

Great to read some positive experiences then.

So to answer the OP, treated right it is an urban myth, notwithstanding Grif's observations about design and BQ.

I just heard from a bloke with a Discovery 200 auto still on the original box @180,000 miles. Not every Tojo can manage that!

Ch

never been with out
 

I love my disco 200 tdi, built in 1993 2door in white and the only thing I have replaced is the left side cv joint as it popped while wading through the floods in lockerbie last november and the water was at bonnet level while stopped.

the landie has never failed me and only leaks through the twin sunroofs.. build quality could be better:blushing::blushing:

would I change her ? NO
will I take her around the world ? A very big YES WITHOUT HESSITATING.

NOW IN THE PROCESS OF prepping for the tour...

20,000,000 landie drivers around the world can't all be wrong.. can we.

my stats on landie
200 tdi auto
250,000 on the clock
original engine, gearbox, transfer box and axles and propshafts
serviced every 5000 miles

owned from jan 1994 so had this landie all its life ex demo

may replace injectors and transfer box as still original...... never broken down well only when the cv joint popped but still drove home. fixed within the hour.....

We hear you Crappy but dont let's have this thread go that way again - the LR bashing has all been done to death here.

Like the OP said... I really am not interested in a LR Vs Toyota thread highjacking...

Ch


Later....
Oh dear. Let's lock this one up and throw away the key.

why have THE BRITISH ARMED FORCES USED THE LR FOR THE LAST 50 years and the Dutch army swears by land rover.... best war horse ever still see series 1 s on the road but dont see any 30 year old Jap 4x4s. lets keep this thead LAND ROVER..... sod it going for a drive and to do some green lanes..

ps... not even al quieda or the Taliban can stop them.... we repair and its back on the road......e SAS cant be wrong theirs are PINK(are you going to tell them its crap)for the desert and green camo over here

ITS also the only 4x4 thats sold in 90 0/0 of the world and out sells jap crap... (may not be fact

its interesting that seeing whats on the road, the utility companies (eon) seem to be going back to landrovers where as a few years ago they seemed to have moved to nissan i think.

i'm guessing the landys last longer and have better residual values so the economics work

The military use landrovers because of political expediencey. they were going to ditch them after the debacle of the early diesels, but the government stepped in and insisted they were used. Landrover then managed to consistently fail to deliver what they were supposed to deliver when they were supposed to deliver it.
MOD procurement wanted mercedes, a mix of G wagen (which, incidently is used by the dutch, the landy is only used in limited numbers) and the unimog. The landie is also being replaced in ops by more suitable vehicles, and not before time(and the SAS don't use them)
travel around the world a bit and you will see that very definately 90% of the world does not use landrovers, they use toyotas. Having said that, I've got a landrover! why, because I can't get a toyota that does the same job as my landy, that doesn't have electrocics and has the parts availability of a landy
TLC H60
Landy 130 crewcab
Ford Ranger

If you overload them, drive them to the extreme they will generally carry on regardless. So people do and get surprised when occaisionally fail. (Don't know about all the electronic stuff)

We have had Landy's (series and 109 and Defenders) in our family since 1958 and no serious problems. My Defender was bought in 1991 and only once didn't get us home. The fuel gauge got stuck on a quarter full ran out of fuel outside our neighbours house.