Buying a disco - year recommendation?

On or around Mon, 7 Mar 2005 08:04:54 -0800, "feynman" enlightened us thusly:

I reckon you'd do better to stick with skis, for skiing, but your choice...

My personal thought is a good late disco I, 300 TDi or 3.9 V8 (your choice) with LPG. Not too much to choose on the fuel costs, but to get decent range on a converted V8 requires a lot of expensive tankage. 'course, if you can afford the petrol, you just run on petrol anyway :-)

If you intend significant mileage on the continent, a diesel probably makes much sense, seeing as the diesel tends to be cheaper over there.

Since the advent of the Disco III, there's a knock-on effect on SH prices for the earlier ones - there are some VERY tidy fully-loaded disco Is out there at very reasonable money. Disco I goes up to 98/99 or thereabouts. The advantage of this is the money you save with which to buy fuel and other toys.

It's reckoned that you're better off avoiding early TD5s, and TBH, the only TD5 that appeals to me is the face-lifted one with the snazzy headlamps. I forget when they start, might be about 2003, but someone will know.

Austin, I suspect the OP is from Merika. The use of $, going skiing a lot, and traveling; sort of leads me to think in a left pondian way.

So, get the biggest V8, and floor it baby, yeah. How much is 'gas' a US gallon now I wonder?

On or around Tue, 08 Mar 2005 18:18:44 +0000, Colonel Tupperware enlightened us thusly:

oops. good point. in that case, avoid the engines which are known to have porosity problems. Naturally, I forget which are the most prone.

Range Rover ones...

I know a bloke who had a 3.9 Rangie engine replaced due to this, and plenty of stories of dead 4.6's. Never heard of a Disco engine going porous, though ICBW of course.

On or around Wed, 09 Mar 2005 10:25:26 +0000, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:

seems odd, they're the same engines, n'est-ce pas?

My recollection is that it was partly when they were made -- perhaps some change in process -- and partly the cylinder bore.

So Austin Shackles was, like

I heard it was 3.5, 3.9/4.0, 4.6, in that order. Something to do with the thickness of the casting between the liners and the water passages - the more they took away, the worse it got.