Buying a discovery

In message , Alison writes

Typical Yorkie, money orientated? :-)

From my experience with a V8...

Major service will be about £200 plus anything that needs fixing. Minor service will be about £100. That compares well to the £365 I have just paid for Mandy's little Merc shoebox to be serviced...

Tyres are about £75 per corner for good branded tyres (BFG etc). You can half that if you are happy with remoulds.

Exhausts are expensive if you need the catalyst replacing - full system is about £600.

Check the timing belt modification has been done - it was a factory recall. Check the state of the gearbox - manual boxes at that vintage may or may not have the 'cross-drilled gear' modification - if it hasn't you will need to spend £1000 on a new gearbox at somewhere about 100-120K miles (unless the previous owner already has!).

I'm not aware of any issues with head gaskets on the TDi.

A good Disco will cost a little more to buy than a shed, but will last forever if well cared for. Worry less about the cosmetics and more about the state of the drivetrain, the engine and the chassis.

I've owned some very expensive cars to run (101FC, Jaguar XJR etc). Add them all together and they are still only half the price of my beloved first-born ;-)

This might help with servicing costs and they are in North Yorkshire....

cheers

Dave W.

Dave White wrote in news:20040606113616370+ snipped-for-privacy@news.demon.co.uk:

Many thanks for the website

Hi.....How can you physically establish whether this 'cross drill' mod in gearbox has been carried out? I bought a 'M' plate 300 Tdi Disco a couple of months ago with 95K on the clock and I'm getting a bit paranoid about all these warnings of catastrophic gearbox failure at 100-120K. I have a full service record and the main agent has confirmed that the cam belt would have been changed at c.70K, but they have no record of the gearbox being modified in this way...... k

I don't think there was ever an official mod to the gearbox that could be retrofitted. AIUI the only way to fit the mainshaft is to strip down the gearbox.

Steve Parker did a splasher kit, but I've no idea if it's any good. At 95K I swapped my gearbox - Ashcrofts reckon it had a fair life left in it, but was definitely wearing. You can apparently check the wear by removing the PTO cover and examining it in situ. Don't quite know what to look for, other than obviously worn splines.

On or around Mon, 07 Jun 2004 08:55:02 +0100, Tim Hobbs enlightened us thusly:

rust and dust and worn splines. New toy has quite a clunk on gearchanging, 'specially if you're careless with the clutch or revs.

gearchanging,

Thanks for these comments guys.....my gearbox feels and sounds OK at present, apart from slight synchromesh wear moving up into second gear. I'll open the PTO cover and take a look - rust and DUST eh >?? that would be serious.....give me emulsion and sediment any day!....K

On or around Thu, 10 Jun 2004 00:23:40 +0100, "k" enlightened us thusly:

seen a picture in an LRE or LRM or summat a while back, they were doing a bit on fitting Steve Parker's thing. The essence of the problem is that the spined shaft inside the top transfer gear cluster gets no oil and therefore gets dry. This results in the sort of debris you see when dry steel things wear. I guess the dust is metallic.

what I don't know is whether it's worth fitting the lube thing to one that's already worn.

in article snipped-for-privacy@brightview.com, k at snipped-for-privacy@madasafish.com wrote on 10/6/04 12:23 am:

If it makes you feel any better, our Discovery has done about 133,000 miles and we've had no problems with the gear box so far. No horrible clunks either.

On or around Thu, 10 Jun 2004 10:08:56 +0100, Nikki Cluley enlightened us thusly:

it may have been modified... how many miles on it when you bought it, and did you have any history?

K plate Disco, 225,800 odd miles before the gearbox went. Replacement from Ashcroft will not make that I'm sure...

On or around Thu, 10 Jun 2004 16:20:08 +0100, Mother enlightened us thusly:

oh well, I'm not gonna worry unduly about this one then. It's possible with practice to make clonk-free gearchanges.

in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Austin Shackles at snipped-for-privacy@ddol-las.fsnet.co.uk wrote on 10/6/04 3:08 pm:

Full service history from dealer and it had about 80,000 on it when we bought it. I've checked the records and can't find any reference to anything being done on the gearbox.