Opinion on Land Rover

Just got my 1995 Discovery out of the shop for the last time I hope. It will be going up for sale this week and I've replaced it with a Toyota.

I've owned the Discovery for 4 months. I bought it with 120k miles and it now has 127k. It was a warm weather car as I bought it from the original owner in the state of FL in the US.

After 4 months and 7k miles I wouldn't own another Rover, in my opinion the engines are junk. From the day I bought it oil poured out of everywhere. I had all the leaks fixed. Last month it blew a head gasket. The garage ended up putting helicoils in the block because some of the threads were stripped.

I don't know if it's a problem anywhere else but in the US you can not get a new or rebuilt engine here. The only option is used. I had a hard time finding an engine but managed to find one for $2100 US which had 56k miles on it. Fortunately it sold before I could buy it. Makes you wonder if it would have all the same problems too.

After 4 months and many $ I've formed an opinion of Rovers, wouldn't have another for anything. It's an overpriced, weak vehicle that breaks down alot. I can hardly wait for the next owner to drive off in it.

Mine came with all the repair receipts the original owner had done and it was a lot more then what I spent.

Sorry mates, but these were my experiences.

Joe

Reply to
joe dzurinda
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So you bought a 9 year old car (which was pissing oil) and it broke. The garage stripped the threads and had to helicoil it.

On that basis you form the opinion that 'the engines are junk'.

Statistically, one is not a large enough sample to draw such a conclusion. I have 135,000 on my Discovery, and it doesn't leak or use oil. I have 70,000 km on the V8 in the 101, and it runs very well. Therefore, I conclude that the engines are absolutely perfect. :-)

BTW, it isn't 'a Rover'. Rover haven't been involved in the production or design of Land Rovers for donkey's years.

Having spent money fixing it, I'd personally want to keep it and get something for my investment. But good luck with the next car.

Reply to
Tim Hobbs

The engines are American - best Buick I'm afraid. They're a lot better now than they were when originally designed.

If you had wanted to you could have replaced your blown engine with a Buick Fireball 215 which is fundamentally the same engine, albeit without the electronicery that your one had.

If the threads in the block were stripped this really points to a mechanic who couldn't find his arse with a map. More or less the only way to strip the thread is to overtorque the bolts quite badly or to crossthread and force them - it's an alumin(i)um block and thus a bit softer than the iron blocks most US mechanics are used to.

As for the oil pouring out of everywhere, these engines always seeped a little, but pouring out sounds like it hasn't had enough/correct maintenance.

A fundamental problem with landies in the US is that there are effectively zero people who know how to maintain them properly. They tend to be as tough as nails if they get the correct care, but as you have discovered they don't like being abused while being maintained.

FWIW I just got rid of a 20 year old Range Rover with somewhere over 1/2m miles on it and the engine was about the most sound thing on the car. It had been maintained by people used to these blocks and it showed.

As goes overpriced, yes - they are expensive, but how many cars do you know that can reasonably be expected to still be working as well 40 years on as they did when new while being thrashed on a daily basis as an awful lot of Land Rovers do?

I don't see what you mean by weak. Sure your engine was problematic, but what was the issue wit the rest of the car?

Sorry you had such a bad experience and hope you have a better one with the Toyota.

P.

Reply to
Paul S. Brown

im sorry to here of your bad experiences with land rover, as you can appreciate with ANY used vehicle you may risk the possibility of buying someones problems.

yes Landys leak oil but so do other vehicles. and if your after a reliable oil leaking free, luxury, maintanance free vehicle, dont get a landy.Part of the enjoyment of owning the best 4x4 on any road in any state in any country is sorting out any defects, bringing it up to YOUR standards and saying" yes it may be a little behind in the luxury stakes," but its my Landy, and its how i want it.

It is not just a vehicle to buy and compare to the rest of the world. Theres things you can do wth a landy that other companies just dream of.

no other vehicle manufacturer has the reputation of being the best

4x4xfar.

but its like a good scotch whiskey, .........not everyones tatste.

i too have a toyota landcruiser as well as my landrover and i can see your point, but they realy are two totaly different vehicles.

good luck

Andy

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Reply to
Andy

Whiskey is Irish...

I'm not usually such a pedant - but I'm currently working my way down a bottle of Glenlivet.

Reply to
Tim Hobbs

if the boot was on the other foot, and id bought a hummer that was well worn, i suppose id slag all hummers off.

if anyone would like to lend me there hummer for a month or two. ill report back here on my opinions of it.

andy

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Andy

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Of course. I hate Alfa Romeos, because I owned two once (yes, at the same time, double jeopardy!!). But what is it about Land Rovers which means I (and so many others) can forgive them so much?

I've spent almost 2K on the Discovery in the last six months, and reckon on spending about half as much again on the 101 in the rest of

2004. This is on top of the steady drip feed of oddments with the Series 2.

Mandy has spent absolutely zero on her Merc in the last 12 months, and loves it. I hate the bloody thing!!

Reply to
Tim Hobbs

I knew the engine was an old Buick, I had one. That engine is the weak link of the Rover I'm afraid.

Maintenance is the thing. I hoped buying from the original owner would be a good thing but the woman must not have taken good care of it. Or whoever did the work was bad. When I bought it I took it to where she had the work done as there was a good amount of oil pouring out of the upper manifold. The mechanic told me he replaced the engine with a used one at one point. After that the original owner let it sit for a year.

Everything else on the vehicle is good, but I had nothing but problems with that engine. There were so many problems that I refused to buy another used engine, and here in the US there are no rebuit ones around.

The place I had do the work told me they have no idea how long the helicoils would hold, and I'm not feeling lucky.

Joe

Reply to
joe dzurinda

If they've done them properly, they should be stronger than the original threads.

Reply to
Simon Atkinson

That doesn't inspire confidence in the place which put them in.

I know Rolls Royce used helicoils for the threads in one of their engines as standard.

Reply to
David G. Bell

in article snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Tim Hobbs at snipped-for-privacy@101ambulance-urine.net wrote on 24/4/04 11:35 pm:

No character.

Reply to
Nikki Cluley

in article snipped-for-privacy@bright.net, joe dzurinda at snipped-for-privacy@removebrightdsl.net wrote on 24/4/04 11:56 pm:

Our Range Rover sat for a year and still started. Was the used engine from a Land Rover? Our Discovery has just done 133,000 miles and properly maintained will go on for the same again. The 120,000 miles you mentioned in your first post, was that the figure on the clock or the miles that the replacement engine had done? Do you know how many miles the replacement engine had done at all before the transplant? The fact that its had to have another engine in it at all doesn't sound that the maintainace was very good from the owner or her mechanics.

Is this the place that did the original work and fitted the replacement engine? Sounds to me like they don't really have a clue and are after some work fitting a replacement engine.

Reply to
Nikki Cluley

I was told the replacement engine had 80k on it. Also told the reason for the replacement was the previous owners son froze the old engine.

The current mechanic told me this engine wasn't in very good condition. They said the heads had been off at one time and there was also a mark on one of the pistons where a valve had hit it. Didn't crack it but dented it.

Things are terrible for Land Rovers in the US, we just don't have good service for these vehicles.

I thought about it last night and I wasn't fair in my statement about Rovers. I once had a very bad experience with Ford that put me off for 10 years. The second one I bought was the best vehicle I ever owned.

Think I'd have a better opinion if I could have found a new engine at a reasonable price. What they want for a used engine here you can buy a new domestic engine.

Joe

Reply to
joe dzurinda

Maybe running a Land Rover in the USA is akin to running a Japanese 4x4 in the UK? Things are OK until something radical like a gearbox or engine needs replacing and then your stuffed with either a large bill or sourcing a secondhand unit and hoping that it is still in fairly good nick??

My opinion of Land Rovers is only higher than other vehicles because (a) spares are plentiful in the UK (and cheap by comparison) (b) they are simple to work on (never having worked on anything later than a P38 mind you) (c) they pull like little trojans

However I always seem to be bolting bits back onto mine and, in the case of the 1989 RR that I have just sold, when I compare the build quality and level of 'goodies' with other luxury cars of that period I do wonder just who was buying new Range Rovers around that time - looks like their build quality is still getting the thumbs down?

Graeme

Reply to
Graeme

in article c6gejt$bqkqt$ snipped-for-privacy@ID-198594.news.uni-berlin.de, Graeme at snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk wrote on 25/4/04 2:31 pm:

Before the days of Land Rover we had a Mitsubishi Shogun. Apart from Bruce's Bedford van, this was the worst vehicle we have ever owned. When it finally died I am just glad it wasn't me driving it. Made enquiries about replacing the engine and the cheapest reconditioned one at the time was £2250 and then we would have to get it fitted.

True...as long as you don't use a franchise dealer for your parts.

So easy that Bruce will do most of his own work.

Especially V8's.

But it wouldn't be the same if there wasn't a list of at least half a dozen things to be done on each one.

Reply to
Nikki Cluley

Character = unreliability? Yes I do believe that some of us equate this sum.

Huw

Reply to
Huw

On or around Sat, 24 Apr 2004 18:56:47 -0400, "joe dzurinda" enlightened us thusly:

that engine has been seriously abused and not maintained, and most engines would be unreliable treated like that. I know people who've blown up engines in 30K miles by not bothering to ever get 'em serviced, yet others have had similar engines and 300K with 'em.

Reply to
Austin Shackles

See sig.

Reply to
PDannyD

Actually I agreed with you I know several from Georgia. Just kidding. But I also changed my opinion.

Maybe I just got a Rover that was poorly taken care of and had bad maintenance.

I still don't like the aluminum engine though. The problem I see is when 2 dissimilar metals touch each other there are problems. I also think if Rover had a cast iron engine in the Discovery it would last forever.

Joe

Reply to
joe dzurinda

I think you hit it right on the head. There are no replacement engines here other then used. The price of a used one with 56k miles on it was $2100, for one of our domestics I could spend $1500 for a totally rebuilt engine.

I'd like to know how that equates to your expense in the UK but I couldn't tell you.

LR would do much better here if we could get parts. I couldn't find anyone that would even rebuild the engine I had. Honestly if I could have gotten a decent transplant I'd probably keep the vehicle. Bothers me that it's so expensive for a used engine, and not easy to find at that.

Joe

Reply to
joe dzurinda

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