Discovery 3

[johnnytheboy]

I was thinking about buying one of the older discovery 3, diesel version, what’s everyones thoughts on them? Ok or to much hassle? I know some of the older rangies are fraught with problems wonders if these were the same? 

[walshie]

Don't do it!  Disco 3s are probably worse than the earlier ones with added electrics to also go wrong. 

[Wb123]

If you are going to work on it yourself and are clever with the newfangled electrical systems they are probably ok. 

 

Im not that good so won’t go newer than disco one. 

[PhilR]

I've had two following on from a D2 TD5. The first was taken back by the LR specialist I bought it from because of an expensive gearbox fault within a couple of weeks of ownership.

The next one they replaced it with I had for 3 years and did 40k miles in it. However, it was a money pit and eventually it had to go, the straw that broke the camel's back was brake failure caused by oil seepage into the brake servo, a very common problem.

It's a great shame because I thoroughly enjoyed driving it, it was extremely versatile the second row of seats dropped flat making into virtually a van. I've had a tonne of pheasant feed bags in it and it also assisted the house move when the removal company cocked up their van size. I've been a member of breakdown recovery companies for 40 odd years. In all that time I've only ever had to call them out to attend roadside breakdowns for my Discoverys.

I now own a Honda CRV and can't fault it.

Edited January 6, 2019 by PhilR

[Mungler]

The disco 3 was the best looking of the bunch but of the half dozen or so people I know to have had one, none of them would get another one.

The best disco motoring ended with the facelift 2 td5 manual - nothing fancy or expensive to break / go wrong, good looking enough to go anywhere.

 

[MFC]

Had3 D3’s and must have been lucky as they were superb cars and now on my 2nd D4 which is superb. No more spent on them than anything else I have had. The worse thing I had expense wise was a full service with the cam belts which was about £800 at the Landrover indie garage I use. Superbly cabable cars and if it’s the HSE model it’s get all the bits. Superbly comfortable and great to drive. With decent tyres on them they are great off road too. Make sure they have been serviced looked after and sure you won’t have too much trouble. 

[Harnser]

Save your money and buy a jap or ford pickup .

harnser

[figgy]

For certain jobs the body has to come off the chassis, who ever thought that was a good design should be shot.

Go buy a Toyota or Honda Volvo anything but a old disco 3.

There is a reason they oy come with a three year warranty, jaguar land rover would go bust repairing them.

Edited January 7, 2019 by figgy

[secret-squirrel]

Air suspension 🤮🤢 

when Your driving your jap truck and turn a corner to see a 2005 Range Rover or disco 2 or  3 that looks like it’s either cocking it’s rear leg like a dog ..or totally sat on its a**e having a number 2 because the air bag has split 😂😂 makes me smile ...  I no it should but it does 

 theres So much potential to get a pin hole puncture in the airbags then all that happens from there is the compressor works overtime and eventually burns out costing a small fortune to replace 

if you buy one convert it to springs but then you may aswell but something different .

I nearly bought a 2004 Range Rover until I went to see my local specialist talked me right out of it .

went and brought a 2006 ford ranger ..to be honest I wasn’t very happy with that . sucked like a goodn very very low geared when you was doing 60 engine was high up the revs and the truckman back !! What a nightmare ... the Mises has coulinders that are more watertight !!!

 

SS

Edited January 7, 2019 by secret-squirrel

[eddoakley]

Mrs Edd drives a d3 that's been to the moon and back and apart from the suspension compressor (around £300 iirc) it's no more expensive to maintain  than anything else we own, cheaper and easier than some.

Had a remap which was well worth the £200 as it drives very differently and I'm told fuel economy is vastly improved.

But I can only speak for the one that we have, heard plenty of horror stories.

 

Edd

[Scully]

There used to be a lot on big shoot and BIG shoot, but most have changed to the newer Disco's now. The only horror story I know of when they were new, was a bloke who dropped his missus at the shops and decided to have a snooze while he waited, so wound the seat down as far as it would go. Had to drive home hanging off the steering wheel as it wouldn't come back up! 😃

[oowee]

Mate of mine has had one of the first Disco 5. Its just been swapped by agreement for a Range Rover due to the continuous faults. My wifes new Disco Sport went back this week after a year with a warning light fault. I was thinking here we go with LR reliability but it turned out to be a wiring harness chewed by mice whilst we left it for three weeks at the airport car park. £350 😞 

Why not look a a Freelander 2 cheap and get good reliability reports. 

[ferguson_tom]

23 hours ago, figgy said:

For certain jobs the body has to come off the chassis, who ever thought that was a good design should be shot.

My mate runs an indie landy garage and everytime i go see him there is always at least one with the body up on the lift and the chassis on the deck. Normally its for a turbo change, there is now a way of doing it without removing the body but its about as short as it is long for them.

You may be lucky and get a decent one but they were known for reliability issues at a few years old let alone 10-15 as they are now, 

[bruno22rf]

secret squirrel - LR suspension compressors are under £300 and generally last 80k miles + the air bags can be picked up for around £60 - gives you luxury handling and adjustable road height for years as well as self levelling.

[Hayden]

Be very careful.

I had a 57 plate that I had to scrap after 5 months of ownership, due to the oil pump housing shearing off, knocking the timing belt and knackering the engine. It just wasn’t economical to get the engine replaced. Was quoted between 6 and 12k to repair.

Whatever you buy get it checked to over as I was told that the oil pump had been changed when it hadn’t.

Saying all this, if my wife would let me, I’d get another one! They are huge inside, and are very practical, loads of room for kids and dogs.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Hayden

[BrowningDJC]

Got numerous friends that have had discovery’s, 3’s and 4’s. ALL of them have had expensive issues. 

I’m sure there some good ones out there. But a major fault in an older disco 3 could cost a big part of the cars overall value. 

Edited January 26, 2019 by BrowningDJC

[tweedledee]

I would love to try one but sadly I don't have deep enough pockets to sort the figures in reading here should anything go wrong lol

[norfolk dumpling]

A mate of mine has £100k RRover and basically he says it is **** - both electrical and mechanical issues. It has spent half its short like back with the dealer. He's not impressed with dealership either and that seems to be a common issue. What i can't grasp is this has been the case for years - another buddy who worked for Ford when they had LR under their wing (circa 2000?) said all RR's were passed through Ford quality assessors before they were released to customers. Why oh why haven't they looked at every fault - like all other makers do - and learn from the repetitive faults. Ford fix in real time as breakdown/faults are reported. JLR seem to ignore.

[figgy]

On 13/01/2019 at 07:37, Hayden said:

Be very careful.

I had a 57 plate that I had to scrap after 5 months of ownership, due to the oil pump housing shearing off, knocking the timing belt and knackering the engine. It just wasn’t economical to get the engine replaced. Was quoted between 6 and 12k to repair.

Whatever you buy get it checked to over as I was told that the oil pump had been changed when it hadn’t.

Saying all this, if my wife would let me, I’d get another one! They are huge inside, and are very practical, loads of room for kids and dogs.

Good luck with whatever you decide.

Hayden

Why didn't you buy a rear ended write off for the engine, sell any other good bits and scrap the rest. Might not have cost you very much.

[Hayden]

On 29/01/2019 at 04:00, figgy said:

Why didn't you buy a rear ended write off for the engine, sell any other good bits and scrap the rest. Might not have cost you very much.

Very good point.  But unfortunately I was at the stage of, if I get this repaired, what else could go wrong with the car in future, had lost trust in that particular car.

Various people had suggested all these options (The D3 forum was very informative of all the options I had), but I'm not very handy when it comes to cars, so would have had to rely heavily on others and the thought of doing all this filled me with dread.  Also not having the time to buy, strip and sell all the good bits of a donor car, and then there was trying to gain access to a workshop to do a 'body off' rebuild.  Completely out of my comfort zone, and way too much work for an accountant by trade!

Cheers

Hayden

[figgy]

Hayden it's the body off chassis that kills any disco 3 and 4 work. Most stupid design I've seen in recent times. Even for Jag LR it must cost themselves a fortune in workshop hours on warranty work. Then it puts off potential customers when the cars are out of warranty.

I think I see nearly as many disco td5's as I do the 3 and 4's.  Very good to drive and great tow cars but too many problems that cost lots to fix

 

[Hayden]

6 minutes ago, figgy said:

Hayden it's the body off chassis that kills any disco 3 and 4 work. Most stupid design I've seen in recent times. Even for Jag LR it must cost themselves a fortune in workshop hours on warranty work. Then it puts off potential customers when the cars are out of warranty.

I think I see nearly as many disco td5's as I do the 3 and 4's.  Very good to drive and great tow cars but too many problems that cost lots to fix

 

Completely agree.  Whoever thought it was a good idea, that to do almost anything, you'd need to lift the body off, must have had a screw lose!!  Coupled with not great reliability, no wonder why they are so expensive to buy in the first place!

As you say, a great drive and everything else, but the repair bills could bring most men to tears..

Cheers

Hayden

[simonm]

I’ve got a 54 plate at 120k miles and it’s been fine whilst I’ve had it. It did have 1 last owner with FSH so I thought it was worth the risk!

I think a lot of people confuse maintenance with faults - older Discoverys and RRs are usually high mileage and of course things wear about. But because they are cheap to buy people try and run them on a shoestring. Someone told me if you can’t afford to buy a new one yoU can’t afford to run a second hand one!

The oiL pump issue mentioned above applies to engines manufactured over a couple of years only I will try and find the link to which years

Anyway in its defence, my Discovery was absolutely incredible on Friday in the significant (for the south) snowfall, on Friday which brought north Hampshire to a halt. I rescued many vehicles and bar a defender or two I was the only vehicle to make it over the downs. On AT tyres and in snow mode it really was unstoppable and the grip was phenomenal. It’s a keeper! 

 

[figgy]

Simonm I've heard of a few people who have had very good ones. But that isn't the norm for them. Bled you have a good one and enjoy it.

The cost of running a lot of expensive CA s when new can be eye watering.

[Hayden]

I thought mine had been looked after, even checked with the previous owner about the fuel pump, as it's a known fault, he'd told me it was done, and it was my own fault for not checking.  I should have purchased it, then taken it straight to my trusted garage to check, but I didn't, and 4 months later, paid the ultimate price!  Lesson learned the hard way.  Mine had only done 107k miles, but as said previously, I was unable to do the work needed/know the right people to get it back on the road cost effectively.

I think the oil pump issue was the 2007 and 2008 cars.

 

16 hours ago, simonm said:

Anyway in its defence, my Discovery was absolutely incredible on Friday in the significant (for the south) snowfall, on Friday which brought north Hampshire to a halt. I rescued many vehicles and bar a defender or two I was the only vehicle to make it over the downs. On AT tyres and in snow mode it really was unstoppable and the grip was phenomenal. It’s a keeper! 

Ah, the snow on Friday Simonm, living just outside of Basingstoke (And working in Basingstoke) we had fun..  My XC90 worked well, but I'm pleased I didn't get stuck in the traffic!

But you're right, they are everything anyone would ever need in a 4x4, assuming you look after them/have a good one!  Mine had AT tyres, and worked really well.

Cheers

Hayden