buying a discovery????

[napper]

am selling my suz and am thinking of buying a series 1 discovery but don't know the weaknesses and things which have to be up graded. am going to work it a bit and do the chop. ANY IDEAS???? or is a rangie the go.

thanks

[kitacooch]

your enquiry is one of the most common, if you do a search you will find out heaps.
Don't be too hasty buying one as plenty of bargains pop up on ebay and if you have 6k to 12k to spend you will find finnished projects ready to go and with the purchase price spent on aftermarket goodies, chech out and watch the sales section of the forum, seen a few good ones of late, there is a 2 door on there now.
good luck

[Phatmoe]

Watch for the gearbox. Being 5pd's pre 99 ish were a LT77 Box which were a VERY weak box. Also if the Disco or Rangie has a viscus coupling instead of a diff lock when you increase tyre size sometimes they will not drive under heavy load and your left in the S**T. I know of such a case where the guy is putting a earlier Transfer case in his rangie for this reason.

[RangingRover]

Watch for the gearbox. Being 5pd's pre 99 ish were a LT77 Box which were a VERY weak box. Also if the Disco or Rangie has a viscus coupling instead of a diff lock when you increase tyre size sometimes they will not drive under heavy load and your left in the S**T. I know of such a case where the guy is putting a earlier Transfer case in his rangie for this reason.

No discos came with viscous coupling T-cases (except maybe disco 3s!). LT77 stopped being used when they facelifted the series 1 disco in about the start of 93, any series one disco from 94 on should have R380 (easy way to tell is reverse is up left on an LT77, and down right on an R380, same as most other cars). Don't think classic rangie ever came with an R380 as standard, despite getting the softdash treatment in 94.

[napper]

ah ok. so the r380 is all sweet no problems?? want the 4 speed auto here there tuff is that right?

[RangingRover]

R380 is much stronger than the LT77... still probably not as strong as say a Nissan gearbox, but should be strong enough.

The ZF autos don't seem to be a problem in normal road use for series 1s (series 2 seem to chew up autos for some reason, probably because Rover changed the servicing to not have the auto filter changed after the first 40,000.). Don't know how the ZFs are off road though, few guys seem to be running them around here and fitting them in preference to other gearboxes, so they can't be too bad.