Petrol or diesel Disco - and car seats?

Hi,

First post as am new to the forum.

Well, here goes... We have 4 kids between us (you know how families collect after divorces), and I'm looking for a 6/7 seater vehicle for the family. I never thought of a landy before, but have been advised they are a good choice. So I have two questions as I dont want to ask the obvious what shall I get??!!?

First, the car will be used for school runs (about 3 miles each way), but also for more general use, not many long journeys I might add. We have about £2k absolute max to spend. So, would a petrol or diesel be better, and should I steer clear of a V8 or are they mor reliable. We're also looking at LPG converted discos or potnetially the option of making/using bio-diesel, although I did read on yahoo answers (I KNOW!! I KNOW!!) somewhere that discos and bio-fuel dont work.

Second question (notice how I've phrased 3 questions in 1 above)... Is there anything illegal about using booster seats for children in the rear where there are the two side-facing seats?

Any other advice would be greatly appreciated.

Looking forward to becoming more of a member on here

Kind regards and many thanks in advance

MN

hello and welcome to the forum(that should have been done in the introduce yourself bit on the main page....)
Q1 a Disco 1 would be an excelent choice for your needs a later one with anti roll bars would be best as the original ones never had them and wallowed on the road you'll not really find any disco 2s for the £2k you wanna spend
Q2 personaly i would buy a 200tdi one as it will run on bio diesel or svo at a 75% mix with diesel a V8 with lpg will give you alot more problems then a tdi will
Q3 i just wouldn't use the dickie seats with booster seats as i dont believe it to be safe practice regardless of it being leagal or not

hope you enjoy your time on the forum, there is alot of p*ss taking and mocking but is 99% in good heart and the 1% they isn't should be ignored

bloody hell mate (messie nessie) you sound like me about 8 months ago. i had a k reg tweaked BMW 325i coupe and basically needed more seats for kids to sit on. I reluctantly changed my pride and joy for a 1996(N) 3.9 V8i ES thats been converted to run on LPG/petrol. it cost me £1700. the water pump went on it after 6 weeks, then the front shocks a month later and it needed 4 new tires when i bought it. i thought it was a **** heap. HOWEVER mainly my pride forced me to carry on and as i do the work on the Disco myself its only cost me about £80 for the water pump and belt, £50 for Bilstien black front shocks and £380 recently for BF Goodrich all terrain tires! now i own a mean offroading familly vehicle and i absolutely LOVE it-so does the missus! its pokey enough but at the same time has stopped me driving like a nob, sounds stunning, has great road presence and is absolutely pratical in every sense - the other day i put all the seats down, turned it into a van and helped my mate move home, later i bought a washing mashine and put it in the boot with a hoover and all our weeks food shop and 5 of us drove home in comfort, then we put the dog guard in and took our dogs to the woods, my missus collected the kids from school and then i even did a cheeky little bit of off roading! I personally love the V8's (im a bit of a petrol head) but believe the majority on this forum will tell you that the TDi's are a LOT more reliable(and simple) especially off road (in water). sorry to ramble i'm not entirely sure what my point is apart from that a year ago i wouldnt of looked twice at a landrover now i wouldnt be without 1. Just choose VERY wisely, there are some very good ones out there, and some **** uns!-look out for rust. hurray for 7 seats, air con, V8's and 4wd!!!

All booster seats are designed to work and be used in forward facing seats and the law states this as well, if you have children who are old enough or tall enough to not need child seats then put them in the dickie seats, otherwise put an adult in there and a child in the forward facing seat.

Hi I have a n lpg disco 1 v8 which I love. It runs fine on lpg provided it's well maintained. Servicing of ignition components is absolutely essential as is keeping the water topped up as the lpg relies on hot water from the engine for vapourisation. LPG v8s are great but don't buy one. I you're doing mainly short journeys you will use a lot of petrol as you really need to get up to normal running temperature before switching to lpg.

Some 15 years ago we borrowed a V8 Range Rover for a few months, it did about 12mpg but sounded magnificent! Not an appealing prospect at current petrol prices. I have just got a '97R 300Tdi which is costing about 25p/mile in diesel doing mainly trips of 15 to 25 miles.

After a big Volvo estate I find it desperately lacking load space and storage - the extra height in the back certainly doesn't make up for the lack of floor area, I have trouble fitting the week's shopping in the boot as I keep a box in there with all the stuff that went in a space UNDER the boot floor in the Volvo (jump start cables, triangle, umbrella, dog bowl, water and towel etc etc) - and the huge turning circle is a pain.

The jump seats in the boot are horrid for anything but very short journeys and definitely should not have child booster seats fitted to them. You'd probably need something like a Ford Galaxy to use child seats in the 3rd row, and then you don't have any boot space at all.

mayday08 said:

Some 15 years ago we borrowed a V8 Range Rover for a few months, it did about 12mpg but sounded magnificent! Not an appealing prospect at current petrol prices. I have just got a '97R 300Tdi which is costing about 25p/mile in diesel doing mainly trips of 15 to 25 miles.

After a big Volvo estate I find it desperately lacking load space and storage - the extra height in the back certainly doesn't make up for the lack of floor area, I have trouble fitting the week's shopping in the boot as I keep a box in there with all the stuff that went in a space UNDER the boot floor in the Volvo (jump start cables, triangle, umbrella, dog bowl, water and towel etc etc) - and the huge turning circle is a pain.

The jump seats in the boot are horrid for anything but very short journeys and definitely should not have child booster seats fitted to them. You'd probably need something like a Ford Galaxy to use child seats in the 3rd row, and then you don't have any boot space at all.

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So yer thought yerd come on here n moan about it then ?/

did yer not think t look at what yer spent yer money on afore yer bought it?