series 2 disco td5 auto - whats it like offroad?

Struggling to find a decent disco td5 manual (prices seem to be all over the place).

So was looking at auto's. But what are they like offroad? Can you lock them in gear so it isn't shifting when your right in the middle of mud etc.

How much worse is the auto for mpg than the manual?

cheers

Stu

In low range they can be set in manual mode, that locks it in a the gear you select, but I'm not convinced it always works. However in practise I have found that the gentler take up of an auto goes some where to reduce the need for higher gears.
The biggest problem is descending steep hills. It will tend to be quite quick. It is best to stop at the top to ensure it is actually in 1st gear, if you are rolling even if you put the selector into 1 if you're not going slowly enough it may not change down, but even in 1st it will still descend faster than a manual, even with HDC (don't try it without HDC!)
I am talking about extreme off roading, if you merely want to do some greenlaning, or go shooting, an Auto should be fine.
I would try and go for a later one with a Diff Lock, but if I found one that ticked all the other boxes, it wouldn't stop me getting one without.

i have an auto without difflock. TC works well but tyres are the most important thing. when the wife allows, i'll get a set of BF AT's and a difflock lit from Ashcroft (TC will get me across very muddy field with road tyres on)

I have done some gentle green laning in mine and it coped ok. The TC went bonkers a few times but it worked.

this guy seams to think there ok he is in this months LRO mag aswell www.discovery2.co.uk