smallzoo2

New Member
Been looking for a cheap used SUV for under £3500k. its a 2nd car, and will be used mainly to carry the 3 dogs in the boot, transport stuff and the occasional longer trip to cornwall ( rare ). We will only do about 5k miles a year max


I had an old discovery over 15 years ago and no matter what I did to it ( even crashing through a hedge when I hit black ice ) it never let me down

I've been looking at the obvious Ford Galaxy, Ford S-Max etc but then I thought what about a tdi or td5 discovery

Am I mad thinking I can get a reliable one ?

Cheers

Peter ( Cheshire )
 
Yes!
and welcome to the asylum by the way.
why not pop over to the "introduce yourself" section and do just that?
If you could find a Disco 1 300tdi that isn't too crusty it'd be better.

But others who love the electronix loaded TD5s will gainsay this.

I have both and still would rather have the 300tdi.
 
Welcome :)

Have you thought about a non crusty P38:).

I have nothing against the disco but it seems finding a non rusty 1 is harder than a non rusty P38, also as far as I can gather the TD5 Disco has as many electrickery bits as the P38.

As for reliability, well keep some spare money and I am sure it will be.

Do you do your own work?

J
 
I would agree with @Stanleysteamer see if you can purchase at 300tdi for the mechanical ease! But if you don't mind best of both! Look for Td5?
But! Make sure you do your homework?
300tdi are at the moment rockinghorse 💩 for a good one at the price your looking at?

I'm a Td5 owner, but I'm happy doing anything that needs to be done!!

If both 'D1 & D2' are well maintained (inside and out) there is no reason that you will enjoy many years driving it.

Kev
 
Been looking for a cheap used SUV for under £3500k. its a 2nd car, and will be used mainly to carry the 3 dogs in the boot, transport stuff and the occasional longer trip to cornwall ( rare ). We will only do about 5k miles a year max


I had an old discovery over 15 years ago and no matter what I did to it ( even crashing through a hedge when I hit black ice ) it never let me down

I've been looking at the obvious Ford Galaxy, Ford S-Max etc but then I thought what about a tdi or td5 discovery

Am I mad thinking I can get a reliable one ?

Cheers

Peter ( Cheshire )
Yes. And if you're not mad yet, you're going there.
 
Ok.. no I will not be doing my own maintenance, it will be a local one man band garage that I have used for over 20 years

Dont mind a 300tdi at all.. no preference

P38? yes I did see some 2.5 diesels..I guess though when things go wrong they are even more expensive to fix ?
 
Yes. And if you're not mad yet, you're going there.

You really are pushing the brand lately aren't ;) you?
P38? yes I did see some 2.5 diesels..I guess though when things go wrong they are even more expensive to fix ?

I wouldn't say they are more expensive to fix. They are fairly close mechanically/electrickery.
The help is here for both models, but you wont be asking about rust as its rare:).

Its your choice and money.

J
 
Ok.. no I will not be doing my own maintenance, it will be a local one man band garage that I have used for over 20 years

Dont mind a 300tdi at all.. no preference

P38? yes I did see some 2.5 diesels..I guess though when things go wrong they are even more expensive to fix ?
So you have deep pockets. Good, you'll need them.
 
Rust rust and er rust.
See plenty of td5s about, cannot remember last time I saw a 300.
 
My first BIG worry is when people say I need deep pockets to keep them on the road.

If thats honestly the case for the 300/td5/p38 then I will have to pass.. no point in dreaming
 
My first BIG worry is when people say I need deep pockets to keep them on the road.

If thats honestly the case for the 300/td5/p38 then I will have to pass.. no point in dreaming
No such thing as a cheap landrover. But if you are happy to find a decent one and put the money into it you will do well.
@1988smithy has had a D2 I think like @Stanleysteamer
If you go mad and up to D3 @gstuart will be able to help.
 
My first BIG worry is when people say I need deep pockets to keep them on the road.

If thats honestly the case for the 300/td5/p38 then I will have to pass.. no point in dreaming
Unless you are very lucky you will be spending almost continuously to keep any of the above on the road.
Not so bad if you are willing to do some work but paying labour rates will be a killer.
It's an age thing, to be expected really.
 
My first BIG worry is when people say I need deep pockets to keep them on the road.

If thats honestly the case for the 300/td5/p38 then I will have to pass.. no point in dreaming
You can be lucky, or you can give them a damn good once over before buying.
Personally I would try and find a Jap import Crossroader, or go very carefully for a really rust free D1 300tdi.
Mine has only let me down by rusting in the bodywork, nothing else could I not fix and tbh there has been very little, diesel return pipes, lift pump, rusty sump, that is about it.
The TD5 I similarly worked on and continue to. Rusty chassis had to be welded up. (Many replace the whole back end of it). Warped exhaust manifold which was a bit of a pig due to studs snapped off below the surface but again, apart from getting it ground flat I was able to do all the dismantling and refitting myself, electrical problems like a map/iat sensor which took some diagnosis and help from people on here, ABS problem which again people on here helped with and gave me a work around, as well as a garage misdiagnosing which wheel hub was out to put the 3 amigos up (ABS again). But both of these I was able to do myself cheaply. Worst one from the point of view of sheer expensive stupidity was having to pay a bloke to take the auto box off to replace a paper seal which cost nothing but cured a leak of ATF. Labour to get the box off and back on again was £1000.
Some jobs are awkward, like replacing a starter motor or the contacts in it, due to one particularly inaccessible nut. And the coolant pump is amazingly buried and silly to get to to change.

As you can see I have had to do far more work on the Disco 2 and I have recently paid a bloke to weld up the rear of the front wheel arches.

The above list is totally typical of the sort of work needed. And at the same mileage the D1 300tdi has, as you can see, had much less work needed. BUT it needs much more welding doing on the sills and the rear wheel arches were done soon after buying.

Both vehicles have done about 160K.

And all you need to do to improve the main fault on the 300tdi, namely lack of low down torque on take off, is to fit a sports exhaust.

(I also have a 3.9 litre V8 Disco 1 on LPG, but that is another matter! Goes like stink! Took me AGES to find.)
 
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not only a fantastic post Stanley, but it taught me a new word - bravo sir!

I've been looking at the obvious Ford Galaxy, Ford S-Max etc but then I thought what about a tdi or td5 discovery
You mentioned looking at mundane hatchbacks and considered the alternative to be a classic land rover...
My first BIG worry is when people say I need deep pockets to keep them on the road.

If thats honestly the case for the 300/td5/p38 then I will have to pass.. no point in dreaming
Hear me out before you hit autotrader for a people carrier, but please do bare in mind that a disco 300tdi is a 30 to 25 year old vehicle, a td5 is 25-20 years old at youngest, a bit of TLC will be required. But generally speaking, if you get through an expensive phase of its live, or better yet, get one where the previous owner has aten all those lemons for you, it's still going to be the disco you remember of yore. [EDIT: Best still is to do some preventative maintenance on a disco TD5 to prevent it becoming expensive. ]

I had been without a disco for about 5 years, after selling our 300tdi that I had done all the welding on, stupid I know, but reasons at the time., I had a hankering for another disco, and couldn't find a nice 300tdi that wasn't going to be a welding project, or had been done, but wanted silly money for it. So I bit on the brave pill and bought a late* TD5.

Not gonna lie, I was reticent about taking on a TD5, but the more I looked into the TD5, the more I RESPECT it as an engine. Long story short, with it's integrated injector units, a TD5 will always get you home even if one fails, whereas in the equally unlikely event that a a 300dti kills its fuel injection pump, its immobilized. In many respects the TD5 is more like a marine engine than a road vehicle engine, it has a centrifugal oil filter in addition to the usual oil filter, these "injector units" are an individual HP pump built into each injector, operated by a camshaft. Reminds me of Wartsilla engines I dealt with offshore.

They do have a few weaknesses, and remember I asterisked the word LATE in the previous paragraph? There are really two TD5 engines, 10P & 15P The 10P was the earlier original TD5, and had a few weaknesses later resolved in the 15P, such as having poorer design of head with minimal meat between a fuel pipe (IIRC) and the bore, which lead to cracked heads. ?the heads were also located by PLASTIC (like WTF land rover) dowels, which failed eating a head gasket in the process, whereas the 15P has steel dowels locating the head.

Both engines suffer a bad rep for oil in the ECU, I kid you not, the injector units are located INSIDE the engine, but controlled by an ECU on the inner wing, connected by a wiring loom that goes to a socket on the side of the head, and an internal harness from this bulkhead fitting to the injectors. Oil started to get capillaried up the wires into the ECU. But it's like £25 for the replacement part, and takes less time to fit with a £20 1/4" drive socket set than I've spent typing up this post so far.

Comparing the D2 to the D1, there are enough mechanical similarities you'll feel at home driving it, and I personally found it almost emotional revisiting disco ownership, where the 300tdi XS was our family transport when the kids were little and cute, now they are teenagers, it seems fitting that the disco has also moved on. But those mechanical similarities are not direct like for likenesses. For example it always pained me as an engineer why oh deities be damned why did LR put the bushes for the front and rear arms/hockey sticks coaxial to the arm, rather than perpendicular, as in the D1/RRC/Def the bush has to deform every single time the arm moves, eating the bush. But on a D2 the bush is perpendicular to the arm, coplanar to the bushes that secure it to the axle, making more of a clevis, where the arm can pivot on the metal sleeve against the bolt.

But I do think the 300tdi 3rd row side facing dickie seats were better than the forward facing ones in a td5, I also don't like the fact they went from chrome swivels to rubber bellows for the CV joints on the front axle, or the transition from solid calipers to floating ones (with slide pins - yuck!) on the TD5. However, the D2 TD5 has solved the usual body corrosion issues of the D1, but somehow eats the back chassis rails, so if you get a facelift one with the sexy headlights, which are phenomenal BTW, and thus will have the 15p engine, with a clean or plated but solid back chassis, and are willing to undertake a few preventative maintenance routines like that injector harness, its a sweet vehicle for the task you outlined above and will add more character to your life than any soccer-mom minivan or repmobile estate car.
 
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not only a fantastic post Stanley, but it taught me a new word - bravo sir!


You mentioned looking at mundane hatchbacks and considered the alternative to be a classic land rover...

Hear me out before you hit autotrader for a people carrier, but please do bare in mind that a disco 300tdi is a 30 to 25 year old vehicle, a td5 is 25-20 years old at youngest, a bit of TLC will be required. But generally speaking, if you get through an expensive phase of its live, or better yet, get one where the previous owner has aten all those lemons for you, it's still going to be the disco you remember of yore. [EDIT: Best still is to do some preventative maintenance on a disco TD5 to prevent it becoming expensive. ]

I had been without a disco for about 5 years, after selling our 300tdi that I had done all the welding on, stupid I know, but reasons at the time., I had a hankering for another disco, and couldn't find a nice 300tdi that wasn't going to be a welding project, or had been done, but wanted silly money for it. So I bit on the brave pill and bought a late* TD5.

Not gonna lie, I was reticent about taking on a TD5, but the more I looked into the TD5, the more I RESPECT it as an engine. Long story short, with it's integrated injector units, a TD5 will always get you home even if one fails, whereas in the equally unlikely event that a a 300dti kills its fuel injection pump, its immobilized. In many respects the TD5 is more like a marine engine than a road vehicle engine, it has a centrifugal oil filter in addition to the usual oil filter, these "injector units" are an individual HP pump built into each injector, operated by a camshaft. Reminds me of Wartsilla engines I dealt with offshore.

They do have a few weaknesses, and remember I asterisked the word LATE in the previous paragraph? There are really two TD5 engines, 10P & 15P The 10P was the earlier original TD5, and had a few weaknesses later resolved in the 15P, such as having poorer design of head with minimal meat between a fuel pipe (IIRC) and the bore, which lead to cracked heads. ?the heads were also located by PLASTIC (like WTF land rover) dowels, which failed eating a head gasket in the process, whereas the 15P has steel dowels locating the head.

Both engines suffer a bad rep for oil in the ECU, I kid you not, the injector units are located INSIDE the engine, but controlled by an ECU on the inner wing, connected by a wiring loom that goes to a socket on the side of the head, and an internal harness from this bulkhead fitting to the injectors. Oil started to get capillaried up the wires into the ECU. But it's like £25 for the replacement part, and takes less time to fit with a £20 1/4" drive socket set than I've spent typing up this post so far.

Comparing the D2 to the D1, there are enough mechanical similarities you'll feel at home driving it, and I personally found it almost emotional revisiting disco ownership, where the 300tdi XS was our family transport when the kids were little and cute, now they are teenagers, it seems fitting that the disco has also moved on. But those mechanical similarities are not direct like for likenesses. For example it always pained me as an engineer why oh deighties be damned why did LR put the bushes for the front and rear arms/hockey sticks coaxial to the arm, rather than perpendicular, as in the D1/RRC/Def the bush has to deform every single time the arm moves, eating the bush. But on a D2 the bush is perpendicular to the arm, coplanar to the bushes that secure it to the axle, making more of a clevis, where the arm can pivot on the metal sleeve against the bolt.

But I do think the 300tdi 3rd row side facing dickie seats were better than the forward facing ones in a td5, I also don't like the fact they went from chrome swivels to rubber bellows for the CV joints on the front axle, or the transition from solid calipers to floating ones (with slide pins - yuck!) on the TD5. However, the D2 TD5 has solved the usual body corrosion issues of the D1, but somehow eats the back chassis rails, so if you get a facelift one with the sexy headlights, which are phenomenal BTW, and thus will have the 15p engine, with a clean or plated but solid back chassis, and are willing to undertake a few preventative maintenance routines like that injector harness, its a sweet vehicle for the task you outlined above and will add more character to your life than any soccer-mom minivan or repmobile estate car.
You want to watch it with those "new (to me) words" Jay. 🤣 🤣 🤣
"coaxial" , "coplanar", "clevis" to say nothing of "deighties" which I have yet to look up. (I'm joking, I did enough maths to know the first two and somehow knew the third, as in "clevis pin"!)
And your whole post was almost poetic.
Nice points of view there, although I think the forward facing third row of seats was probably a legal thing, remember that awful crash on the motorway where a teacher ran a transit minibus into the back of a service vehicle and killed herself and a load of kids in side facing seats?
We were once very close to a crash where an old-style mitlitary truck full of Foreign Legionnaires from their boot camp at Castelnaudary, hit one or more of those deadly plane trees on a typically scenic French road, there were at least 4 deaths. They were sat on side-facing benches.
We have very little need now for the third row of seats and I love the lockers that replaced them, they are where I keep my huge stock of tools and spares, but once in a while when the grandchildren come to visit it would be nice to be able to put all six of us in one vehicle. The Disco 1 has those and we did use them quite a bit. In fact the kids loved being in them.
You have taught me stuff about the TD5 engine that I hadn't though about, like the benefits of each cylinder being fed by a separate powered injector rather than the whole lot by an injector pump.
Tis such a shame that the old Series are so stupidly expensive as they are almost as easy to work on as a Fergy tractor.
Thanks for such an interesting post for me to read over brekker!
 
I have decided to take the expensive route, just asking for a quote at the moment.
 

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