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.
for a good one at the price your looking at?
