Which Land Rover for overland travel?

Choosing a Land Rover

I started thinking of over land travel in a car in 2010 after years of doing solo long distance motorcycling, which is not a smart idea the last trip I did on my R1100RT was right up in some of the more remote high alp passes and I nearly came a cropper a couple of times so I thought a car might be better soon. But selecting the car was always going to be an issue, I have always been a Land Rover fan and always fancied a 110 forward control.

However when I was looking for a Land Rover it had to meet several criteria;

• Be fixable in the field, or at least easy to service
• Parts needed to be available and cheap (they are not on a Nissan) in the UK and abroad 
• Be reasonably priced, I have a budget of £8k for a fully prepared car
• Be a diesel, and capable of running on emergency fuel
• Be green, long story
• Be easy to park

Anyway, needless to say what I really wanted was a Defender 110.  I went out to look for one within my £4k base car budget.  All the 110's I looked at either needed a massive amount of work, were very high mileage (although if maintained this is not an issue Land Rover diesels are usually good for 250k miles) or ones which were not green.   I do not have a covered workshop, so I decided to stay away from cheaper defenders because I would not be able to complete strip the car down without parts being all over my driveway.

For what I wanted to spend I just could not get a good base 110, so I started looking at alternatives.  After a bit of research a Discovery 1 Diesel seemed to be the car to go for, although they have a terrible reputation for rotting.  So I decided to try and find the best Discovery 1 I could.

So I went from one of these

Defender 110 TD5

To one of these

Discovery 1

Also it's worth noting now that the general feeling between the Defender v's Discovery argument is quite simple.

1. A Defender is better off road than a Discovery, but with minimal modifications a Disco is as good as a Defender.  However for overland travel you do not need to change the suspension hight unless your intending to do some extreme off roading, possibly with the exception that is of heavy duty suspension for carrying all the extra kit
2. A Discovery is a much easier to live with, for example if I sit in a Defender my right shoulder is against the drivers door, Defenders are not spacious for the driver
3. A Defender 110 has more internal storage than a Discovery 1, but after a motorbike both hold loads of stuff
4. You can get an auto Discovery, I like auto's off road
5. Both cars are considered as great overland vehicles
6. Both cars have cheap second hand part available from ebay and breakers, I'm intending to get most of my parts second hand if possible

Which Engine 200tdi, 300tdi or TD5

Anyway, then there was which engine to go for.  When I read about the 200tdi I seemed to really easy to maintain, possibly one of the last real fully non electronically controlled diesels out there, whereas the 300tdi seemed to be more refined but with some electronics, especially on automatics and I wanted an auto.  But again both the 200 and 300 tdi's seemed to be great and again easy to maintain.  I had discounted a Discovery 2 TD5, they are within budget but just have too much to go wrong on them.

The 200tdi is also more economical than the 300tdi, with 34+ being reported for manual 200tdi's on the motorway which considering the size of these cars is not bad at all.  Also, both the 200 & 300 units will run on vegetable oil and if absolutely needed, I have heard of people using a mix of engine oil and petrol if really needed.

So I made some calls to local and not so local Land Rover specialist and what kept coming back was “get a 300tdi, you can fix anything on them” so I did.  But only after looking for a month for one in good mechanical nick.  I guess at the back of my mind was just how old the 200tdi was getting now.

It's worth doing a google search on Discovery 300TDI overland to get ideas what to do with them, there are many now roaming around the wilds quite happily carrying their occupants all over the place.

My Discovery 1 300TDI

So after a month I parted with about £3.5k for a Discovery 1 Japanese import (more on the Japanese bit later) with 43k miles on the clock, with crap paintwork and also a headlining hanging so low it was like wearing a cloth hat whilst driving.  The front disks looked special as in warped and also the engine bay looks like it had been sprayed with diesel, it had.

I was not worried about the cosmetic stuff and things like breaks which can be replaced easily, its rust that kills there cars.  As if to prove a point we look at a 300tdi in a dealers on the A23 near Handcross and I got into the boot and heard a crunch and nearly fell through the floor, this as I now understand is a common problem for Discovery's but a a price of £3.8k we walked away, there are a lot of Discovery 1's out there. 

 

Check for rust!

 

My idea of checking for rust before buying Larry was to lie under the car with a hammer (well ratchet) whacking everything in sight.  I whacked the sills, boot floor, wheel arches, below the driver’s feet, everywhere.  One thing I did not do, which a chap who bought my Nissan Patrol did to Patsy, was to wet my finger by sticking it in the radiator and taste the coolant.  I still to this date have no idea why he did this; I can only assume he had a taste for cheap Spanish wine?

To be honest after parting with my cash I then spent the next two weeks with loose bowel movements before I got it checked over for rust etc.  I FORGOT TO CHECK PREVIOUS MOT FOR ADVISORIES doh!  

I kept saying to my girlfriend “I might have made a mess of this one”.  She nodded and smiled after all her Smart Car just got sold for this, oh crap!

And the name "Larry", why not, Larry the Land Rover seems to have a ring about it, like a nice woolly sheep climbing up a hill.

Now, what’s next, oh yes the initial service and getting it right, that continues later!

Update, the girlfriend now has a new Smart car so I'm safe!