So this morning I dropped Little Red Rover off at JC British, a Rover specialty shop outside of Denver, to have a thorough once over. I've been meaning to do this since I bought her in December, but you know how these things go. I told the gent I left her with I just wanted to make sure she was safe and wouldn't leave me stranded when I took her off road. "No problem, we'll give you call by noon." I headed off to work and forgot all about her.

Until I realized it was 3:30pm. I called up the shop to see what was going on. The short version is they were still compiling the list of all the things that were wrong and hadn't even started working up an estimate. By this point they had already installed a light bulb in the CEL socket, and it had apparently snow-balled from there. Towards the end of the conversion he even told me "your Rover is a hot mess," to which I involuntarily started laughing. I knew she needed work, and had even said she was a hot mess when I dropped her off, but to hear that from a serious mechanic was just awesome.

Now I'm waiting on the call back with the laundry list of things to fix. I was told they would call me some time tomorrow morning, but the way this is looking I'm guessing it'll be some time tomorrow afternoon. Right now I'm trying to decide how much I actually want to spend on Red (keeping in mind she needs new shoes). Red is my third car and competes with the motorcycle for fun, but I really like her. So at this point I'm thinking my repair limit, not including tires, is 100% of what I paid.

Fingers crossed.

 

Well...keep in mind they are going to be higher priced than a indie shop, they are also going to use the best parts.
Take your laundry list and shop around for a more affordable shop keeping in mind that only safety issues are a must do and cosmetic and "need to be done soon" things can wait.
You do not have to use top of the line the "best" name brand parts.
A pair of front rotors is $80 at AutoZone for example.
A set of brake pads from AutoZone, under $100 for all four wheels.

 

good luck with the estimate... If you have some skill in the garage you might think of doing some repairs yourself when you get the list from the shop. I'm sure the labor will be a few grand alone so if it's not your daily driver then you can save some serious cash doing the work yourself.

 

I dig that color. Good luck dude. Good thing about a Rover shop, they know exactly what they're doing

 

Wow, I think thats about the most weights I have ever seen on a rim... (rear) whats the deal with that?

Like the color. Love the bumpers and the rack. Just send it my way and I do a little swapparooing to the one I'm getting

 

Someone balanced the tyre, and when it called for mucho weights, instead of breaking the tyre down and re-indexing it for a better balance, they just threw more weights on it.

 

wow... crazy.

 

What year is it, how many miles on it?

What did you pay for it originally?

The bad thing is that people usually do not sell one until it's cost outweighs keeping it. The fact the CEL lamp was removed is not good.

Like was pointed out, you do not need a speciality shop to do all the little things that they find unless you have the bucks to burn. Also the more you have them do, the less that you learn about the vehile yourself..

So if you want the most affordable situation, let them do what you cannot do and shop around for things like brakes and the simpler stuff yourself.

Rovers North has replacment rotors and pads for roughly a hundred bucks per axle. When you do rotors be prepared to do wheel bearings as well since you have to pull the hubs to get the rotors off.

If you truly want to enjoy your Rover for a long time, do as much as you can yourself. Or watch when the work is done so you learn. If you need a speciality shop to do it for you, you will need lots of disposable income.

Enjoy it.

 

Thanks for the comments everyone. When I first saw Red I knew I had to have her, and the rack and bumpers had no small part in that.

Jared, I know my way around the tool box and am not afraid to tackle a lot of things (doing the valve cover gaskets this weekend). However, when it comes to safety related things I really prefer to have a professional take care of things. And while I have no problem messing with suspensions on cars... yeah, this Rover is a whole different beast to me. I wish she would fit in my garage and then I wouldn't mind taking my time and having her sit for extended periods of time. But garage door is only 6' tall, and Red is 7.5'

Spike, I usually go to independent shops for the routine stuff like fluid changes, just makes more sense to me. Any routine stuff JC came up with I'd have a neighborhood shop do or I'd take care of it myself.

Ok, so I talked to the shop and it turns out things aren't as bad as I was lead to believe.

First, they said the suspension is in good shape and there's nothing wrong with the steering! He said that the slop I perceived is just part of the fun of driving a lifted Rover.

On the ABS, it appears that one of the previous owners went to a lot of effort to remove the system all together. To reinstall the ABS system would cost thousands of dollars. And really, who needs ABS? I only asked to have it checked out because my wife insisted.

One other thing they found was that it was idling really rough, which I knew. At least it was idling, it didn't idle at all until I replaced the IACV. However, simply as part of the diagnostics they completely fixed the idle issue! I have to say, I like the way JC's does things.

Now the bad, all four wheel bearings need to be replaced and repacked. I've done this before and I don't want to do it again, ever. The rear right axle seal is also leaking, very bad as I don't want to run the diff dry. But they said they'd replace the axle seals as part of doing the bearings. Win.

So all told this isn't cheap, but it's only 50% of what I paid so I think I'm doing pretty well. Now to order some new tires. There's only a mm left of tred on the massive 305 70 16's and I really want something smaller that won't rub the frame.

 

So what do they want to replace the wheel bearings? They are actually 8 of them 2 per wheel and they are all identical. It's not a difficult job either. Just messy.

305's are way too wrong for a Discovery. Doing your own fluids is a great way to save money as well.

Did they check anything on the engine? How does it do as far as operating temp? That is usually a problem with lots of used Discoveries.