Yes, I am intentionally stirring a pot, poking a hornets nest and flingin' mud with the following statements. Also, this is an effort to take a small break from the idle, rear windows, suspension lift, tires, should I buy? threads we see over and over...

After thoroughly considering as many variables as possible (drive line, engine, ECM, suspension, interior, etc...) and without initially quallifying my statement I will simply say this...

In my opinion ('cause I don't care about yours ) '94 - '95 were the very best years of production for Land Rover.

During those years Range Rover, Discovery and Defender all were at the pinnacle of design function and simplicity while still offering unsurpassed ability and comfort. These were the two BEST years for Rover in the modern era!



p.s. I thought long and hard about that subject line...

 

The Lucas ignition system on the 95 and older 3.9L is pure crap.

 

LOL obviously an inflammatory statement! You sir, have no clue and therefore your statement is irrelevant.

The 3.9 is superb and reliable and the 14cux is the most field servicable and reliable unit they made... plus it was located INSIDE the cabin! Gems??? you have fun with that generic attempt at NAS conformation with ODBII standards and Bosch you can keep... Since I don't like HAVING to go to dealerships for code reading or resets I won't have either of those systems in my stable.




(this is all in fun of course... yet true)

 

Um my comment may be biased but here it goes..

I own a '95.. and it's better than yours.

 

I would definitely agree that the 94/95 Range Rovers were the RR zenith. Thereafter they began their dance towards "modern" Mall Crawling functionality. With Discos I would say 98/99 D1's and then it began it's dance towards mall crawling with the D3 and D4. With the Defender who is to say in the States as we don't get them. All in all I would agree with your statement of 94/95 bring the zenith of LR's original mission statement and plan.

 

Actually I do have a clue

A friend of mine owned a RRC with the 3.9L and the horrible distributor/ignition module, and I owned a 96 disco with the wonderful 4.0L

My 96 rarely gave me any real issues. Heck the fuel pump waited until the car was parked in the garage to go out. I'd drive the wonderfully reliable 4.0L over the 3.9L any day

 

Oh nooo! I'm gonna side-track a moment into a "should I buy this?" thread.

Ironic you bring this up, because I have been looking at getting another rover, and the two I'm down to are an '04 Disco or an early '90's to '95 RRC LWB. I'm leaning towards the RRC since I have a disco already, but them bells-n-whistles of the '04 are sure hard to dismiss.

Now as a serious question, I have heard that the distributors can be problems. I've heard stories of people junking their entire distributor just by not changing the cap and rotor correctly. I don't know 'cause any rover I've had had coil packs.

I will say, my '98 has been good to me. It was kinda annoying to have to make a trip to the dealer to reset the adaptive memory in the ecu after replacing the IACV. 20min job and only got raped for $100 and change.

 

**Side note ** IF the RRC is mostly rust free and you don't mind having a bit of a rolling restoration on your project lilst then go in that direction. A '95 is good way to go if you don't mind the updated dash and airbags.

The rotor only goes on one way the cap goes on one way... not sure what happened there but the dizzy is (again) servicable on the side of the road and is not computer controlled therefore what I'd prefer to have.



--- Jafir, when you say "my friend had..." it is hard to take anything after that seriously. And quite obviously your "friend" did not know how to properly maintain the simplest form of ignition in a car. You say it is horrible as a blanket statement without ever having maintained one and without any sort of qualification other than "my ding-dong friend used to own a RRC and had no idea how to fix it so that means they are all "horrible""....

Oh I do love a good natured joust...

 

I have to agree on the 94/95's. I have a '95 and a '97 and much prefer the '95, even though it has more electronics than I prefer.
The downside to the '95, both my Disco and D90, is that later R380's were more robust, not that I've had any issues with mine other than the baulk rings needing replacing on the Disco after 250k miles.

 

Good point on the R380... by-the-way, I have been trying to source a late edition r380 and MAN are they getting hard to find over here. Thinking about slipping it into my rrc and losing the BW txfr in lieu of a 230. Tom do you have a good source for 5 spds? I may have to end up shipping one from the motherland but that is my last choice...