I'm new to this forum and new to Land Rover. I am about to purchase a 2003 Disco with 67,000 miles in excellent condition. I have been reading a lot of complaiints about the oil pump/engine failures, and was wondering how prevalent this really is, even in vehicles within the TSB. What can you do to really prevent it from occurring?

 

Seriously? Your kidding right? See that search button on the tan tool bar above, type in "2003 oil pump failure". IMO, the only way to rule out completely that it will never happen to you is to not purchase an '03 in the first place.

But, that is my opinion and some '03 owners never have any problems at all with the oil pump, ever.

BTW, it was misaligned dowels, not the pump itself, that caused the failure.

 

Many 03 owners have no oil pump/engine failures. Of course people who have issues complain the most. It's hard to determine the actual number or percentage of failures by internet complaints. One failure will show up in 50 internet postings. I'm looking for hard numbers, not smartass comments.

 

You are not going to get any hard numbers, who do you think we are actuaries. No one here has asked every single 03 owner if they have had problems or not and then run the percentages. The only thing that we can tell you is that the failure rate is pretty high and buying an 03 is a risk. By the way there is nothing that you can do to prevent the oil pump failure. If it's going to happen it's going to happen no matter what you do. Get used to the smartass comments, all forums are filled with them and it's how we deal with the stress of owning a Land Rover.

 

I know, and I didn't intend on coming off as a smartass either. It does appear that there is a high failure rate, but it would interesting to know the number of failures compared with the number of vehicles included in the range. This would give a real number to the problem.

 

Hey, I got a 2003 I can put you in.

 

No, you didn't come off as a smartass. Yes, it would be nice to know of exactly how many suffer from this problem. For many, it's enough to not even consider the 03's. The worst problem is that there is no quick fix and by the time most realize that their is a problem it's to late, not that it matters really. If you can get it for a good price it might be worth the risk.

 

But there is no way to know the number of '03's sold in the US.
There is no way to know how many of them had failures.
There is no way to know how many have not had problems.
The only thing you can do is add a aftermarket oil pressure gauge, know what your numbers are and what they are supposed to be and if they start to fall below those numbers on a regular basis then replace the oil pump and front engine cover.
If you were to go that route then start buying front engine covers off of e-bay and out of junk yards, but buy them off of scrapped '04's.

 

The failure was not common and most have long since failed. Most failed by 10k miles. The 04 also had some issues as well. Being in the vin range definitely does not mean certain failure. The problem blocks where drilled by one operator on one line and land rover doesn't know the exact blocks so they issued the TSB on the whole run from that line.

 

Thank you. Nice info.