Hello,

I purchased a 2002 Land Rover Discovery 2 this morning, from an online auction. The vehicle is “cosmetically” in excellent shape, and has 136,000 miles.

There was little information available on maintenance history, the listing offered several observations of “It Runs & Drives” “The breaks are a little soft” and “appears to be an exhaust leak”.

I expected to inherit some gremlins. My expectations came true.

The most concerning issue so far is that the vehicle will not accelerate hard. Putting the pedal to the floor, will stall out rpm’s and the motor will dog. Applying a slightly less than aggressive acceleration, the vehicle will slowly but relatively smoothly accelerate until Approx 50mph where it then begins to sputter and miss.
Applying a very slow rise in acceleration, there does not appear to be any major concerns and the vehicle will run out to 65-70MPH without much hesitation.

The check engine light, brake light & fluid level light are all currently lit up on the dash. At one point on the maiden drive, I thought I smelled antifreeze & maybe had some white smoke. Perhaps I’m paranoid, it is also below zero here today in central Minnesota. I don’t have to rely on this vehicle for day to day transportation, so would rather fix the issues and not create more damage, if possible.

More often than not, I rely on my Dad who has been a lifelong auto-diesel mechanic to diagnose problems, he then tells me what to do, and I do the work. I do have him for back up, but this time, on this vehicle, I’d like to see if you all would mind sharing some insights?

Thanks,

WheresMarv

 

Nice looking Disco. You’ll get lots of good help here. There are way more experienced LR people here than me, but I’d start by hooking up an OBD2 reader and see what fault codes you have.

 

I would not drive it too much until you get a decent diagnosis. You could cause worse problems like blow it up.

 

congrats on buying that Disco -nice looking truck a few things should be looked at before using it much:
-check the front driveshaft-if u-joint fails,shaft will thrash around and batter the transmission case-often breaking off a section of the pan flange...
-plastic coolant tees,one atop the fan shroud ,other to the side of the water pump,are prone to cracking and spilling out coolant-replace with aluminum tees
-engine wire loom convulated tubing crumbles and wires chafe,can wear through and short to ground.
-the fan design used on '99-02(with ring around slanted blades) is know to fly apart at higher RPM and make a BIG mess underhood...
-pay close attention to coolant leaks and coolant level.Cooling system may need to be properly "burped"if temp unstable.
-check transfer case oil level and also diffs.

 

Welcome to the forum. +1 on stop driving and get a cheap OBD2 reader. I like this one:
I hook up to my iphone using OBD Fusion app. Report back on what you find with the codes.

 

Question about your warning lights... what is the fluid level light? Or can you take a pic of the illuminated lights and post?

(just making sure you aren't getting it confused with the oil pressure warning lamp)

My bet... could be plug wires arcing / sparking, coil packs, an ignition issue.

But yes, def read codes.

 

Congrats, on your new purchase and welcome to the group.

Good information already.

 

sounds like you have a massive air leak somewhere in the intake or the vacuum hoses. Once you get the throttle open to a certain point, you are sucking too much air for the amount of fuel available. Could also be a bad air flow sensor. I can't remember, but I think you can unplug that and the truck will revert to a standard map and probably run better than it is now.