I bought a 2003 Discovery with 70k miles yesterday, and this morning, I learned you guys call these "disco", which to me until now was a dance music genre that inspired hypnotic gyrations of hips and arms.

Anyway, my friends think I am nuts. "Land Cruiser, not Land Rover", they tell me every Thursday night.

A couple of things:

* Where to find a bike rack (bicycle carrier) that carries four bicycles, and you can still swing out the rear hatch door open?

* who does your work in my neck of the woods (title line)

Thank you.

 

With the size of trees in the Muir Woods area, must be some really good shade tree mechanics out there. While you wait on a referral, you can download the whole factory set of tech and owners manuals for free at link below, it is called the RAVE; which stands for Rovers A'nt Very Economical. Also check out the 60K service recommendations in our tech listing.

Some important points of general use:

1. This is a complex vehicle with lots of electronics. A good battery in tip top shape is a plus.

2. The front drive shaft if not greased will start to make a chirping sound, just before it snaps apart and pokes a big hole in the transmission. Grease every oil change. If no grease fittings rebuild it, write up in tech sticky area of the Discovery 1 forum, covers D1 and D2 units.

3. Oil change early and often. Lots of owners use a diesel rated oil for extra cleaning chemicals that come with it. Something like plain old Shell Rotella, changed every 5000. Don't you fall into the trap of 7500 or once a year oil changes.

4. Rovers are high performance, but require scheduled maintenance that the average DIY can easily do. A neglected Rover costs a lot more in the long run.

5. Keep an eyeball on the temp gaguge, overheating is quite dangerous for engine health, and gauges are known to keep the same reading over a broad range of temperatures. So if you normally are at 9:00, and it creeps up to 10:30, this is cause for concern. You have passed the high side of "normal" range and gotten a lot hotter than you might imagine. Lot of people run external scan guage or the Ultra guage, so you can see what is going on with raw data, like coolant temp.

6. Flush and change coolant, green or yellow, don't use Dex Cool, it makes an orange mud

7. Welcome and have a great time. Post pictures early and often.

 

Congrats on your "Land Cruiser".... for your bike rack question, all depends what type of bikes you are hauling. I have the Yakima Holdup (2 bike) rack
Yakima › Shop › Bike › Hitch › HoldUp (2" receivers only)

You can buy a +2 adapter which is 2 extra trays that brings this puppy up to 4 bike capacity. This is the cadillac as it is built though and beefy to carry heavier Downhill bikes that can weigh up to 45 pounds each.

If your going with smaller or lighter XC or Road bikes, you'd be safe with the Yakima Stickup Yakima › Shop › Bike › Hitch › StickUp

If you install this rack direct to the rear hitch of your LR the door will not swing open... a quick inexpensive fix for this is to go to your local harbour freight and get a hitch extention like this http://www.princessauto.com/trailer/...itch-extension and flip it so that your hitch is lower.

Other Hitch rack models to look at :

Saris
MWE (www.mweracks.com)
Thule

 

Here's a pic

 

Thank you moncton_vw and Savannah Buzz.

The recommendation for lubing the front drive shaft is not intuitive at all. Thank you for mentioning it. The rest of the maintenance, well, I am a maintenance believer.

On the oil, do you believe synthetic or diesel grade is better?

Knowledge of my local surrounding! You must have been a local around here at one point.

....Bike rack...
I like your setup. It looks like the 2+2 in photo. I am guessing that each one of those bars swings out so you can have rear hatch access.

 

Mine is a 2 bike rack only... when there are no bikes on the rack, it swings up like in the pic I posted. You pull on the little red **** on the bottom of the rack in the pick and the whole rack folds down to hold your bikes. That said if the bikes are on the rack, you cannot open the rear door... one of the only rear racks that I know of that can leave you access to your rear hatch with bikes on is this one MWE Swing Away Base - rear receiver hitch tray bike rack - YouTube

Seems a bit to high tech and time consuming for me

 

Are you referring to the procedures on pages 54-8 to 54-10?

http://www.landroverresource.com/doc...hop_Manual.pdf

Also, I could not find the 60k service link, but I presume it is as described by Muller here HOLY CRAP!! HAs anyone here priced out the 60K service?? - Land Rover Forums : Land Rover and Range Rover Forum

 

see Propshaft Rebuild - Land Rover Forums - Land Rover Enthusiast Forum for propshaft

and 60 K service is listed on the D2 forum page and the D1 tech sticky at the top of that forum page.

see https://landroverforums.com/forum/di...service-29020/


On the oil, old units with questionable owership practices may not get all the benefits from syn as they won't be lasting that long anyway. But you can get syn diesel oil. IMHO the diesel stuff is formulated for more cleaning and holds the soot in suspension, so filter can grab it. In our 1960's gas engines, the ability to resist sludge formation, a keep some sludge from settling out (so it can be trapped by a good Wix or Mobile 1 filter) is a plus. Plus with frequent changes one of the syn benefits for extended drain interval is set aside.

As for local, no, but I did enjoy some well earned vacation time there from Carmel to Lombard St to Napa Valley. Most impressed by the trees, those shade tree mechanics must be very well skilled because their warranty is four times what I can offer...