Hey guys, well Ill get started by introducing myself, My name is Keller from Austin,TX. Well my fiance has been looking into buying a 2000 to 2003 discovery for some time now, and now that her car is dying shes getting more serious. I wanted to find a good forum site to check and see how people like their discovery. Im an offroad guy my current toy is a 94 wrangler. She tho will be doing 99% on road driving. One of her biggest complaints is she hears the tranys are horrible on them. This i know nothing about. So I want to find out if we buy one, what to keep and eye out for when looking at them and what should we expect to break haha. So any and all positive and negative feed back is welcome, thanks.

 

Tranny will be the least of the problems. If you open our D2 forum, and just keep looking at older posts, you'll find that overheating is a much more common problem. You can also download the factory owner and shop manuals below for free. In our tech area there is a post for what to look for on a Discovery and differences between a D1 and D2. Poor service practices by previous owners is a very large factor in problems with the truck. Worth the price for an indy shop to examine any one you plan to buy. Common problem is front drive shaft from factory has sealed joints, so grease dries out, they split, and poke big $7,000 hole in the tranny. You can rebuild ($100 ish) or replace drive shaft ahead of time. Any one you want to buy take a scanner to plug in and read codes, check coolant temp reading from computer, etc.

 

That is very helpful, I didnt even know there was a D1 and D2. I will have to look into them.
As far as the front drive shaft goes, are they easily accessible? So when im looking into them I can check it my self. I consider myself a pretty decent mechanic but im no master tech for sure. Well hopefully I can find her one thats not been abused and for a good price.

 

https://landroverforums.com/forum/di...section-32402/

Read thru several posts in this section on comparing them, shopping for them, front prop shaft rebuild, and lots of DIY techniques, plus high miles service needs. D1 has a basic tranny, D2 has an electronic control model with lots of other bells and whistles. These trucks are built to be maintained with minimal work skill set, but the electronics may require a trip to dealer or advanced shop from time to time.

 

03 seems to have more issues than 02 or older in my opinion, plus if you go with a early 01 model you will have the cdl transfer case if that's important. Either way you will end up working on it, but they are awesome vehicles and i am sure you will begin to enjoy it.

 

Is she going to use it as her daily driver?

If so I'd look long and hard through this forum.

In the first 2 months of ownership I've dealt with no horn, can't get the truck out of park and a busted differential which necessitated a tow, hotel room, car rental, etc.

Not saying you won't have better luck than I but I did initially get it checked out at a Rover shop and I've been steadily tackling the 60k maintenance sticky. Dealing with most of this was ok, but I was well aware of these headaches and that helped me maintain my patience with my truck. If you can always get to her quick when it craps out on her then by all means go for it. I guarantee she'll be calling!

 

yeah its a daily driver, she wont be having it out in the rocks like my jeep, so I will definitely get into looking at those forums and start to learn the difference
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