I just bought a 1996 Land Rover discovery se7 (automatic) with the 4.0 a little under or over a month ago, its been wild i haven't even put a 100 of my own miles on it yet. i bought it from a little old man who has been legally blind for the past 16 years. he let other people drive it to the store for him, then he sold it with 89,000 miles on it.

so far i've taken it in to a couple of shops and have had it looked. luckily the city i live in has a jaguar land rover dealership so i stopped in and had them do their used car trade in inspection upon it. they deemed the engine oil cooler lines and the trans cooler lines to be bad and need replacing and that the radiator might need flushing also the front the swivel joints needed rebuilding. they also said that on their test drive the thermostat gauge showed that the engine overheated and that they fixed it.

well i drove it away and took it on an adventure over the highway and through a couple of towns and upon stopping the disco dropped a bunch of coolant out. i monitored the gauge the entire trip and it showed regular operating temperatures. i drove it back home and let it sit to cool down. i drove a tractor that would do just do that from time to time so i disregarded it knowing that it won't do that for long. so later that evening i drove it a few miles down the road and parked it to find that it overheated again.

i had it towed to the shop and it needed its upper radiator hose replaced, i had them also degrease the engine while it was there. it is now back in my posession and i am supposed to drive it a hundred miles or so to put some pressure and force some stuff out so far i've gone 20 miles and the only leak was from the new hose i tightened it up and then noticed the shop left some rags. underneath there were 3 vacuum hoses unconnected from a 3 way splitter. one was running towards the front of the engine the other into the dash the final into what my friend seemed to believe was what controlled the passing gear it these hoses were located to the very back on the drivers side towards the corner.

in conclusion what i am here for is some guidance from some drivers of these beasts upon what is important to have repaired it seems almost all of the hoses including the serpentine belt are suffering from dry rot except the brake lines i haven't heard anything about them yet. how important are the trans and oil cooler lines, my dad seems to think the upper radiator hose was one of those line was it? and how important is it to have the swivel joints fixed they said they are leaking differential fluids, but not how severely. i want peace of mind when i'm driving that this won't blow up or die on the side of the road. I also want to use the 4x4 and get into some snow this winter. please help answer my questions and guide me to getting her fixed up.

 

I would be a bit concerned about the spilling coolant more than anything else. If the motor overheats, all kinds of bad things can happen. The heads and gaskets get bad, and the cylinder liners can slip. Changing the thermostat is a good place to start. You can put a cooler temp one in , make sure it has the extra hole in the thermostat to help get rid of the air pocket that can form.

Might take a hard look at the serpentine belt. If it is slipping, that also can affect water pump (and cooling)

If your temp gauge gets above 1/2 way, it is too hot. It should be just below 1/2 way up.

If the front axle has fluid, and the swivel joints have fluid, take a look at them next summer. You need to worry if the STOP leaking...