RE: SOTW: Range Rover LSE

[Johnspex]

Yann1882 said:

What the bleedin ell is soccer?????

My Dad was born in 1908 and when I was kid (born in 1953) he called it soccer. I think you'll find it's short for association to distinguish it from rugger which is a derivation of Rugby, the other form of football. I guess you're one of those who were led to believe the name soccer was invented by the Americans. Well, I can assure you it wasn't. So the answer to your question is- association football.

[W124Bob]

Anyone commuting from Leamington by train may see a very early (K plate?)RR usually parked in the staff carpark just like the one appearing in the posters,it looks very tidy!

[BeirutTaxi]

Oh the irony!

V8 Range Rover pulling a bus up an icy hill


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRZpG2ke_QY&fea...

[Johnspex]

anything fast said:

a bit frilly?? the bodywork looks like a basket case, it must have had paint over the years so there has to be a lot more rust thats hidden... avoid..

oily bits are easily fixed but rust.. forget it, spend around £1500 to £2000 and you can get some very solid RR's for that.

If it was £500 would be worth smoking around in it it. But £1000 for a rusty rangey is not a good idea.

I've never understood this. The idea of deciding how goos a car is based on it's price seems ridiculous. A £1k Rangie is obviously crap but a £1.5-£2k one isn't. How do you know the guy selling the £1k car isn't just making a mistake/desperate for the money? Or the £1.5k one isn't just over estimated/a deliberate rip-off? Surely if you're in the market for one they're all worth seeing up to your maximum budget. I wouldn't ignore a car becuse the price is too low. I'd investigate and hope I might pick up a good'un cheap.

[DonkeyApple]

Rockatansky said:

My experience of the air suspension was that it was pretty reliable and very easy to replace springs if required.

I don't think it was as well designed (in a home repair way) as the P38, but I suppose it was really the prototype for that system.

The most annoying thing for me was that when it threw a code (usually osr height sensor for some reason) it had to go to the dealer for a reset.

I'd imagine there is software available now that'll communicate with the car, there wasn't back then.

Air suspension wouldn't put me off, but new dampers and a huge lift kit would be tempting...

Those plug in terminals are now sitting all around the UK in the hands of ex workers or dealers.

I practically have a map in my head of the whole SE of England and up into Yorkshire of all the locations of these units. It took me 6 months and was like some secret quest where each one you found led you to the next one.

The problem I had was that Overfinch didn't get the pulley ratio right on the alternator so the reading o the revs from one source was out from another ( can't recall the technical details) so as the car went faster the misalignment grew and the system triggered a fault that shut down the perfectly fine air suspension.

Now, the interesting thing is that I learnt this at 130mph on a road which was undulating at the time!!!!!!

[DonkeyApple]

Ayahuasca said:

Re the 'Darien Gap' reference in the article - both the original RRs broke down whilst crossing the Gap - knackered rear axle differentials - and they were led in the expedition by a third car: humble, second-hand, locally bought, Land Rover Series 2.

Edited by Ayahuasca on Friday 28th September 17:07

Wasn't the biggest problem that the squaddies ignored their instructions from the specialists and loaded the cars badly and drove them incorrectly and so they broke drive train when stuck in the claggy mud? The Rover chap who kept bringing out the parts told them the solution after the first one?

Although having met Blashford Snell a few times in the past he was definitely a man who knew everything on the planet and certainly wasn't going to listen to a man of lower standing who actually knew infinitely more.

[TTTOPTOTTY]

Ive got an 1987 RR 3.5efi V8 and she it is the best thing ive ever bought it has oulled our 2 wheel tractor out of the field and also a 7.5 tonne horsebox home. She is worth her weight in gold to me. She has got some issues now but she is going for a full restore when ive got the full amount to restore her not far off now and then that growling v8 will arise again cant wait.


Mu girls Green one is Rage Rover lol and other one is Bena
http://i946.photobucket.com/albums/ad308/tttoptott...

[Markh]

These are great old cars, much more character than the newer version, see quite a few tidy version driving around London these days

[Midnight Bear]

Pure classic ... literally! Bought mine last year for similar money off FleaBay and whilst I have spent similar on it to sort a couple of mechanical challenges, she's in pretty good condition all round. '93K with 106k miles and a heavenly V8 rumble .... with no LPG!
Should've mentioned a 4.2 V8 LSE hard-dash!

[anything fast]

Johnspex said:

anything fast said:

a bit frilly?? the bodywork looks like a basket case, it must have had paint over the years so there has to be a lot more rust thats hidden... avoid..

oily bits are easily fixed but rust.. forget it, spend around £1500 to £2000 and you can get some very solid RR's for that.

If it was £500 would be worth smoking around in it it. But £1000 for a rusty rangey is not a good idea.

I've never understood this. The idea of deciding how goos a car is based on it's price seems ridiculous. A £1k Rangie is obviously crap but a £1.5-£2k one isn't. How do you know the guy selling the £1k car isn't just making a mistake/desperate for the money? Or the £1.5k one isn't just over estimated/a deliberate rip-off? Surely if you're in the market for one they're all worth seeing up to your maximum budget. I wouldn't ignore a car becuse the price is too low. I'd investigate and hope I might pick up a good'un cheap.

I think If you want a really solid, rust free well specced, well running range rover, chances are you wont get one for £1000. RUST FREE is my main point, I have seen how the bodies rust on these buggers and If i wanted one I would happily pay a lot more for a solid one. I have bought enough second had cars to know a genuine bargain is rare thing indeed. Most cheap cars have issues. Rusty range rovers can be had for peanuts, in fact most end being broken for parts much like this car will be prob in the next year or two. Unless someone goes mad and decides to spend £3000 on the bodywork. You can however find a very decent example for around £2000, thats what I would do.

[splitpin]

If (so that's a big if) the concept of SOTW is a car you can buy for less than a grand and then run on an equivalent economic budget, then this is probably the least appropriate/pragmatic SOTW ever.

Fair enough if you want have the odd outing on a Sunday to a piece of grass to pretend you're part of the 'old money set' (but don't mind doing or paying someone else to do lots of spannering during the week/on Saturday to realise this strange ambition) or (thereby to my mind defeating the ethos of SOTW) to buy it as a base for then spending umpteen sheds load more on to make it either 1) a 'Collectors Car' (ugh!) or 2) a serious off-roader (as some others on here obviously have and fair play to them).

As several if not all of those who bought them new at the time as a 'prestige car alternative' will confirm, they were an absolute nightmare to own; aside from a nice high driving position (enhanced by the thin pillars of the time) in a 'typically cow and timber British interior, their petrol consumption was appalling (and poor reward for the ultimately completely feeble performance from a 'largish' V8) and their lack of any sort of inbuilt reliability did most Owners heads in; it was by no means uncommon to have a breakdown on the way home from picking it up brand new from the dealer if home was more than half an hour's drive away. Not breaking down within the first week of ownership was about as rare as Rocking Horse Whatnot. As the vast majority were exactly like that when new, what chance of much better when they are near enough 20 years old?

I wish my memory was as 'rose-tinted' as several on here (I suspect several of the wearers weren't even around when these cars were new), but unfortunately it's not.

For some obviously it'll suit, but the reality is great and unique concept of its time, then with an utterly dire execution of its time and then and now poor on road performance. Spen King designed it for off-road and went to his grave still regretting how they marketed it, how it finished up get used most of the time and how badly they had to build it because of 'management and facilities'.

So a great SOTW in 2012? Nah, a million miles out.

[Johnspex]

anything fast said:

I think If you want a really solid, rust free well specced, well running range rover, chances are you wont get one for £1000. RUST FREE is my main point, I have seen how the bodies rust on these buggers and If i wanted one I would happily pay a lot more for a solid one. I have bought enough second had cars to know a genuine bargain is rare thing indeed. Most cheap cars have issues. Rusty range rovers can be had for peanuts, in fact most end being broken for parts much like this car will be prob in the next year or two. Unless someone goes mad and decides to spend £3000 on the bodywork. You can however find a very decent example for around £2000, thats what I would do.

I'm just suggesting that just because it's £1k doesn't mean it's a bad'un. It might just be undervalued for some reason. On the other hand I'm not saying it is worth having, just that I don't feel one can say it must be crap because it's only £1k. People come on here all the time saying what bargains they've picked up for less than they expected to pay for a given car in a given condition. Bargains do happen occasionally.

[DonkeyApple]

splitpin said:

If (so that's a big if) the concept of SOTW is a car you can buy for less than a grand and then run on an equivalent economic budget, then this is probably the least appropriate/pragmatic SOTW ever.

Fair enough if you want have the odd outing on a Sunday to a piece of grass to pretend you're part of the 'old money set' (but don't mind doing or paying someone else to do lots of spannering during the week/on Saturday to realise this strange ambition) or (thereby to my mind defeating the ethos of SOTW) to buy it as a base for then spending umpteen sheds load more on to make it either 1) a 'Collectors Car' (ugh!) or 2) a serious off-roader (as some others on here obviously have and fair play to them).

As several if not all of those who bought them new at the time as a 'prestige car alternative' will confirm, they were an absolute nightmare to own; aside from a nice high driving position (enhanced by the thin pillars of the time) in a 'typically cow and timber British interior, their petrol consumption was appalling (and poor reward for the ultimately completely feeble performance from a 'largish' V8) and their lack of any sort of inbuilt reliability did most Owners heads in; it was by no means uncommon to have a breakdown on the way home from picking it up brand new from the dealer if home was more than half an hour's drive away. Not breaking down within the first week of ownership was about as rare as Rocking Horse Whatnot. As the vast majority were exactly like that when new, what chance of much better when they are near enough 20 years old?

I wish my memory was as 'rose-tinted' as several on here (I suspect several of the wearers weren't even around when these cars were new), but unfortunately it's not.

For some obviously it'll suit, but the reality is great and unique concept of its time, then with an utterly dire execution of its time and then and now poor on road performance. Spen King designed it for off-road and went to his grave still regretting how they marketed it, how it finished up get used most of the time and how badly they had to build it because of 'management and facilities'.

So a great SOTW in 2012? Nah, a million miles out.

I think that is a fair assessment from the other perspective. Harsh, but fair

I love them. As a kid we had a battered old 2 door used for shooting and then in the mid 80s one of the first proper road ones as we all know now. The 2 door never had any issue which other cars of that era didn't have and that a competant or even basic spanner wheeler couldn't handle. The mid 80s onwards as they were fitted with more fancy kit picked up issues from those. I don't recall any issues with my father's 4 door (the first one that was delivered was well over an inch longer on one side than the other and was sent back ).

Myself, I went and bought for £1,500, a few years ago, a K reg with 80K on it that had been one owner and just parked in his barn. It broke down once and the AA took 3 hours to discover that it was the cable connecter under the foot rest which had been unplugged by my foot. Other than that and the usual rot it was a superb car.

I then bought an LSE which had been totally rebuilt in 2005 and then converted by Overfinch. It took me a year to sort out all Overfinch's bking, slapdash work but everything else worked perfectly. However, the expectation of something electrical buggering up and my lack of space in London to do anything other than pay someone to fix it saw me sell it when I found the Rangie that I'd actually been hunting for for a fair few years, a solid, galvanised 72.

Once I've finished with that it will be a nice solid, fast road car without any fancy gubbins beyond a modern engine management system. All of the traditional weak points will have been sorted.

This is also why the modern rebuilds, when done by the right people, are a good buy as everything is now sorted in these cars but it costs a fair packet for it to be all done and done properly. This is why fully rebuilt Rangies are being commissioned for £80k+.

[SuperHangOn]

Johnspex said:

I'm just suggesting that just because it's £1k doesn't mean it's a bad'un..

Its an old Range Rover, of course its a bad'un

The body will be full of holes but if you're lucky a previous owner won't have covered it in waxoyl to make pre- MOT welding a nightmare. The engine will be a tickety old heap full to the brim with gunge and k-seal. The gearbox will clonk into the odd gear it can still find. The tailgate will randomly fly open and half the headlining will probably fall down over the first pothole.

In the spirit of PH, someone should buy it for amusement value. But not me.

[ITech]

SuperHangOn said:

Its an old Range Rover, of course its a bad'un

The body will be full of holes but if you're lucky a previous owner won't have covered it in waxoyl to make pre- MOT welding a nightmare. The engine will be a tickety old heap full to the brim with gunge and k-seal. The gearbox will clonk into the odd gear it can still find. The tailgate will randomly fly open and half the headlining will probably fall down over the first pothole.

In the spirit of PH, someone should buy it for amusement value. But not me.

I have to say that this post is all too true. I love these cars and have owned a few, which have brought me much pleasure (and pain), but the above description is very accurate of most of the ones left for sale now, certainly at this money. When they are working well, they are so good it's so easy to forget the times when they aren't..

[tercelgold]

Landrover have a nice picture for the new model.

http://www.landrover.com/gb/en/lr/

[rswift]

ITech said:

SuperHangOn said:

Its an old Range Rover, of course its a bad'un

The body will be full of holes but if you're lucky a previous owner won't have covered it in waxoyl to make pre- MOT welding a nightmare. The engine will be a tickety old heap full to the brim with gunge and k-seal. The gearbox will clonk into the odd gear it can still find. The tailgate will randomly fly open and half the headlining will probably fall down over the first pothole.

In the spirit of PH, someone should buy it for amusement value. But not me.

Spot on !

I've got one parked up outside the house, I've had it for about 4 years, bought off a mate who paid proper money for it about 10 years ago. tax ran out in May, still MOT'd .... and was toying with the idea of re-taxing for winter..... but in reality will probably sell it to someone well meaning with Rose Tinted specs, whilst I but a cheap Pajero or even an old Vitara, or similar, for the snow.

The concept of it, the looks, the green oval etc ... lovely. In reality, I don't have the patience, skill, time, money or inclination to bring it back to its' former glory.

I suspect the SOTW will be the same, someone will either love it and keep on top, or it will appear in another 6 months as requiring "minor work for the MOT"

[richb77]

Oh yes please.

Absolutely one of my favourite all time vehicles.

High on my list of lottery win vehicles is a Mint 100" version of this.

Bargain at the price if the lumps running smooth.

[300bhp/ton]

anything fast said:

Johnspex said:

anything fast said:

a bit frilly?? the bodywork looks like a basket case, it must have had paint over the years so there has to be a lot more rust thats hidden... avoid..

oily bits are easily fixed but rust.. forget it, spend around £1500 to £2000 and you can get some very solid RR's for that.

If it was £500 would be worth smoking around in it it. But £1000 for a rusty rangey is not a good idea.

I've never understood this. The idea of deciding how goos a car is based on it's price seems ridiculous. A £1k Rangie is obviously crap but a £1.5-£2k one isn't. How do you know the guy selling the £1k car isn't just making a mistake/desperate for the money? Or the £1.5k one isn't just over estimated/a deliberate rip-off? Surely if you're in the market for one they're all worth seeing up to your maximum budget. I wouldn't ignore a car becuse the price is too low. I'd investigate and hope I might pick up a good'un cheap.

I think If you want a really solid, rust free well specced, well running range rover, chances are you wont get one for £1000. RUST FREE is my main point, I have seen how the bodies rust on these buggers and If i wanted one I would happily pay a lot more for a solid one. I have bought enough second had cars to know a genuine bargain is rare thing indeed. Most cheap cars have issues. Rusty range rovers can be had for peanuts, in fact most end being broken for parts much like this car will be prob in the next year or two. Unless someone goes mad and decides to spend £3000 on the bodywork. You can however find a very decent example for around £2000, thats what I would do.

Most of the body is Birmabirght (and aluminium alloy) and doesn't rust at all! Some bits will, but none are structural and chances are even a £7k one might be no better (or worse)

[ITech]

300bhp/ton said:

ost of the body is Birmabirght (and aluminium alloy) and doesn't rust at all! Some bits will, but none are structural and chances are even a £7k one might be no better (or worse)

I accept you have owned and know a bit about these cars, ok. But to say they don't rust? You know that's not the case, im sure. The Birmabright as you call it, reacts with the steel in a rust frenzy. They are special and rather wonderful cars in many ways, but lets not try to pretend they hardly rust.. Doors, A-Pillars, C-pillars, Upper and especially lower Tailgates, the whole boot floor, the flitch's, etc etc