Full Fat Range Rover Vogue SE (2010 L322, TDV8)

[TurboRob]

Familymad said:

Great thread and lovely thing

Glad you're enjoying and thank you.



A bit of reactive, proactive and servicing work over the past couple of days, ahead of its MOT.


Oil change. Anyone familiar with these will know it's a messy job as LR put the sump plug(s) adjacent to crossmembers. With c.10L of oil in the sump it has a decent head on it and shoots out all over the place. I gave vaccing it out a go before dropping the final bits of oil from the sump plug and to my surprise found the trusty old vac pump to get the lion's share out, with only a 100ml left to come out from the sump plug after. This saves a lot of ballache for future oil changes.

I forgot to take pics but just had a look back at the security camera on the driveway and have a still of the vac pump sat doing it's job:





Front o/s lower arm. Last year the n/s needed replacing due to a worn OB balljoint advised on the MOT. I'd planned to replace the otherside too as I'm a bit OCD for replacing things in pairs, but only got round to it this summer. Bit of a fight of a job but remembered the splitter I'd bought to do the otherside, and going nuts with a sledgehammer to break the joint:





Rustproofing. Whilst in the wheelarches I pulled the splash guards to have a good look around. All well but some surface rust starting to form. Back when I bought the car I looked at a lot and found a huge variance on rust. Generally they were all solid but a bit scabby visually. The steel they're made from is plenty thick enough, I just think they weren't that well protected from the factory and get bashed around a fair bit. This car was one of the better ones - not perfect but it had been undersealed early on in it's life by a previous owner, and I knew part of the L322 ownership experience would be keeping on top of corrosion.

Under engine is a large tubular steel subframe. This was looking a bit ginger around the sides and under the front bumper:



I jetwashed off all the crud, knocked back all the flakey bits with various wire brushes, degreased and applied a couple of coats of Bilthamber Hydrate-80:



This 'converts' the oxidised steel to a black acrylic surface coating:



I then coated with two layers of brushed on Dynax UB, ran some Dynax-S50 inside all the voids I could get to and sprayed a few layers of Dynax UC over the rest of the metalwork:




I'm not a particular Bilthamber fanboy, I just seem to have amassed a shelf full of their products over the years as find them easiest to use and readily available at autojumbles etc.


The above work ended up not just rustproofing the front subframe but also the wheel arches, chassis rails, turret tops and most of the front half of the car. Hope to get the rear half done before the winter months appear.

[TurboRob]

Quarterly update on the L322!

The maintenance must've paid off as a clean MOT pass was awarded:




And since then it's been completely reliable, doing the nursery/work run daily and family trips away at weekends. We're not far off 170k miles.


I treated the headlights to a polish and sealant. The facelift L322 headlights are real gems, with lots of detail, and highly effective. This has the active bi-xenons, so they turn with the steering wheel, auto dip and turning lights. The LED indicators are comically bright at night - you can see them reflecting off roadsigns 500yds away.

I bolt a Holts kit but ended-up going off-piste, using Farecla G3 then G10 on different pads. Sealed with the spray that comes in the Holts kit which smells a lot like furniture polish.





This time of year - with miserable, wet and cold starts/end to the day - make the Range Rover really appealing. Onwards!

[Patrick Bateman]

Jealous. Ideal for this time of year.

What were the lenses like before up close?

I need to get my Jag ones done but I'm not sure if they've deteriorated more on the inside.

[Filibuster]

Must unfollow thread ….

ETA just yesterday I was browsing L322 again. And your thread isn‘t helping

Edited by Filibuster on Saturday 18th November 13:59

[pingu393]

I've also got a FFRR. Here's a link to my playlist on YT. There's only one video at the moment (replacing the thermostat), but I expect there will be many more to come...

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLy8_psZQBJX...

[lost in espace]

Have you pulled out the plastic sill mouldings at the rear yet? Mine was full of crap, and there is double skinned panels which trap mud and rot. You can get them off far enough without removing the side rails. My 09 120k RR was awful, rotted and rusty. Took real cleaing to get all the crap out. All hidden by the plastic moulding.

[pingu393]

lost in espace said:

Have you pulled out the plastic sill mouldings at the rear yet? Mine was full of crap, and there is double skinned panels which trap mud and rot. You can get them off far enough without removing the side rails. My 09 120k RR was awful, rotted and rusty. Took real cleaing to get all the crap out. All hidden by the plastic moulding.

Mine were rotten, and the biggest problem is that there is only access to the outside of the box. You can't get to the middle skin without ripping a lot of one of the outer skins. I had to cut away a lot of good metal just to gain access to the corroded middle section. I also had to fabricate a fair bit around the plastic rear ventilation box.

Edited by pingu393 on Saturday 18th November 22:22

[alpha channel]

Patrick Bateman said:

Jealous. Ideal for this time of year.

What were the lenses like before up close?

I need to get my Jag ones done but I'm not sure if they've deteriorated more on the inside.

If they're going to go then it's usually on the outside, it's usually easy to tell if you look at them from an angle as you can see at just what depth the deterioration is. Mine were far worse than that when I got my XK, you could feel the depth of the cracking on the surface with a tip of a finger nail (and it was like that all over both of them).

I used the 3M kit which did a great job (the last time I did them I used the Holts kit and I wasn't particularly impressed with it so got I another 3M kit). These days, now that the damage is sorted they get a wipe down with teeth whitening toothpaste if they start to yellow (I've found a particularly abrasive number from Lidl, nice spearmint smell though) and a couple of coatings of Meguiar's headlight sealant... which looks like you can't get any more outside of their kit.

[TurboRob]

Patrick Bateman said:

Jealous. Ideal for this time of year.

What were the lenses like before up close?

I need to get my Jag ones done but I'm not sure if they've deteriorated more on the inside.

It's always hard to tell on photos, but don't think they were this bad. Yours look like bad road rash on the outside, so got to be worth a try!

[TurboRob]

lost in espace said:

Have you pulled out the plastic sill mouldings at the rear yet? Mine was full of crap, and there is double skinned panels which trap mud and rot. You can get them off far enough without removing the side rails. My 09 120k RR was awful, rotted and rusty. Took real cleaing to get all the crap out. All hidden by the plastic moulding.

Good point - I thought I'd put this on the thread but looks like I missed it:

In the first few months after getting the car I pulled the plastic sill covers and bungs in the sills off to give a good going over. No rust or corrosion in the sills. A previous owner has treated the car to some kind of rust prevention treatment at some point as there's a waxy residue inside most places I've looked - plus the underside of the car has been "shutz'd".

Where there was corrosion was on the rear wheelarch lip, but very early days. I wire-brushed anything that looked flakey, converted with bilthamber over 24hrs under clingflim then brushed on Finnegans No.1 (brown). The back of the arch lips were cleaned out and loaded with Bilthamber Dynax on a brush. This has held up very well to date!

[TurboRob]

The L322 has proved so successful in the household that it was getting used more and more, and becoming the main steer of choice for day-to-day work and family trips away. No problems as it's been very reliable and always a pleasure to drive - the preventative maintenance and servicing have paid off well. But we decided we wanted the bigger (4.4 TDV8) engine and 8sp ZF box, plus a bit more modern package/tech.

So the search started a month or so ago and within a few weeks a 70k miles L405 SDV8 Vogue SE in Mariana Blue was purchased and has been pressed in to service as the mummywagen of choice since.

The L322 has stuck around since, in the hope it would still get used but apart from a couple of runs out has sat languishing.




So over the Xmas period she'll be getting a decent clean and sent up for sale. Obviously this is the worst time of year to sell so chances are (hopefully) it'll be around for a while longer yet...

[RayDonovan]

Lovely, did the new one come from a Garage near York?

[HawthornBowTie]

Nice one !
So, how does it compares ?

[Stick Legs]

Marina blue is nice.

Great to see another on 20” wheels looking tasteful.

[DaveyBoyWonder]

Great read - despite horror stories I still really fancy an L322

[TurboRob]

RayDonovan said:

Lovely, did the new one come from a Garage near York?

Thanks Ray - no it was a private sale from the East Mids.

HawthornBowTie said:

Nice one !
So, how does it compares ?

Thanks HBT, I'll do a detailed report soon once I've run both side-by-side for a bit longer. In short - so far I prefer the way the L322 drives: more character, more sense of occasion, posher materials around you, better headlights.

Stick Legs said:

Marina blue is nice.

Great to see another on 20” wheels looking tasteful.

Yep big fan of the colour! I like how it goes from a regal black to a very deep metallic blue depending on light.

I'm not a fan of RR's on big wheels/low profile tyres - a combination of the state of the roads around here plus looks.

I've enjoyed your thread on your 2015 over the past couple of years.

DaveyBoyWonder said:

Great read - despite horror stories I still really fancy an L322

Now's better than never - the ability to own/drive cars like this is getting harder and more expensive as each year goes by!

[RayDonovan]

TurboRob said:

RayDonovan said:

Lovely, did the new one come from a Garage near York?

Thanks Ray - no it was a private sale from the East Mids.

HawthornBowTie said:

Nice one !
So, how does it compares ?

Thanks HBT, I'll do a detailed report soon once I've run both side-by-side for a bit longer. In short - so far I prefer the way the L322 drives: more character, more sense of occasion, posher materials around you, better headlights.

Stick Legs said:

Marina blue is nice.

Great to see another on 20” wheels looking tasteful.

Yep big fan of the colour! I like how it goes from a regal black to a very deep metallic blue depending on light.

I'm not a fan of RR's on big wheels/low profile tyres - a combination of the state of the roads around here plus looks.

I've enjoyed your thread on your 2015 over the past couple of years.

DaveyBoyWonder said:

Great read - despite horror stories I still really fancy an L322

Now's better than never - the ability to own/drive cars like this is getting harder and more expensive as each year goes by!

Ah cool, my BIL has an identical one (colour, engine and wheels). Lovely thing....when it works...

[DSLiverpool]

Some good L322 left, I paid top $ for my 5.0 but nothing major has failed.

It goes in every 3 months for oil and a check up / line.

The 2 seat heaters failed and was £1k to replaced with genuine new.

[Patrick Bateman]

What sort of price do you think you’ll be advertising at if you don’t mind me asking?

[Smitters]

Patrick Bateman said:

What sort of price do you think you’ll be advertising at if you don’t mind me asking?

My thoughts exactly...