Any 1990's 110 owners in the Mornington Peninsula/Frankston/Cranbourne Area?

[Adam99]

Hi,

I'm looking at buying a mid to late 1990s Defender 110, however I know nothing about Defenders other than 'they look cool'.

Is there anyone in the Mornington Peninsula/Frankston/Cranbourne area who's willing to give me a tour of their vehicle so that I have a small clue what I'm potentially getting into?

Any other general advice/pointers to existing threads on what to look for in a second hand vehicle of this age? (I've searched around and not found much)

Many Thanks,

Adam

[BilboBoggles]

For me the following things are important to look for.

Rust in the bulkhead or chassis is pretty much a one way street to being terminal. The bulkhead is a steel panel that holds the steering column, pedals, dash and windscreen hinge bolts. IT also includes the foot wells. These are all mild steel and prone to rusting. Yes this panel can be replaced - but it's easily 2-3 weeks solid work, and sometimes you might find it unrepairable requiring you to find a good used one - which is hard work. Generally if it's been kept near a beach it's going to be rusty. I would not touch a defender with rust in the bulkhead - unless I wanted a meaty project...

Rust in the side door frames. I'm not as worried about this as you can buy new doors , and repair panels, and because they can be unbolted it's a bit easier to fix. My wife has done a panel beating course and actually made some defender door skins... But if you have to pay someone to fix this - you will find it costs about $2-3k per door to buy a new one and respray it. If you have 4 broken doors, that's a LOT of money.

Rear Door Frame - If the spare wheel is mounted on the rear door, check that the door frame is not all floppy and broken . The wheel tends to fracture the door frame and cause it to fall apart. They also rust like crazy. A post 2003 Defender has a slightly better one piece door frame for the back door. Although it's not immune to breaking either.. (My 2003 has a damned crack in it now...)

300tdi - The engine on a mid to late 90's defender is likely to be either a 200tdi or a 300tdi. I've owned one of these engines in the past and quite like them. Nice and simple, but not indestructible. Water pumps can fail - they can overheat and warp heads, the timing belts can break. So best is to look at the service records. If' it's had a timing belt replaced in the last year , and everything else looks clean it might be worth the risk. Keep it serviced regularly and you can get quite a few miles out of them

Interior - Make sure the interior is in a condition that you will want to sit in it. If you are fussy - getting the interior up to scratch if it's knocked around is very possible on a Defender - but can be costly.

Drivetrain - Realistically it's very hard to assess a Defender drive train during a purchase - it's almost a game of luck if you get a good one or one that has reached the end of it's life. And really there is not much difference in drivability between the two.. Preferably one that does not whine too much, or one that does not drive you crazy with clunks. If you can find one with a rebuilt gearbox that's a good plus. But really you are going to have to take a leap of faith and perhaps budget for a few repairs each year for a while if you are unlucky. Realistically you are buying a nearly 20 year old car in the middle of it's maintenance cycle - you could be purchasing it at the end of an expensive period of repair or at the beginning - hard to tell - so budget 3-5k per year just in case you have some expensive repairs.

Oil Leaks - Yes they do leak, and they are a pain in the arse to get through a road worthy if they are leaking. So watch out for serious oil leaks - most likely from the transfer case - which can be expensive to fix. Or jsut about anywhere else - which varies from easy and cheap to reasonable to fix. I'd knock $2k off the asking price for a leaking gearbox or transfer case.

On Road handling. Defenders are very different to drive to a normal car. The steering feels a lot more remote, they tend to feel a little floaty over bumps. If you are cut out for a defender and once you get used to a good defender you will hate driving any other vehicle especially those modern plastic little crap boxes. But you should not find too much slack in the steering - anything more than 1 inch of wheel travel without the wheels moving means something is worn, could be an adjsutment or coudl be a new steering box/ball joints/ bushes etc.


Hope that helps!

[Adam99]

Thanks, this is exactly the sort of information that I need.

I've found this video series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YUKegLzssU
Which seems to have some reasonable pointers (if you ignore the product placement)

[BilboBoggles]

Yep - that's quite an interesting series of videos - there are several others on you tube as well. Most of them are UK focussed where you will see absolute worse case rusting, australian land rovers are less likely to rust as much.

Although recently I did see a very shiny nice looking 2002 Defender 130, quite nice to look at - but so badly rusted it had to be wrecked. Beware of cow farmers defenders - cow **** eats metal literally. Also beware mining vehicles - they are almost always knackered. Any defender from a beach area has to be suspect for badly rusting out.