Thread: What D3 to buy?

Originally Posted by Disco-tastic

Id leave some room for some maintenance. I spent a couple of grand replacing worn items in 18 months (doing some of that work myself), and i reckon ive had a good run. That doesnt include a $600 gearbox service (theyre usually about $900) or $500 to free up the EPB when it died. If you need new front LCA bushes and wheel bearings (both things ive done at 165k km), and you cant do it yourself, you're looking at up to $2.5k (cost me about $750 for parts)

The only thing that worried me about higher mileage cars was the gearbox. If its serviced then anything up to 200k km would be ok. (Its about $7k for a gearbox rebuild) Just watch out for the diesels approaching 7 years or 168k km as thats the big $2.5k timing belt service.

Theres also some later d3s and early d4s with gearbox stator bushing issues which cause premature failure of the gearbox. You can google VINs to see affected vehicles.

Lots to think about!

I do all my own work and never had a car in 30 years go to a mechanic, been reading about the auto service fluid and filter change for $600 is a bit rich.
Everything else i can do myself although i'm guessing the timing belts are not diy friendly.

Originally Posted by loanrangie

I do all my own work and never had a car in 30 years go to a mechanic, been reading about the auto service fluid and filter change for $600 is a bit rich.
Everything else i can do myself although i'm guessing the timing belts are not diy friendly.

Not 100% sure, but don't the belts require a body lift?

Originally Posted by loanrangie

I do all my own work and never had a car in 30 years go to a mechanic, been reading about the auto service fluid and filter change for $600 is a bit rich.
Everything else i can do myself although i'm guessing the timing belts are not diy friendly.

I got told the next service would be 900 bucks as its a pain of a job removing the sump with the cross member in the way.

For my 600 i also got a new steel pan

Originally Posted by johntins

Not 100% sure, but don't the belts require a body lift?

Thats the "easy" way to do it, though it is possible with body on, you just need 3 arms and x ray vision to see what you're doing, or so I've heard

those arms being the length of a grown adult, but thin as a 4 year old, with the strength of a gorilla...

Originally Posted by loanrangie

I do all my own work and never had a car in 30 years go to a mechanic, been reading about the auto service fluid and filter change for $600 is a bit rich.
Everything else i can do myself although i'm guessing the timing belts are not diy friendly.

If you've done all your own work for the past 30 years then the timing belt shouldnt raise to many issues for you. The main front timing belt isnt to hard, its the HP fuel pump that's fiddly - but its doable. I took 2 days to do both but I also done the oil pump housing and half the time was spent trying to get the starter out to lock the motor. Bloody thing only comes out one way

Both cars I've been looking at (a D3 and a D4) have triple sun-roofs - one dealer said I couldn't take that car off-road because the sun-roofs would shatter due to body flex. I've searched on this site, and googled generally, and I can't see much discussion of that happening. And, given that the D3 and D4 are both monocoque, I wouldn't've thought that there would be much flex anyway - they're not Unimogs, where the ladder frame chassis is (supposedly) designed to twist.

Originally Posted by Arapiles

Both cars I've been looking at (a D3 and a D4) have triple sun-roofs - one dealer said I couldn't take that car off-road because the sun-roofs would shatter due to body flex. I've searched on this site, and googled generally, and I can't see much discussion of that happening. And, given that the D3 and D4 are both monocoque, I wouldn't've thought that there would be much flex anyway - they're not Unimogs, where the ladder frame chassis is (supposedly) designed to twist.

Was he trying to sell you a different car, one he'd had longer? Only reason I can think of for him saying something like that. LRs have had sunroofs foe decades. D1 and 2 often had two of them.

Given the car's oft stated purpose as an off roader, if sunroofs were shattering LR would have been inundated with warranty claims, IMO.