Thread: Prospective Land Rover Series 3 Owner

Hello,

I am looking at buying a Land Rover series 3 and have a few questions about a specific example I have just viewed and will potentially buy. It has been sitting for about 15 years and will not roll, seller believes that the drum brake shoes may be rusted which could be causing it? I assume that would be a fairly easy fix as new shoes are fairly cheap? Also it has a Holden 202 red engine, what is the effect of not having the original engine in a car like this? Is this a common swap to be made? I would assume that it would decrease the value of the car. It is a station wagon body type with Salisbury diffs and the safari roof, is this a rare specification? As I have struggled to find any for sale that were even in the station wagon body type, would it be possible to make an estimate as to what an example in working order like this would fetch on the market?

Kind regards. *

Originally Posted by JDNSW

1. Seized brakes are quite a likely reason for not moving, but not the only one. But this is unlikely to be a major issue. (compared to other problems likely to exist!)

2. Holden engines were a common change to Landrovers, as second hand Holden engines were far cheaper than overhauling the Rover engine, and, if replacing a four, gave a useful boost in power. On the other hand, shoehorning a six in a space designed for a four quite often involved rather undesirable compromises, such as chassis modifications, and may involve problems with registration in some jurisdictions unless records of its being registered with that engine cannot be produced. A different issue is that some of the adapters to connect the Holden engine to the gearbox were not made accurately enough, resulting in repeated gearbox failures due to misalignment - for which the gearbox was blamed!

3. All long wheelbase Series 3 had a salisbury rear diff, but these were only fitted in the front to armoured cars and the "One ton" models. As there are none of these in Australia and none of them had a station wagon body, it is likely that the front diff is a Rover one.

4. All station wagons had a safari roof.

5. Station wagons (meaning the five door long wheel base body) were quite uncommon throughout Series Landrover production. Series Landrovers were a work vehicle, and the station wagon was much more expensive, and almost exclusively purchased by government bodies and occasionally large companies.

6. There are so few on the market that it is impossible to guess what a value would be, but a working station wagon will certainly be worth more than other models in the same condition. But you need to be aware that restoration of a station wagon is going to be a lot more expensive (and more work) than other models, because there are a lot more parts. As well as extra doors and all that implies, they had a higher trim specification, with a lot more bits, many of which are hard to source and tend to be expensive and/or custom made.

7. You need to be aware that in some states the standard seating arrangement (10 seats) requires it to be registered as a bus, with all sorts of implications. (removing the centre front seat may relieve this issue, with engineering costs)

Thank you so much for the help I really appreciate it. I have attached an image FYI.

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