300tdi Defenders - 94-98

[Russ]

G'day all ... After years of wanting, and back and forth between marquees, I've decided a 300tdi Defender is the go.

Do have a couple questions though:

Throughout the 300tdi run, is there a year better than the others? What I mean is, was there an issue with earlier years that was rectified in the later years?

I realise with their age and KM's travelled, a well serviced vehicle would probably have most factory faults tended too, but I thought I'd better ask as before jumping in.

Anything specific I should check to ensure has been done?

To clarify, I'm looking at 110 wagons.

Thanks for your time ...


Cheers,
Russ

[weeds]

i have a 95......i here the 98's were the go but even they are 15 years old now so maintenance/reliability wise they would be the same as all the other tdi's

the better the sevice history will give you a better start but there will be a few things you will need to sort

[Brett1066]

I have a 94 110 wagon, and on the whole she has been pretty good to me, most of the problems are just age associated problems, which you will get with any car that age. I've had her for 5 years, and my best mate had it for 10 years before that, and kept up the regular servicing etc.
As weeds said, try and get one with good service records so you can see exactly what has been done and what problems the previous owner had.

Other than that, look after it and it will look after you

Enjoy your new bus when you get it

[steveG]

Seems common for the 98/99 engines to have issues with big end bearings at 250K++
Cheap easy job to replace them if they haven't got too bad.

AFAIK the 300tdi's are pretty much all the same apart from that.

Steve

[DiscoMick]

Coolant overflow bottle in the early 300tdis cracked and engines cooked. There is an upgraded bottle. Make sure the oil filter in the gearbox has been changed regularly or gears can run dry and fail. Only use genuine head gasket seals. The engine seems reliable with regular servicing. I love my 300tdi Disco. Hope that helps.

Sent from my GT-I8730T using AULRO mobile app

[ugu80]

From AULRO archives - "Gearbox - 300tdi.
The R 380 was introduced in 1994 with the suffix J.
This suffix J did unfortunately have a couple of design flaws which gave the R 380 some bad press, they were prone to the mainshaft shearing across the oil feed holes, the layshaft also sheared at a stress concentration behind the sandwich plate causing loss of 5th and reverse also early ones still suffered from mainshaft wear until the cross drilled transfer case gears became fitted as standard on the suffix G transfer cases."

So, the later 300tdi's have a slightly improved gearbox (serial No. with a 'G' suffix).

[uninformed]

Coolant overflow bottle in the early 300tdis cracked and engines cooked. There is an upgraded bottle. Make sure the oil filter in the gearbox has been changed regularly or gears can run dry and fail. Only use genuine head gasket seals. The engine seems reliable with regular servicing. I love my 300tdi Disco. Hope that helps.

Sent from my GT-I8730T using AULRO mobile app

how often should you change the oil filter in the gearbox

[camel_landy]

There were a number of minor tweaks to the 300TDi in the first couple of years. These were mainly around the areas of the timing belt to prevent premature failure or the 'P' gasket.

However, with the youngest of these engines now 15yrs old, I'd be surprised to find an engine that hasn't had the mods.

On the whole, a very reliable & very simple engine to work on.

M