Gaffers Fleet - Have I finally seen the light?

[Cookiesouwest]

Top LR work as always

[Landy Mann]

Very very nice, does it still have the picnic basket instead of a cubby box?

[Gaffer]

59 minutes ago, Landy Mann said:

Very very nice, does it still have the picnic basket instead of a cubby box?

Centre console bag thoroughly cleaned and reinstated!

[Gaffer]

So 6 months later where do we find ourselves? Not really any progress to report, if anything a number of steps leaps backwards but we will come to that. The constant being work has been busier than ever which I’m forever grateful for, but it can be hellish long hours and juggling that with a young family leaves little time for playing with Land Rovers (especially when they are being ungrateful bastards).

We begin in late Jan/early Feb:

Had another turbo actuator failure on the black disco which has since been narrowed down to piss poor tuning (from one of the largest LR tuning houses in the country no less). Replacement turbo in within 3 hours which if you’ve ever done one you’ll know that’s not bad going!

 

Even found time to wash it, don’t think it scrubs up too bad for 295k miles

Workshop has been full to bursting most of the time

March rolls around and I snap up a Disco 3 with LOTS of very nice parts but a blown engine, but this deal was about to cost me more than I’d ever anticipate…

Photo taken minutes before disaster ^

Storming up windy hill on the M62 towing with the black Discovery, about 2/3rds of the way up something suddenly felt ‘off’. I backed out of it and crept the rest of the way up to the summit, pulled off at the next exit and parked it on the slip road hard shoulder. Wound the window down and was met with the unmistakeable sound of a rattling bottom end. 2nd engine gone in less than a year FML.

Managed to limp the outfit into a customers yard in Huddersfield, and a mate came to rescue the trailer in my commercial disco so I could limp the black one home - it did make it but sounded truly awful by the time we got back! 

At this point the LR love was well and truly dwindling, and my black disco was my every day work ‘van’ so I needed to sort an alternative out. A month prior I nearly bought a Disco5 but after this latest escapade I swore to never buy a LR for work again unless it was still in warranty.

Conveniently enough a mate came down in his new to him NP300 Navara on the Friday and forced me to take it for a drive despite me being a firm hater of pickups. I actually couldn’t get over how much I liked it, so when my Disco blew up on the Saturday there was no guesses as to what I went out and bought on the Monday:

Naturally I can’t leave anything alone so these days it looks more like this

 

Genuinely cant rate this highly enough, returns 33mpg with all my kit in and it hasn’t needed a spanner on it for anything other than mods/basic servicing in 4 months/8k miles. 

After losing my main tow vehicle in the black Disco I needed to sort something out (the Navara can tow 3.5t but I’d rather not tow heavy with my main work vehicle after the Disco experience), I did what I should have done ages ago and put a towbar on the Overfinch. Naturally the first tow test was disposing of the recently deceased down the storage yard as I was sick of the sight of it

As you can imagine a twin turbo v8 made light work of it and I genuinely was baffled at why I didn’t do this sooner.

In related Overfinch news, now it had a tow bar we took it on holiday to North Yorkshire

Went to Ravenscar and made a friend

It’s just had a rust free (imported from Barcelona!) top tailgate painted and fitted, and wants a couple other tidy up jobs doing but we will get around to them in time. Properly good motor this and dare I say it, a forever car?

With all the new found spare time not having to keep up with the constant repairs needed when running an elderly Discovery for daily work, I managed to rebuild the engine on my fridge van. Pictured just back from paint:

Just a few more bits of prep and that can then finally go up for sale.

As a final kick in the pods, my mate who bought the ex @Cookiesouwest Discovery from me messaged me the other night to say it had just shut off driving along at 40mph and then wouldn’t crank. He was hopeful of a snapped timing belt but knowing these engines I expected complete crank failure. Sure enough investigations the next day showed it locked solid, completely fucked. If that one can’t survive with the comprehensive history from new that had, then there’s no hope for any of them. 


 

Time will tell if it gets a new engine but safe to say I’m a little exhausted with Discovery’s at the moment. Including this one I’ve got 3 to do now and not an ounce of motivation to do it with. Hopefully the mojo returns in a couple of months!

[mk2_craig]

Does seem to imply a lot of effort for not a lot of reward. Good to hear the Nissan has impressed though. Are the chassis members a little less snappy on the newer models? 

[Gaffer]

With my black one and my mates silver one it’s purely for the love of the vehicle otherwise they would be bean tins! 

The model I have doesn’t have the same chassis issues as the old one no (fingers crossed) although it seems you can get any pickup to be a bit bendy if you abuse them enough 😅 Toyota are currently recalling a load of Hilux for chassis replacement so none of them are perfect!

[Gaffer]

Long time no update! Things have been very busy but very productive at Gaffer HQ. 2025 brought lots of new business including some very high profile clients, to the point I had to finally cave in and take on an engineer in November.  Luckily he is a great fit and shite sympathetic so it’s a win win. 

After getting a bit fed up with the Land Rovers I’d decided that I wanted to get everything I own working and then slim down the fleet drastically. I’ve not done too bad on the first point but not so well on the 2nd just yet… 

Last year I’d decided my Golf was going to be broken up as investigating coolant loss lead to finding a dead engine. Naturally I then slotted a new engine in around November time and used it as my daily ever since.

Before committing to a new engine for the Golf I’d bought a Mini diesel from Copart, decided I didn’t like it and then passed it onto mother who very much did like it

This saw the Freelander 1 she was using move onto a new life with a friends dad who wanted a cheap green oval to potter with and use for camping.

The Navara has just *worked* since day 1 on fleet and has wanted for nothing other than front discs and pads, and regular servicing. Bloody brilliant thing.

Bought a bike, although not totally sure why as I’d ’given up’ over 4 years ago in preparation for my daughter arriving. I’m currently threatening daily to list it for sale but see what happens when the sun properly comes out.

 

Bought a van, again not totally sure why. I wanted a cheap pool van for the business but I got so frustrated with the absolute scrap on sale that I ended up buying a 3 year old one at 4x the original budget. Fucks sake.

 

That’ll do for this post, Land Rover content in part 2…

[straightSix]

52 minutes ago, Gaffer said:

Bought a bike, although not totally sure why as I’d ’given up’ over 4 years ago in preparation for my daughter arriving. I’m currently threatening daily to list it for sale but see what happens when the sun properly comes out.

Been on the lookout for a speed/street triple so would be keen to get some more details if you do put it up for sale!

[Matty]

Good vans 2 litre trafics. Bought one for work in september been all over in it already. Mega comfy, good to drive and just works. That or a Transit. No contest.

[Gaffer]

@straightSix I might shoot you a pm in the near future in that case. It’s a 12 plate Speed Triple that’s slightly up on miles but has almost every bit of history you could imagine and rides mint. Just flown through an MOT too. I put round headlights on with the street triple headlight bracket mod but do have all the stock bits.

@Matty I’d originally discounted them before a mate who’s a van dealer said how good they were. I’m well happy with it especially from a value for money point of view, in my head it’s basically brand new 🤣 Like you say it’s proper comfy and the spec is great. After taking on the Navara that was a revelation in buying stuff that just works so I wanted the same in a van. 

[Matty]

5 hours ago, Gaffer said:

@straightSix I might shoot you a pm in the near future in that case. It’s a 12 plate Speed Triple that’s slightly up on miles but has almost every bit of history you could imagine and rides mint. Just flown through an MOT too. I put round headlights on with the street triple headlight bracket mod but do have all the stock bits.

@Matty I’d originally discounted them before a mate who’s a van dealer said how good they were. I’m well happy with it especially from a value for money point of view, in my head it’s basically brand new 🤣 Like you say it’s proper comfy and the spec is great. After taking on the Navara that was a revelation in buying stuff that just works so I wanted the same in a van. 

I went for ours because (with the obvious disclaimer that all new stuff is shit) every van maker has got rid of a good engine for a shit one. Renault was the only manufacturer who realised their folly, binned that fucking useless 1600 bi turbo and stuck the 2 litre dci back in!

[Gaffer]

Time for another update!

Back in January after the MOT ran out I pulled in the cheap snotter commercial Disco and decided to pinch its engine for my black one. Good choice as it turns out as when we lifted the body the ramp went up but the body didn’t… absolutely rotten on the sills.

 

Engine upside down, bottom off and new rod/main bearings. Originals were heavily worn so this was good insurance.

Nice new main bearing

 

Once that was done the black one was retrieved from the storage yard

And split in two. At this point I decided to treat and paint the chassis after having to tend to some rot

Before and after on one of the body mounts - had to do 4x of them!

 

Chassis was de scaled, treated and painted. This was by no means a concourse show off job, merely just to protect it so don’t look too closely. New engine and automatic diffs (lower ratio) were slotted in

Going down

And back (mostly) in one piece.

Around the same time as this was going off the wife with unrestricted access to my copart account took a liking to a BMW X3 and bid, then overbid past our agreed budget to win it. Luckily when it arrived it was a really decent car only needing a few bits and at around half of retail price I’ve since let her off.

This meant a certain Range Rover was left redundant so after a brief stint on eBay it left for a new life in Devon

I was enjoying selling rather than buying for a change so I finally relented and sold the Discovery 1 to a mate who wanted it since I bought it

 

Holidayed in the X3 following new brakes all round and a good service

At this point I’d driven the black disco around like the engine was made of glass, but I’d justified its 2nd rebuild as becoming a dedicated trailer hauler (hence lower ratio diffs etc). Time to open it up and put it on the trailer, make or break time. The lower ration diffs were a revelation and bloody hell did it pull well now. 

I’d decided I liked Discovery’s again now so managed to win a cheap tax early D3 that I figured may make a good one again. The cheap tax ones are starting to command a premium so thought this was a good move

Alas while dragging this back the 3rd engine popped a head gasket (or both) and started forcing coolant out. The silver one id just picked up was a bag of shit too. Safe to say I wasn’t in a good mood!

This triggered something in me and I’ve since weighed in over a ton of engines and other spares out the workshop, plus a spares Disco I’ve had sat about. I’m slowly working through the rest and they are all going apart from the black one - for now at least. 

Right now I can’t stand looking at a green oval so maybe I’ve finally been cured, but only time will tell. Maybe life is too short to spend it fixing Land Rovers after all…

As always the Navara has been there to help pick up the pieces, what a faithful thing. I’ve chucked most of my kit in the van now and will use this mostly on the trailer instead.

If I’d have been told a couple of years ago I’d have a Renault engined pickup and a Renault van (and love em both) I wouldn’t have believed it 😂