Lets bring you up to date

Let me take you back to June 2008......for nearly two years I had a 1991 Toyota Surf 2.4TD Japanese Import. The interior was SO red it was like a blood bath! Red everything, the same colour as the outside!

Yeah, I know its sad, but don't hold it against me! I saw the light, got rid of it, and bought myself a REAL 4x4! The Surf was in the garage more times than it was on the road. But that's a story all of its own.....and one worth forgetting!!

So I decided to chop the Toyota in for my Discovery. A little bit less than I wanted to let it go for, and little more money than I wanted to spend on the new one. But isn't that the way it generally goes?!

Thought we had a reasonable bargain (I'm not going into prices coz that's my business!), a little cosmetic work, but nothing much more than a good polish and clean round sorted that out, and far less money than the additional required to buy something not much better.....or so I thought! That's where the real probs started.

Just three weeks after getting it home I noticed I was loosing coolant - BIG TIME. Back to the dealer I bought it from. NOT a main dealer I hasten to add. They got it booked into a specialist LandRover service shop, who replaced a bottom hose on the radiator free of charge. Nice chaps!

Turns out it was leaking a little. Told to keep an eye on the fluid levels. Two weeks later, more coolant loss, about the same as before. Back to the garage to have a complete new radiator fitted.

All looked good for little while. After a few weeks of to-ing and fro-ing checking this and that, the head was stripped down only to find that the coolant chambers around the block had rusted so badly, the block was irrepairable! The previous owner had obviously been using the wrong coolant, a mix of different coolant types, and a periodic top-up with tap water. MUPPET!!

Bloody typical of second hand cars here in Oz though. Stuff up the engine, trade it in, dealer cleans and polishes it, puts it straight back on the forecourt, you buy it, no servicing done, and they hope you don't come back within the statutory three month warranty period!

Hmmmm.....

Anyway, I was two days over the mandatory three month warranty when we found the engine was stuffed. I won't go into ll the details, but all I can say is the owner of the dealership I bought it from was extremely helpful and willing to listen, and paid for a new block to be shipped and installed with him footing the entire bill. Something I was quoted as being in the region of $10,000!

So after a few delays in engine delivery etc, and fitting time, I finally got the Disco back. It came back with new block, internals, fuel pump, water pump, and front prop shaft (as this was just about to go bang too!). So I now have a nice new block, and at today's date have only clocked up some 3500km's. So plenty of life in her yet, and I'll make damn sure it gets serviced properly from now on.

So this is what she looks like now after a bit of TLC.