I know, I know. Land Rovers are horrible cars and nobody should ever touch one if they have any sort of financial sense. For various reasons, the British-made SUVs are consistently at the bottom of almost all reliability reports.
I’ve never been rich enough to afford a new Land Rover or Range Rover, but thanks to the magic of depreciation, I took a leap of faith two years ago and bought a used LR3. And ot just because it was relatively cheap, but because the Discovery 3 (as it’s known in Europe) is maybe the best all-rounder out there. It’s comfortable, it’s capable, and if you know how to take care of it, it won’t leave you stranded (maybe, possibly, don’t take my word for it).
Since buying it at the beginning of 2023, my Land Rover has been a fantastic family car, road-tripping machine, overlander, and sometimes masquerading as a work truck. It has done everything I’ve asked of it, and then some.
But my LR3 is not like the others. It’s diesel-powered—something you fine people in the United States never got. That’s because I live in Romania, a country where the Discovery 3 was only ever sold with the famed 2.7-liter TDV-6 diesel. Famed not because of its outstanding capabilities and reliability, but because of its ability to make internet mechanics tirelessly caution everybody that the crank will snap.
Photo by: Iulian Dnistran / Motor1
It’s a known issue among owners (even though Land Rover never admitted any wrongdoing), even when the cars were new and under warranty, so there was never a recall. The later 3.0-liter SDV-6 found on the LR4 suffers from the same potentially catastrophic issue. Some say the 5W-30 oil viscosity specified in the service manual is a bit low. Others add the very long oil change intervals into the mix, while some say that it’s simply a bad design and all these engines will eventually die.
Mine hasn’t yet, thankfully. Granted, it only has a little over 100,000 miles on the odometer despite its age, 25,000 of which were my own doing. It’s a 2006 model but it was manufactured at the end of 2005, making it a nearly 20-year-old car. And for what it’s worth, it still drives like new even to this day, but not without some financial and emotional sacrifice.
When I bought it, I quickly found out from the previous owner that the timing belt had never been changed. That was a ticking time bomb, exacerbated by the presence of the original oil pump. That’s not a huge issue on most cars, but on the TDV-6 LR3, it can lead to a dead engine because its metal casing has a thread for a timing belt tensioner. As it happens, that part of the casing on older oil pumps wasn’t reinforced, and there are plenty of horror stories out there about cracked casings and dead engines. That was rectified on later iterations.
Photo by: Iulian Dnistran / Motor1
Land Rover Discovery 3 TDV6 body off
Photo by: Iulian Dnistran / Motor1
Land Rover Discovery 3 TDV6 engine with new everything
Knowing all of this, I took my Land Rover to a specialist some three hours away for all the big stuff: timing belt, high-pressure fuel pump belt, oil pump, chain tensioners, EGR valves, torque converter—the lot. It was a pretty big job that took about four days, including some suspension work and new fluids all around. The body had to be taken off the frame for easier access and the total bill was around $6,000 including parts and labor. That was roughly half of what I paid for the car a few months prior, but it meant that I had a solid car to use as a daily driver.
Now The Bad Stuff
I grew up watching Wheeler Dealers and Scrapheap Challenge, and I love working on cars, but that job was too much for me. That said, it wasn’t too long before my home mechanic skills would be put to good use because on a scorching summer day when one of the front calipers decided to give up and warped the rotor, making the steering wheel shake like a rabid dog under braking.
I was driving with my wife and two kids on the weekend, so I had to put up with it until we returned home. I installed a new set of front brake disks and refurbished the original calipers with new pistons and seals, which seemed to do the job. “Seemed” is the key word here. The new rotors were shit and warped after just a few hundred miles, so yet another set, this time from another brand, were installed.
Photo by: Iulian Dnistran / Motor1
On a previous adventure, this damned thing failed, leading to a transmission fluid leak.
Photo by: Iulian Dnistran / Motor1
Getting it fixed involved dropping the old transmission pan.
Photo by: Iulian Dnistran / Motor1
The original design had a plastic pan with an integrated filter. I decided to upgrade to a metal pan with a separate filter.
That was in 2023. This year, again while on a trip with the family, the same caliper that failed two years ago decided it was finally time to go to heaven. So a new set of calipers were ordered and changed in a garage far away from home—an easy job if you have the tools. But the old girl wasn’t done.
After mending the front brakes—hopefully for good this time—we were ready to hit the road and head back home. The bags were in the trunk, the wife and kids were all buckled up and the engine was running. I was saying goodbye to my brother and was just about to climb inside when I noticed something leaking on one of the rear wheels.
A brake pipe had ruptured. Oh, joy.
Plans were changed. As luck would have it, I had bought new brake pipes and hoses a while ago thinking I would change them once summer brought warmer temperatures. The problem was that the parts were home, and the round trip would take about seven hours. So I left the Discovery, hopped in my brother’s car, got the parts and drove back to fix the Land Rover the following day.
Before and after buying my car, I’ve seen a fair share of Discovery owners posting photos of their cars on flatbed trucks, and I always thought that the roadside assistance plague would avoid me. I was wrong.
Photo by: Iulian Dnistran / Motor1
Last summer I embarked on a roughly 2,000-mile European road trip with my family. It was the first time we would drive such a long distance with the kids, but I was confident everything would be alright. I changed the oil and gave the car a general checkup before leaving and hit the road.
Everything went smoothly and we reached our destination battling heavy traffic on the highway and 104 degrees in the shade. And then, while driving to our hotel from a day trip, I noticed the engine temperature dropped to zero despite it being 100 degrees outside. I said to my wife: “Something is wrong.” And sure enough, a few minutes later the car started sputtering and revving up on its own. I pulled over in a gas station parking lot.
After an engine restart, the jury was in: the car had gone insane. Without touching the throttle, the engine would rev to 2,000 rpm and then back to idle over and over again.
Here’s a top tip for every Land Rover owner out there: Get an OBDII scanner and keep it in the car. You won’t need it until you need it. That’s what I did and boy was I glad. A quick scan revealed a million errors, though most were caused by the erratic behavior. The culprit was the engine oil temperature sensor which conked out and told the ECU that the lubricant was at -76 degrees. As a result, the electronic brain was trying to warm up the engine, but it was confused because the ambient temperature sensor, transmission temperature sensor, and coolant temperature sensor were telling it something else.
It was undrivable. Because of the constant throttle blips, the automatic transmission was refusing to change gears and the exhaust was smoking heavily. So I had to call a tow truck.
I was in Croatia, a country where I’d seen precisely one other Land Rover Discovery 3 in the week I had been there, so I told the flatbed truck driver to drop me and my car off to a respected spare parts store on the outskirts of a big city. Taking it to a random repair shop wouldn’t have been very productive in my mind, so I set out to fix it on my own. I knew the sensor was on the side of the oil pan and I had a very basic toolkit on hand, so I was confident that the car would be back on the road in no time.
I was wrong. The parts store said a new oil temperature sensor for my car would “never” arrive because there were none in stock anywhere in the country. I tried another store and got the same answer. That was a big problem.
Thankfully, my parents joined us on our trip from the start and were there when I had to call the tow truck, so the kids and wife got a free ride to the hotel. I called more parts stores, broadening my search in the surrounding countries, too, but to no avail. I eventually found some in stock in Spain and the United Kingdom, but delivery would take too long and would not get to me in time.
We had to head home in two days, so I was out of luck.
But on the last day, I thought the sensor that made my life hell was little more than a resistor. So I unplugged it, but the car behaved the same. The winning ticket came in the form of a certified bush fix: a piece of wire bridging the two connector pins together. The ECU saw a fake oil temperature of around 180 degrees, which was within the normal temperature range and all went back to normal.
We drove back home some 1,200 miles during a heat wave and the car didn’t miss a beat. I ordered a new sensor and installed it once I was back at the garage. But guess what? It was a cheap knockoff and it failed again in less than three months, so I had to order yet another one—this time an original Land Rover part that hasn’t failed since.
Even With Those Problems, There’s Still Plenty To Love
The Land Rover LR3 is a superbly engineered car. It rides almost like a Rolls-Royce, it feels quiet, understated, and unstoppable once you get off the pavement. With a decent set of all-terrain or off-road tires, it can go almost anywhere thanks to its adjustable air suspension and advanced Terrain Response system that eliminates the need for mechanical diff lockers.
Photo by: Iulian Dnistran / Motor1
It has a split tailgate, making it ideal for short snack stops in the great outdoors. It has a parking heater to which I attached a remote control module, so on chilly winter mornings I can just press a button inside the house and warm the coolant without running the engine. When I go to start the car, there’s hot air blowing through the vents. It also has a crotch vent—why did manufacturers stop installing those?
I paid maybe a little too much for my car, but I wanted a low-mileage rig with a good service record. That said, there are good LR3’s out there that cost less than $8,000, and you’ll be hard-pressed to find another car that’s this capable for so little money.
I used to do stupid stuff when I was young, like taking a beat-up Mitsubishi pickup with street tires in the woods alone and seeing what it would take to get stuck. Don’t do that, it’s stupid. Bring a buddy. The point is, I took my LR3 with street tires on some of the trails where I did get stuck in the Mitsubishi and it did not miss a beat. It didn’t struggle for traction, it just kept going forward. Mind you, it’s no extreme off-roader, but for most people who just enjoy a nice trip off the beaten track, it’s perfect. And it can also get you home in comfort after you’re done playing in the dirt.
As for the engine, it’s a peach. Buttery smooth with a Leopard-like sound note and plenty of power and torque for everyday use. It’s far from the 300 horsepower of the mighty 4.4-liter V-8 you guys got in America, but 195 hp and 320 pound-feet of torque is plentiful around here. It cruises like a champ at 80 miles per hour and returns around 21-23 miles per gallon.
I did my best to avoid catastrophic failure by changing the oil every 6,000 miles (10,000 km) or so to avoid fuel contamination and I switched from the manufacturer-recommended 5W30 viscosity to a 5W40 oil with A3/B4 spec because my car doesn’t have a DPF and a high-shear rate (HTHS) of over 3.5 mPas is essential. So far, it has been easy sailing.
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Iulian Dnistran / Motor1
The Land Rover LR3 is getting a bit long in the tooth, admittedly. Ever since it launched in 2004 in Europe, it was considered a complicated car due to the air suspension system and many electronic components scattered throughout the car. That made it more prone to breakdowns compared to your average commuter car.
In my mind, having a stuck brake caliper and a dead sensor isn’t such a big deal because I was able to fix the issues on my own. Other problems were encountered, too, like a leaking transmission connector which required a new gearbox pan and a transmission fluid change. I also did that at home.
These are issues that can and will likely happen to any 20-year-old car, and I think that the Land Rover LR3 doesn’t deserve its reputation for bad reliability. That said, if you’re in the market for one, you either need to work on it yourself or find a competent garage that will do good work for decent money. And that’s rarely the case, unfortunately.
I’ve seen numerous posts on Facebook groups from American owners complaining about repair shops asking for ludicrous amounts of money for basic jobs like breaks or coolant hoses. It’s no different in Europe, either.
Any wannabe buyer reading these posts would assume that it would be better to stay away. The LR3 and later LR4 are not for everyone. You need to know what you’re doing and what you’re getting into. If you soldiered through this entire article, you’ve seen that my ownership experience has been somewhat of a rollercoaster ride but the gist of it is that I always made it home. Could it have been easier? Sure. There are plenty of owners out there who have had an easier life–as well as plenty others who will never buy a Land Rover again because of the troubles. You just need to do your research before you dive head-first and set your expectations accordingly.
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