Bricking myself

[Madsteve]

first up i would like to say hello to everyone!

second i am currently in the process of buying a second hand 1.8 freelander and have had a couple of sleepless nights worrying about the reliabilty of these babies!

are they as bad as everyone seems to make out???

also someone pointed out the whole topgear crash test thing and quite frankly i am a bit worried that it performed that way at 40mph

any help or views on these subjects would be greatly appreciated!



:confused:

[Desert Warrior]

Hi Steve

I have just bought a 3 door 1.8S soft top a couple of months ago and had the same thoughts as you. I have to say though that I have done 3k in 2 months and it hasn't missed a beat. Yes, people do have problems with their freebies but they are either older vehicles (the newer ones are more reliable I think) or the snags are relatively small.

What I did was to buy a second hand one (18 months old) from a dealer with a good reputation and with a reasonable mileage (18.5k) that indicated it hadn't spent too long in the workshop. Obviously, I also looked at the service history and for any obvious signs of accident damage etc.

The main thing is not to let the scare stories on the forums get to you. Remember that for every horror story, there are a thousand satisfied owners who have never had a problem with their Freebie.

[badlands]

Hi MadSteve

And Iam one of the thousand satisfied frebie owners, (beta halfs motor) got a 2000 1.8 xei, its now done 18k had 1 prob but land rover soon put that right at no cost to me.
Mint car might sell it in Dec for anotha 1.
About the crash test, well i neva seen it, but what can yer do, wen i replace this one i am going to look at the safety part of it.
Plus ive neva heard of any horra storys about the freebie.:yay:

[Madsteve]

thanks guys!:p

the freebie in question is a 1998 S reg petrol 1.8
38000mls full landrover service history.

the thing is it looks absolutely immaculate and i wonder if this means that it has spent a lot of time of the road in the dealers?

obviously the warranty has expired and the place i am buying it from is not a landrover dealer but it is a main ford dealership.

the thing that worries me most is that i have seen some reports by people that the head gasket blows nearly every 1000mls and some have even had to get a new engine fitted after this has occured.

any thoughts on the above?

cheers again
Steve

[Lighting90]

I have heard the same stories about the rover cars as well regarding the head gaskets, and well we have had ours since new for seven years, and it hasn't blown the head gasket in that time, though now I have said something about it, it will no doubt go now, but at 100,000 miles, you can't moan too much.

With regard to the accident test thing, stay away from concrete walls, if your going to crash hit the nearest volvo or something like that.. :p

Like all things a lot of things are minor, but because of the way the dealer has handled it, the owners become upset. If people generally had a better understanding of the mechanicals of their vehicles, they would know how to deal with problems better.

Like any car, you get good ones and bad ones, you just have to judge it yourself.

[Madsteve]

concrete wall/ volvo = same thing surely:p

[Lighting90]

Nope, the volvo is covered in crumple zones... :buck:



Something the concrete wall doesn't have....

[russ]

I would take what top gear say with a pinch of salt personally.

Have a read of the EuroNCAP crash test http://www.euroncap.com/results.htm

Do what Lighting90 suggests and avoid brick walls! :cheers:

Most cars won't stand up to a brick wall or tree trunk, no matter how much 'design' goes into it.
I'd be more worried about being crushed between lorries like that poor family on the M1 the other month! :(

[s.stirley]

Indeed .. my father worked in crash testing directly for 15 years and at the facility for a further 10. The tests that NCAP and the like produce he always said were nonsense compared to real-world crashes. They worked very hard on techniques to get more real crash tests (including petrol tanker roll-over tests with different central reservation setups - they were worth seeing !) but NCAP ignored their advice and went with what their 'experts' told them to.

4x4's are not as safe as a lot of people perceive them to be, BUT they are generally safer in real terms than smaller cars - like the Megane etc.

Just my additional 2p ..

[Desert Warrior]

Steve

Re head gasket and everything that could go wrong. I would just go with it and bite the bullet.