Going To Look at RR Classic Tomorrow

[live2travel photography]

Tomorrow I am going to go look at a 1995 RR. I have only seen one photo of the vehicle so it will be interesting to see what condition the vehicle is in. The guy who is selling it seems like he needs the money so I'm hoping to pick it up for under 3K. I have read a bunch of forums on what to look at when I get there, but just want to get some last minute info from you guys before I go up to get it look at it. All I know right now is it has 120K miles, it runs, and has been sitting. Any help will be much appreciated!

 

[safariguy]

That's a steal of a deal if it is in good shape. Ask if the air suspension has been replaced, as it will fail at some point. To do it yourself is probably $1500 worth of work.

 

[proper4wd]

Rust. Check everywhere. Especially in the front floors, rocker panels (sills), rear wheel arches, inside the engine bay along the seams on the firewall, at the bottoms of the A pillar posts where it meets the floor, front inner fenders, rear corner pieces by the taillights, lower tailgate under the bottom edge (run your hand under there), upper tailgate, and the chassis. Also make sure the interior is in fairly good shape... most of the small interior components are becoming NLA or very hard to find.

Anything else can be fixed with enough time and effort ($$$)

 

[live2travel photography]

That's a steal of a deal if it is in good shape. Ask if the air suspension has been replaced, as it will fail at some point. To do it yourself is probably $1500 worth of work.

Thanks for the reminder on that. I plan on swapping a OME suspension in. If the air ride system is bad I'm hoping to get it for a little less.

 

[proper4wd]

At this point I would bet there is a 10% chance it still has air ride in it. If it does, that is probably a sign the vehicle has been well maintained over its life. It's not cheap to keep that system going for 20 years.

 

[proper4wd]

Also, have you owned a Land Rover before? Or any other quirky vehicle? Just wondering what your mindset is going into this.

 

[roverandom]

As above, missing/broken parts are hard to replace these days. For $3K it better be in good to very good shape. A complete Maintenance history is also worth a lot. Any doubts just leave an offer with the owner and walk away and keep searching.

If you want an off roader or daily driver for cheap buy a D1. Homely and not as cool as a classic but much better parts availability.

 

[bigreen505]

Check the sunroof. That can cause problems if it is totally inoperable. I think there are things to watch out for (that you have read about and also mentioned above), but also things that you can just expect to replace. Ask him if there is any history of the vehicle stalling, running rough and/or being hard to start. There are myriad things that can cause those problems and you will likely spend a lot of time and money tracking and fixing the problem. Make sure the windshield and windshield trim are in good shape as they can be tricky to source. Just drive it and see how it feels.

The advantage of the '95 is there is more parts overlap with the D1. The disadvantage of a '95 is there are some parts unique to that vehicle.

 

[live2travel photography]

Ended up putting a deposit down on it. Going monday to pick it up. Ran well, sunroof worked, leather has 0 cracks, already been swapped over to springs, paint is pretty good for age(will need a good wash and wax), and almost no rust. Only things I saw wrong are the back two door outside handles dont work (should be easy to fix and nobody will really be back there) , and the drivers electric seat didn't work (going to install manual seat sliders on both seats as I've always hated electric ones, even high end working ones).

 

[R-Overland]

looks OK

 

[live2travel photography]

looks OK

The engine looks like it has all new hoses and all the fluids look new so it was taken care of before it sat. The paint looks crappy bc of all the pollen on the car.

 

[roverandom]

Power seat will probably work if you dismantle the switch and clean it.

Not sure how a manual seat is better than an 8 way power adjustable seat though?

 

[El Solis]

I just sprayed electronic cleaner into the power seat switch works fine now 👍

 

[live2travel photography]

I'll definitely try cleaning it.

I'm 6'2" and my wife is 5'2" so we end up moving seats back and forth a lot and manual sliders are so much easier than electronic. We had electric seats in our last SUV and hated them. But if I can get these running now I'll put swapping them on the back burner while I get it back into a daily driver.