17th Mar 2006, 15:47

Third week of my first land rover, a Discovery 3 7 seat TDV6 S. It replaced a dismally poor 2004 Renault Grande Espace which was beset by electrical faults. With a newly acquired boat and three kids this seemed a solution. Reading this and other sites I feel I have walked into a replay. So far gas struts for tailgate replaced, rear park sensors failed and on back order as I'm told a common fault and front fogs fused twice this week, I think the dash switch is the problem. Dealership seem relaxed that this is normal!!!

Nice car, but looks like I have only scratched the surface of whats in store. I'm getting depressed at the predictability of what lies ahead. Our Saab 95 Estate has been faultless, wish they built something bigger.

29th Mar 2006, 16:02

I have had my D3 since November 04 - it was one of the very first sold, and have now covered over 40,000 miles.

I had three suspension failures, which resulted in the car sinking to its bump stops whilst driving along. These occurred fairly early on in its life, and ended up with the dealer replacing a wiring loom to fix. This I now consider cured, as the car has covered 32000 miles since the last occurrence.

I have had many software fixes applied, which have improved things a lot. These include the PDC (park distance control) which was intermittent, and the heating which was always too cold.

The latest problem I have is a failure of a gas strut on the tailgate, the mounting has come adrift and the car will need to go to the bodyshop for a repair, as the back of the D post is inaccessible.

The electronic park brake has also broken, and will be repaired along with the above strut problem.

All this aside, I really love driving this car! it is like nothing else I have ever driven. I could not imagine what I would replace it with; nothing comes close.

If you want, or have a Discovery3, you must look at www.disco3.co.uk; there is so much information on there. There is more knowledge on there than you will find at the dealers! If you have an issue, just ask the forum and you will get an answer.

30th Jul 2006, 07:27

"...the seats haven't gotten any better, lovely for short trips, but unsupportive on long ones, still I'm not fat and I have the feeling they were designed for 'larger' people"

That's strange... I always reasoned that the rotund blokes were the ones who needed more "orthopaedic" seats as opposed to the barcaloungers, which would provide no support for them at all and be squashed flat by their weight. Hmmm...

Anyway, sorry to hear about yer bad experiences with the D3. Kinda makes me glad I have my TD5 D2 SD with a bare minimum of Lucas wired gadgetry to go to pot. Cheers, M8...

7th Jan 2008, 07:34

Okay, original owner again, one year on and now 55K on the car. It's all been working well.

Faults in the last year are:

Driver's heated seat failed - fixed under warranty.

Gearbox whine still there, but hey ho we live with it.

Mirrors not resetting after reversing - dealer replaced a control unit and the problem went away, you have to push and push the dealer to this though!

Bonnet switch didn't register the bonnet was shut - replaced by the dealer.

Sunroof leaked when parked a certain way - This was due to one of the drainage holes being blocked which hadn't been checked during servicing.

Anyhow, all in all it's been a good year. Still going to keep the car as I've found out you can extend the warranty (for a price) so I'll be doing that in October this year!

4th Jan 2009, 13:36

Just bought a 55 plate disco 3 a few weeks ago, very pleased so far but now a HDC fault has appeared, going in for service next week so hopefully it will be fixed then, oh and the air bag light has just come on. These faults are a little bit worrying, the cars only clocked 35k so I was expecting at least a years fault free driving, although I do love the car.

19th Jul 2009, 12:28

We have a TDV6HSE, and while the car is great most of the time, the problems that arise and the dismal quality of some LR dealer makes me very cynical about it.

We got the car less than a year old, having been used by a Land Rover employee at Solihull. Apparently the higher up you are, the faster they turn over, so this one was used for 6 months on a trip to Spain (from the satnav history) and came to us as good as new.

In the warranty period we have had handbrake sticking problems and the rear discs were replaced under warranty. At the time the dealers called to say that the pads were 80% worn and would we like to pay £330 to have new ones fitted all round. This was 50% more than the next nearest dealer would charge for new pads. I suggested that at 11000 miles and as they were replacing the discs the pads were also a warranty item, even if only on the back. I was told they were not and so I decided to wait till the wear warning light came on.

A year and 14K miles later the pad wear lights are still not on. I can only assume the dealers wanted to make some money out of me. Complaint letters to the service manager unanswered.

We are on the 3rd set of locking wheel bolts as the others got rusty.

This year the warranty ended, and 2 weeks after the service when several ball joints were worn, but not enough to need replacing under warranty for the MOT (strange that - maybe I should have had the MOT done by someone else before the LR service), we have a profusion of warning light problems. Parking brake, loss of gear indicator which changes to adaptive front light warning occasionally. Sometimes the gear indicator works, but only above 20mph and it is slow to register a gear change. It looks to me like it will need a reboot, but I hate to think what that will cost.

We also have the intermittent problems with the mirrors not resetting after reversing, and the seats not memorising settings, and recently loss of the automatic parking sensors (OK if you switch them on manually) so in all, I would sell it tomorrow if it was not going to lose me such a huge amount of money. The TD5 was no as good but it was less unreliable and electronic. The 300TDi was slow and agricultural but much more robust and easier to fix.

5th Jun 2011, 08:25

Drove my Disco 3 home from south west France 960 miles; only leaving the car to cross on the ferry. It was that good we are doing it again this year.

11th Jun 2014, 18:14

I too have this "Engine system Failure" problem on my Disco3 with serious power loss and various other error messages, including "transmission" and brake problems. The Dynamic Stability control warning also comes on. Switching off and then starting again solved it for a while, but not long enough to do a serious journey. The fuel filter has been changed, but the problem persists. I should be very grateful to know what fixed yours please?

kennard.douglas@btinternet.com

Thanks, KD.