Diseasel vs Petrol

[Chicken Drumstick]

I am not convinced that the body off servicing is responsible for the high service costs as they are designed to come off are they not? it just sounds bad.

It is true though that some cars are very expensive to service which makes them cheap to buy but expensive to run.

When the Maseratti coupe came out they halved in value at the end of two years, norm was three to four, so why was that, servicing cost was £1K per service (my M5, pretty much as fast was only £350) and a min of one service per year or x miles (can't remember) but it meant two services a year for me. I spoke to a garage selling them why they were dumpped at two years old, Maseratti offered first two years free servicing after that even wealthy people dumpped them! I didn't buy one as I couldn't afford the servicing.

When looking at affordability it all has to be considered.

Marc.

You have to watch servicing costs though, as it's largely a con.

Remember most services are an oil & filter change and that's it. Ok they'll have a list of things to "check". Just eyeball. But anything above looking and the oil/filter change will be charged extra.

So at a main dealer or even indi specialists you pay heavily for labour -- remember some places will charge £170-250/hour labour rate!!!

And massively overpay for the parts and consumables used.

Any service that offers more such as wiper replacement etc, is just there to catch unwilling ignorant mugs who are happy to over pay for stuff. I had a look through a Bentley independent service guide. They were happily ripping off their clients charging over £80 for a pair of wiper blades you could buy retail price for £21.99

Once a car is a couple of years old or so, you are simply better off taking your vehicle to a local mechanic and sourcing the parts yourself. End result will be the same level of servicing at maybe 1/10th of the cost.

[L19MUD]

I would say the L322 is an easier car to work on than a D3/RRS. I changed the engine in my BMW engined 4.4V8 L322 and whilst it was not the easiest job it the world I did it on the floor in the workshop using no specialist tools.

The engine in my L322 is great (previous engine ran out of oil be previous owner hence the need to change it). I get 17mpg average and 21mpg (at best!) on a run

I also have an M62 engined BMW 535i which is the same engine as the RR but in its smaller 3.5l guise..it has managed 285k reliable miles!

[Chicken Drumstick]

Maybe I asked the question wrongly.

For the home mechanic (no lift on the drive) would servicing be cheaper and/or easier on a v8 petrol compared to the diesels offered in the RRS, l322 or d3/4?

I would obviously have to consider some sort of diagnostic kit (have nanocom for the d2)

Personally I think a petrol V8 is likely to be the easiest and cheapest to service and maintain.

An early L322 uses the BMW 4.4 V8 -- in reality apart from the 4wd system it's almost identical to a BMW 540i and should be no more difficult or costly to service.

Latter ones use the Jag V8, which equally should be no more bother to service and maintain than a 3.2 V8 XJ8 is.

And apart from the engine/gearbox the rest of the vehicle is the same be it petrol or diesel, so maintaining those bits won't be any different.

The only thing I do know is, the BMW powered L322 uses smaller brakes and you can get smaller alloys - good if you want more off roady type tyres. When the Jag V8 came along they upgraded the brakes and thus bigger alloys.

D3 can be had with smaller alloys too I think, but not the RRS.

I would avoid the early BMW powered TD6 L322 as they eat gearboxes, the V8's don't.

I would also be wary of base spec 2.7 D3's as they are coil not air sprung. Suspect they are ok on road, although probably don't ride as well and obviously lose the dynamic ability of air suspension. But being independent suspension it won't work off road as well as the air sprung ones as the air suspension has a solid axle simulation with cross linked air bags.

[L19MUD]

Personally I think a petrol V8 is likely to be the easiest and cheapest to service and maintain.

An early L322 uses the BMW 4.4 V8 -- in reality apart from the 4wd system it's almost identical to a BMW 540i and should be no more difficult or costly to service.

Latter ones use the Jag V8, which equally should be no more bother to service and maintain than a 3.2 V8 XJ8 is.

And apart from the engine/gearbox the rest of the vehicle is the same be it petrol or diesel, so maintaining those bits won't be any different.

The only thing I do know is, the BMW powered L322 uses smaller brakes and you can get smaller alloys - good if you want more off roady type tyres. When the Jag V8 came along they upgraded the brakes and thus bigger alloys.

D3 can be had with smaller alloys too I think, but not the RRS.

I would avoid the early BMW powered TD6 L322 as they eat gearboxes, the V8's don't.

I would also be wary of base spec 2.7 D3's as they are coil not air sprung. Suspect they are ok on road, although probably don't ride as well and obviously lose the dynamic ability of air suspension. But being independent suspension it won't work off road as well as the air sprung ones as the air suspension has a solid axle simulation with cross linked air bags.

Some of the early L322's had smaller brakes..some bigger. I don't know the reason why though.

Both my 52 V8 and my dads 52 TD6 have the larger front brakes fitted

[jad]

So at a main dealer or even indi specialists you pay heavily for labour -- remember some places will charge £170-250/hour labour rate!!!

Not sure where you got your figures from but that's over double what the labour rates actually are for a main LR dealer.

Jad

[Chicken Drumstick]

I guess it may vary from place to place. Although I stating for 'any' brand as Maserati has been mentioned by another poster.

That said, I know that a local LR dealer does indeed charge well over £100/hr labour rates. And they also have different labour rates for different vehicles. Defenders have the lowest labour rates and Range Rovers the highest.

Not sure how they can even remotely justify it. But the same block doing the same sort of thing on an RR is something like 30% more per hour labour than working on a Defender!

[Soren Frimodt]

To reel in the money spent on specialist tools especially of the computer kind, and simply because a lot of the snobs that buy a big expensive SUV expect a certain price to feel special. And no its not something I've come up with, it is indeed what the dealers themselves say!

[DavidW]

Of the things I've had done to my D3, I'd say most you could do at home although you would need a computer to plug in once you've done it to turn the lights off.

Any good Land Rover specialist should now be well used to working on this generation of LR. Costs need not be high.

[De Ranged]

Chicken you might be right about older " simple to work on cars" but modern cars lol service dealers have instructions on how to, the local mechanic has to work this out...

I have a case in point a logging contractor mate, one of his vans was a VW van be about 4yrs old, it needed a new clutch so he decided to save some money and went to the local (very good rep) garage $7000 later the clutch lasted 3 weeks another clutch this time they also replaced the flywheel (which they should have done the first time and why the new non ome clutch failed) they tried to charge another $2500 apparently what the parts cost was for the cheapest aftermarket stuff

I happened to have worked for the local VW dealer so I rang and asked how much to do the job.... $1800 for an OME clutch and flywheel kit and $450 for labour lol

I'm not certain what he ended up paying since I have been laughing at him for it he hasn't told me.... but the last time I drove it 6months after all this it still smelled of burnt clutch and the aircon didn't work since they had disconnected it to fit the clutch and I'm guessing they didn't have the gear to re-charge it

Now I'm not saying "only deal with reg service agents" lol I'm saying do your home work before you get work done.... some things need to be done at dealers, alot don't

As for body off servicing if somebody told me that I'd laugh at them..... if a car is designed like that its resale will be stupidly low and this would impact on sales, no manufacture is going to do that lol well not twice

As for the original post I can't say much on the models you've listed I haven't had much to do with them so can't say anything

But i will say I'll never buy a late model diesel... the hp and economy is impressive catch is so is the complexity and when it goes wrong the cost is ALOT more than a similar bench mark petrol

Me personally, I'm building a diesel motor into my next daily because I want to tow with it and you can't beat diesels for torque, but I'm fitting an older generation indirect injection (no where near the economy of common rail) large motor that is known for lots of torque and impressive reliability, if I didn't tow then I'd be a small petrol that revs