Vehicle

2008 Land Rover LR2 119,000 miles (Owned since new)


High Severity Faults - (for example: Brake failure, engine stalls in traffic, loss of lights at night while driving)

- None (not a single time in 11 years)


Medium Severity Faults - (for example: vehicle cannot be started without replacing a defective part)

- Starter Motor (died on me across the street from my house)

- Battery x 2 (I am on my third battery)


Low severity Faults (for example: coolant leak, oil leak, loss of A/C)

- Radiator Fan (upgraded to dual fan)

- Sunroof not closing properly (Repaired under warranty)

- HDC Fault (Software repair, under warranty)



Maintenance for the past 11 years

21 x Engine Oil and Filter
4 x Engine Air filter
2 x Power Steering fluid
1 x Power Steering filter (Reservoir)
2 x Sparkplugs
4 x Cabin Air filter
3 x Brake Fluid Flush
3 x ATF Fluid (15 Qts. total)
2 x Gear Oil Power Transfer Unit
4 x Gear Oil Rear Differential (Magnet added to fill plug)
3 x Front Brake Pads
1 x Front Brake Rotors
2 x Rear Brake Pads
1 x Rear Brake Rotors
1 x Over Drive Pulley Alternator
1 x Over Drive Pulley Serpentine belt
1 x Serpentine belt, Tensioner and idler
1 x Coolant hoses (3 hoses)
2 x Coolant
1 x Thermostat
1 x Intake manifold gaskets (qty 6)
1 x Anti Drain Valve for oil filter housing

Summary

This Land Rover needs maintenance.

And this Land Rover is very dependable

The cost for the maintenance is trivial (if you do it yourself)

If you ignore the Engine oil and filter (every car powered by diesel or petrol needs this) the other items listed cost about $1000

That's $100/year extra as compared to a typical FWD sedan or estate car.


What made me think of this?

I watched this video


Scroll forward to 14:50 for the cost break down

VW Touareg cost to get to 113,000 miles

Maintenance - $2991

Repairs - $9150




And here is a picture of my latest maintenance item.

Look at how clean that area is it doesn't leak a drop of oil.






Let me know if you've had a different experience with your Freelander 2

Thanks

Paul

Being able to carry out your own basic maintenance on a reliable car is a big plus in cost of ownership...

In 2014 I took an outrageous gamble and bought an RR P38 4.6 HSE with 103K miles on it and whacked 32,000 miles on it in twenty-six months... fuel cost aside (my fuel costs are subsidised by the business) the total bill in maintenance, including £700 for replacing the suspension airbags when I first got it, was around £2,200... I carried out the oil/filter changes myself at 5-6,000 mile intervals, (same on all my cars, I don’t have faith in the modern 10-20K intervals) and fault codes that came up were almost all cleared right away. The one faff where I called the cavalry in was a seized ABS sensor... some prattt hadn’t put the protective cover on when replacing it before, and it was well and truly seized in situ and had to be drilled out.

Can you imagine the cost of all that routine maintenance being carried out by a garage? No way I’d have made that purchase without being able to do my own basic servicing.

The gamble here was purchase cost vs depreciation vs cost to run. I got £500 more selling that car than I paid for it... so in my case that gamble paid off.

Our FL2 was not a gamble at all, and was well ahead of the game until late January 2019... we bought it in 2014 with 22,000 miles on it and put well over 100K miles on it since, and consumables aside, it had cost us nothing at all in faults/issues.

Then in January 2019, with 126K miles on it and literally on the very day we decided to trade it and had paid a visit to our LR dealer, a valve dropped in the number two pot and in effect destroyed the engine... A lot of research tells me that this is very rare in what is generally a reliable unit shared across LR, Ford and Peugeot, and the engine was well maintained, again shorter than recommended oil/filter changes, so we’ve put it down to just being one of those things.

Yet, even adding the cost of the exchange engine into our figures, because we’re now keeping the FL2 for another 70-100K miles we’re still likely to be quids in for our own circumstances, because the same measures of purchase cost vs depreciation vs cost to run still work for us. It’s economical on fuel while still quick enough on the road, tyres last (our XK8 has just had two tyres at 12K miles, whereas the FL’s have 26K on them and plenty of tread left) and the car won’t depreciate much more at all. (The beige/cream leather interior still cleans up nicely as well... )

There’ll be some bits that wear out of course, but it will be interesting to see what other issues come up as it will cross 200K miles in about 18 months from now. It will sound crazy, but I’m really glad to be keeping it a while yet, because I still haven’t seen a direct replacement for it I’d be happy with... and it would have cost much more than the exchange engine did to buy another suitable 20,000 mile vehicle... just look at 20,000 mile FL2 prices, never mind DS or Evoque prices...  Lexus RX450H - 500 mile a week commuter- I just couldn’t trust in a newer RRS or DS for that….
2009 Freelander 2 HSE... 155K miles, we’ve done 135k of those, has done brilliantly on the commute and staying firmly put as car two in the household
2002 Jaguar XK8 Coupe... fun, fast, ours for 12 years and owes us nothing - so staying with us too…

That is an amazing story.

After reading what you wrote I want to get a P38 RR.

Here is an interesting link for a P38 - https://www.motorious.com/articles/feature...-rover-p38


Back to to original topic the reliability of the Freelander 2

I completely agree that doing basic maintenance yourself keeps the cost down.

And I am very impressed that you opted for a new engine when you were looking for a possible replacement to your Freelander 2.

To that last point it makes me wonder if the "Ghost in the Machine" knew that you were thinking about selling and it decided to force your hand.

What I can say for certain is that if I am near my Freelander 2 (LR2) I will only talk about keeping her forever.

No point in angering the Ghost

Thanks again for the inspiring story.


In my case I own the 3.2 petrol engine and my biggest concern is that the timing chain will fail at around 300,000 miles.

I may need to replace mine if I ever get near 300,000.



Take care

Paul