5 THINGS I WISH I'D KNOWN BEFORE BUYING MY LAND ROVER DEFENDER!

what would be my top five things to consider if i was going to buy my land rover defender again let's get into it in this video so as you may or may not know if you don't watch a channel regularly i have no experience in mechanics or ownership of cars like this but i decided to buy my defender about two years ago now and since then i've done quite a lot to my car i've joined the community of defender owners here in the uk and i found it a massively rewarding experience and a really fun journey slowly modifying my defender so this video is not a structured buyer's guide it certainly doesn't have all the things to look out for in the pitfalls when buying a defender but i think from someone like myself when i was buying one this is what i would have liked to know about the different variety of defenders and considerations i think are important when you're thinking of buying one i'm going to cover some really key things and particularly towards the end of the video a very key point so make sure you stick around until the end so my first key point when picking the defender having learned how many are stolen how many are chopped up and put back together again to be sold is make sure your vin number is matching throughout your car and on your v5 logbook so when you're looking for that vin number on the chassis it's down here on the right hand side and if you go up to there you can see i won't show you here on youtube but it's basically along that chassis on there you can clean it up and see it and then also there's one plate in the bonnet as well make sure those pieces are matching when you um choose your defender make sure it's matching with the v5 because these cars are chopped and messed around so much that you want to make sure you're actually getting a good model that's actually the original parts all put together the next is to understand the differences between the engine types that the land rover defender was produced in and what depending on that really is what year you're buying into i went for a land rover td5 defender this was the 2006 7 car there is after that the pumas that were in production until the end and that was a ford engine it was actually a transit engine that was put in the pumas but that car has very different characteristics for what a td5 does and prior to that the tdis as well so depending what engine and what year you're looking for will determine what kind of experience you're probably going to have owning a car i can really only speak on behalf of the td5 and a puma because they're the cars that i've driven i don't know much about the tdis so any input about people that own those cars let me know in the comments below so the difference between a td5 and a puma as far as i'm aware really is the puma is much easier to live with so if you're looking for a car you're commuting in if you're doing long distances in you want a bit more comfort that higher gearing ratio helps you cover longer distance of speed in a more quiet fashion i think the puma's a better choice the td5 i think is more charismatic of the defender many people say the td5 was the engine that best suited the defender and i'm i'm tending to agree with that having bought a td5 myself the options for aftermarket tuning i do a lot of stuff with a live tuning as you can see such as the remaps the turbos there's a lot more modification when it comes to engine sort of upgrades you can do with the td5 that you can't do on a puma and one of the biggest things between the td5 and the puma is the exhaust note so i've got standard exhaust on my car at the moment but i know if i go for an aftermarket system or get a cat delete the sauna td5 is amazing it's probably the best sounding defender ever produced so the td5 depending on what you're after is a car of choice probably for more someone that uses it off-road someone that's more of an enthusiast at weekends i although i could commute in my defender td5 i don't if i did i'd want to do a few more things to it like change a transfer box to a discovery one just to make it run a little bit better on longer distances i think it's more of an involved car the td5 although it is less comfortable it's less nice inside the dashboard is certainly more simple so you have to see both we decide on what's best for you but i think if you're using your car daily and you want something that's a bit more modern the puma is definitely your car of choice so things you'll know about td5 from the exterior if you're looking at one the biggest one is well they have the badging just here or some of them do at least and it has the flat bonnet not the humped kind of muscley bonnet a lot of people changed their bonnets on the td5 to have the puma bonnet i quite like it being the original flat one for the td5 but i'm interested to know what do you guys think should i change that to the hump on it should i get a puma bonnet for my defender they're definitely more nicked than the these um bonnets that's for sure but let me know what you think the other thing to talk about is the body type for your defender now when i bought my car i didn't know so much about it so at least so many of the other options that come with the different body types so mine was a vambac it was a light goods vehicle it's what it's classed as although it's had the windows cut into it it originally was completely paneled out and when i was looking defenders i thought actually that doesn't make a huge difference and in truth it doesn't you can cut the windows into it there's a lot of additional extras such as the internals that you get with a station wagon with the windows in the back and that is things like the headliner it's things like all the finishes around the rear windows and although it doesn't sound like a lot in the defender world things like a headliner are the best part of 800 to a thousand pound if you want to get an aftermarket one so it's a really big cost saving if you're thinking of making that conversion to your car if i was gonna buy again i would go for a station wagon actually rather than a van back the other options are things like the xs spec and if you want things like air conditioning electric window the x aspect is what you want to go for mine is not mine it's a completely basic spec it's only had central locking added as an additional extra aftermarket it doesn't have air conditioning it doesn't have electric windows not a huge problem doesn't particularly bother me but i think if you want those kind of mod con comforts you want to be going for the excess spec when you're choosing your defender you can add those things after market you can quite easily put them in afterwards but it's quite expensive thing to do in comparison to just buying it probably up front the other thing to note is things like heated seats like if you have heated seats i don't know it depends what seats you go for but most of the time the seats that the defender came with are not the best and you're probably going to want to upgrade them at some point and you can easily upgrade a heated seat but you don't have them previously so mine for example is not a heated seat car but when i do upgrade the seats which will hopefully be soon on the channel that will have a heated seat element into it and a button one good thing about my car being a van is that it's um these are the windows i've cut into it here and here is that these are much much better on tacks the downside with that is which i only found out after having a defender which was a van is that these cars you cannot use your no claims bonus on so if you've got your no times bonus on cars you can't transfer over to this because this is a van i don't think you can transfer them back either to a car so there's something to think about if you think you're getting insured and you're young and you're buying a defender also at this point if you want a really really good buyer's guide and technical review of defenders and what to look for when it comes to underneath the car and oil and all the kind of mechanical side of things go check out a video on youtube by a company called juice motors the guy that owns it's called sam and he's done an unbelievable buyer's guide for a defender when it comes to checking out all the mechanics you'd want to know it's probably the best video on youtube when it comes to being a buyer's guide get a car that's been untampered with probably one not like mine now i've done loads of stuff to it and that's because you want something at a complete basic spec you really want to get like an old farm vehicle ideally something that's been looked after mechanically but hasn't necessarily been completely cosmetically modified just so you can have a fresh starting point and you know everything that's been done to it these cars are hobby cars people work on them a lot themselves and that can be a good thing but it can be a bad thing such as my car probably but i think you want to be choosing one that's completely untampered a fresh start that you can start doing bits to it and you know all the history and what's been done to it over time that includes things like engine remaps you don't want a car that's been remapped and changed and performance parts put into it unless it's been done professionally and that's because sometimes those things aren't done very well there's a lot of companies that do remapping and tuning that probably aren't as reputable as others i think it's important to pick a car that you know the history of in regards to those things if you want to do it then you can choose how to do that yourself and i definitely recommend getting all those things done professionally checker plate so although plate can look good and does protect like the wing tops you really want to avoid a cardboard checker plate if you're buying it let's say over 10 years old which is pretty much most defenders now at least some 50 000 pound it is and that's because checker plate typically is used to hide corrosion so you'll often see it along the bottom of the doors on the sills on the rear quarter pieces and that's because those areas are prone to corrosion and the last thing you want to do is buy a car you think looks great it's been covered in checker plate but actually that's all been done just to hide corrosion so that's a really important point to make sure when you're looking at your car rust is top of your list because these cars rust everywhere and some of the rust is fine it's surface rust you can kind of see where it is the great thing with defenders is you can get under them and you can have a really good look around even if you're not mechanical like myself you can still have quite a good go at making sure that it looks at least surface rust and in decent condition and not crumbling and falling apart so as you can see mine's been tampered with quite a lot i like think i've done a good job of it but still if you're buying one you probably want to go for one that hasn't had anything done to it like mine was originally so you can put your own mark on it and do your own thing so checker plate for cars are usually put along this bottom edge because the bottom of the doors often rust out and again you get a little kind of rear bit here a checker plate just to hide that corrosion along there and sometimes even in the worst case just the whole rear crossmember is checker plate and that is just to stop seeing all the corrosion that comes on them you will see on the cars and this has all been re-sprayed but you will see a bit of surface corrosion and even under mine there is some corrosion some elements of it this is all kind of lana garden waxed to stop it rusting and if you're looking at one and the guy said oh you know it's um it's been wax oiled regularly it's been protected regularly that can be a good thing actually you just want to make sure it's not there covering everything up so take like a rag or something with you lay under the car and have a look and finally comes the most important thing which is what are you actually buying a defender for what are you looking at using it for on a daily basis because these cars are used by everybody and to the frustration of some members in the defender community for example mine that often gets called a chelsea tractor at least it was at the last show that i went to is a car that i want to keep i don't off-road in my defender and i'm i'm going to say that right now on youtube i don't do off-roading in my car it's done a small bit of off-road it's previous owners have definitely off-roaded it a lot mine had five plus owners and it's quite damaged underneath so it's definitely been off-roaded but i don't offer it on my defender i want to upgrade my defender get it as nice as it is to drive on road i love the looks the style of the defender and really at the moment these cars are an investment they're going up and up in value i don't want to take one off photo and get it completely trashed so for me that's my personal opinion that's what i do with my car and that does frustrate some people that are big in the off-road scene because they think defenders should only be used off-road but the problem is with them at the moment with some of them trading 40 50 60 000 pounds in the in the kind of higher tier it'd be foolish really to take these cars off and smash them about one of the biggest things about owning a defender for me has been involved in the community there is such an amazing community behind these cars so many people love them they're definitely a car that suits everybody everybody can have a defender when you go to a show you see such a variety of different people that own these cars and for me i've absolutely loved the experience i'd be really interested to hear your thoughts on things that you would look for if you were going to buy your defender again let me know in the comments below check out my other videos here on youtube and i'll see you guys in the next video [Music]

Channel: The Doctor’s Garage

Views: 142,325

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Id: dsWFU4fQbWI

Length: 11min 54sec (714 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 24 2022