I'm looking at buying a 1990 Range Rover for my wife. Was this a good model? How reliable are the motors (3.9? v8) and how much mileage will I expect out of one before it needs rebuilding?
Any info will help. THanks

I like em. I've got a few friends with 90 RRCs with 100-150k and they seem to run well. I wouldn't worry so much about high miles as I would the little electronic gremlins they can get(like power seats, ect) Rust in the tailgate is common. The Borg Warner TC is suspect but for on road use it is probably fine. I've only got personal experience with owning defenders and a disco so take it with a grain of salt. There are plenty of RRC owners here to give you all the details.

Johnathan

I've got a 1990 Range Rover. It has 167,000 miles and the engine runs very strong. It is not uncommon to get well over 200,000 out of these motors when they are maintained properly. The only real issue you might run into is the ABS pump going out. For the most part they are pretty good trucks. You will have various electric things give you trouble over the years. And your truck will probably leak a little. But that's part of owning rovers. Overall a good truck that could use a little more power.

expect to have high maintenance bills for the first year or two.

They like to be driven hard once up to snuff - but if its led a quiet life of mall running, there are dozens of issues waiting to rear their ugly head.

Most of the components on the RR will continue to run with high levels of wear, or seemingly non-operating condition. The end result is many folks ignoring a lot of little noises, and chalking them up to "character", and passing all that lovely "british character" to your poor pocket book. I've ignored such little noises and been left with 3x the price in parts instead of hunting down issues and being proactive with maintenance.

Once you've got the truck on a regular and base maintenance schedule and subsequently in well running mechanical condition, I think they're about the greatest thing on wheels. Unfortunately you have to treat them like a mistress to get to that point.

I paid about 9K for my truck 1.5 yrs ago with the intentions of using it for mountain sports and off-roading. Then my job situation changed, and I had to rely on it for making a 40 mile round-trip commute each day . . . that really beat the piss out of it, and I began to discover how poorly it was maintained in the past. For this discovery process I have about $2500 in receipts for "little things", and that's not touching the original short block, tranny, xfer case, or diffs.

I don't want to scare you off - your wife will love the thing to death, just be prepared for some surprises.

I wouldn't hesitate to ignore the vast majority of "never off-road" Land Rovers, and scout out discoweb, or roversnorth for an enthusiast oriented truck. From what you'll make in take-offs of off-road parts you can dump into a fresh coat of paint, and worry a lot less about shake downs in that first year.

good luck -

isaac / seattle