So i am in the market for a Discovery ..How many miles can i expect to get out of it? the one i am looking at has been taken care of very well. I am just trying to get an idea if im getting an ok deal or not
Hmmmm? That's a tough question about how long they will last and as Joey said - that depends on a lot of things and number one is (at least for a NAS 4.00 liter/241 CID) - has that engine been seriously over-heated at any time in its life? If the answer is affirmative - then I would say - you would be lucky to see 200 K max ouit of it (and probably not even that) - sleeved aluminum blocks do not appreciate being boiled! The number 2 question is (quite apart from what sort of oil has been in it) - what sort of fuel has been running through it (for most of its life) as this is related to number1 reason - i.e., a continual diet of low-grade (i.e., below 91 octane fuel) does not conform well to the fuel-mapping for these engines - causing high internal temperatures and sleeve shifting, etc. Yes, some guys get away with it - they run them on crap and they keep running but there are also dudes who smoke and never get cancer - odds are better if you don't smoke and, in the case of your Rover engine, odds are better for a long life if you run it on the highest octane you can find.
Remember also - a lot of the first time owners for these Discoveries were not owners at all - they leased them as the purchase price was so high (50 to 75 k in the mid-1990s was not cheap by anybody's standards) and when the lease was about up they beat the living tar out of their vehicles - I know - i have seen what they have done - unbelievable Eval Kaneval stuff - jumps - leaps - see how many rocks you can hit on the bottom - just pure bs insanity. Stuff - I would add that would smash most North American trucks to smithereens! So you must bear this is mind.
But if you get one from the original owner who, following the British traditions of 'motoring' - babied it - Joey's guesstimate is not outrageous at all.
In order to save yourself a lot of frustration you must keep in mind that there are profound differences between North American engineering perspectives/expectations and British ones. I will give you one of the best examples I know of personally: i.e., when the IDF/ZAHAL was starting up its fledgling armor corps to hold off the Gypos with their T-34s/Stalins/etc. - the Israelis went for reliable AFV's - i.e., you could plunk an undertrained farmer's son in one and he could make it roll and not throw a track at each turn - so they bought a pile of American Sherman tanks which were well-known for mechanical reliability. Unfortunately they were also known for being a rather lousy tank as they had an exceeding high profile with a small turret which meant you, the tank crew, were a motorized gun-range target armed with a pop-gun for main aramament. The Israelis, ever inventive. pulled all the Sherman turret and pop guns and placed on the slightly larger and seriously upgunned French AMX 90 - thus creating the hybrid known as the Super Sherman. Their experience was that these were good reliable AFV's in the desert and no real match for the continual resupply of the latest Soviet armor to their foes in Egypt and Syria. America balked at the idea of selling their latest tanks to the Israelis so they turned to England where they purchased, at that time, the finest MBT in the world - the Centurion (out-classed anything the Commies could throw at it in Korea - and was basically impervious). it had a huge cast turret with a formidable high velocity tank-killing main gun that also had the world first auto-gun lay apparatus that permitted the gun to stay on target while the tank moved and shot - no less. But the problems began all over the place when the Israeli tank crews took delivery of their Centurions - parts broke, engines over-heated, guns could not stay on target, bells and whistles didn't work for long - in general they were having the 'Land Rover' experience only with a vehicle that they had to depend on with their lives. The Israeli crews were ******-off and wanted nothing to do with their new rides and they all wanted their Super Shermans back. General Isarel Tal knew that what was going wrong was because of the way they were treatuing their AFV's as he knew the battle-winning history of the Centurions. So he made a date and packed off all his chief trainers to the Centurion factory and test-grounds in the UK and he invited out British tank techs and experts to Israel to retrain his crews. After 'going back to school' and learning how to work with a superb but cranky piece of machinery - the Six Day War was upon them and the rest, as they say, was history - as the Centurions tore the guts out of all their armored opponents - quite literally - they out-gunned and out-armored and out-manouevered the best the east had to offer at that time.
Here's the point of this long history lecture: i.e. Tal knew that the North American approach to machinery (which his under-trained crewmen had) was simply not up to getting the best out of the best equipment - which demanded more knowledge and more coaxing than the 'Walmart' fire and forget attitude so popular in NA.
If you tune into the British websites on these rovers and their engines - you will see what i am gettng at here. No - you cannot operate a Rover V8 like a Dodge 225 slant six: i.e. - stick some oil in it - put in the cheapest gas you can find and forget about servicing or treating the engine with any kind of expectation for the next 500,000 miles - when you might think that perhaps it needs a quart of oil (LoL). you have to monitor these beasts and you have to keep on top of all their intricate eccentricies - including what sort of gas you feed them and how cool you keep that block with its steel sleeves! Moreover, there is no point in babying some poor old tired-out 4.00 liter that the original leasee decided to drag race everywhere with in the last few months of his lease (I am speaking from personal experience here).
So, Joey is not off the mark at all - if you can get a well-looked after engine but that's probably the greatest problem of all - i.e., finding a 4.00 liter that has not been seriously abused by folks who thought they were treating it just fine.
Wolf